A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

"In 759 AD, the fourth year of the war, An Lushan had been killed by his son An Qingxu three years earlier, but the war was not over."

"Ye City, after An Lushan's death, his son An Qingxu retreated here with only tens of thousands of remnant soldiers under his command."

The Tang army, numbering 600,000, had him completely surrounded. The city's food supplies were exhausted, and even a single rat could fetch 4,000 coins. Everyone thought Yecheng would fall soon.

"But the seeds of disaster were sown from the very beginning of this siege." He paused, seemingly wanting to say more, "The nine armies had no commander-in-chief."

Nine names appeared on the screen: Guo Ziyi, Li Guangbi, Wang Sili, Lu Jiong, Li Huan, Xu Shuji, Li Siye, Ji Guangchen, and Cui Guangyuan.

"These nine men were from the Shuofang faction, the Hexi faction, and the local military governors. They were not convinced of each other's authority. Emperor Suzong was afraid that appointing a commander-in-chief would give him too much power, so he simply did not appoint one. There was no unified command for the 600,000 men, and the nine men fought their own battles."

"What about the rebels? Shi Siming is here." A cavalry force marching south from Fanyang appeared on the screen, their hooves kicking up clouds of yellow sand. "Shi Siming led 50,000 elite cavalry south from Fanyang, first holding back in Weizhou, waiting for the Tang army to besiege the city for a long time and run out of supplies, and then launching a sudden attack."

The scene shifts to the banks of the Zhang River below Ye City.

Shi Siming's cavalry maneuvered and cut through the Tang army's camps, and the nine Tang armies fought independently, being defeated one by one.

A strong wind suddenly arose, with sand and stones flying everywhere. The two armies were entangled together, and the 600,000-strong army was routed overnight.

"The Battle of Yecheng was the most humiliating defeat for the Tang army during the An Lushan Rebellion. It wasn't that they couldn't win, but that they lacked unified command from the very beginning."

Six hundred thousand men besieged a lone city for months without success, and it was eventually defeated by fifty thousand men.

The consequences of this defeat were extremely serious. Luoyang was once again exposed to the rebels, and the imperial court had no choice but to urgently conscript troops to reinforce the defenses.

Du Fu, on the devastated land of Henan, witnessed firsthand the human tragedy of conscription.

The scene fades out from the battlefield and into a series of dilapidated villages.

"The Official of Xin'an. In Xin'an County, all able-bodied men had been conscripted, and officials began to arrest underage boys. These children were short, their military uniforms dragging on the ground, tears streaming down their faces, but no one dared to cry out loud."

"The Officer at Shihao. In Shihao Village, late at night, officials came to arrest people. The old man in the house escaped by climbing over the wall. The old woman went to open the door and said to the arresting officers, 'My three sons have all gone to Yecheng, two of them have died in battle. I only have a grandson who is still nursing at home. My daughter-in-law is so poor that she doesn't even have a complete dress. If you insist on arresting people, then arrest me. I can still cook for you.'"

"The Officer at Tongguan. An old soldier guarding the pass said to Du Fu, 'Go back and tell the court not to urge us to build more city walls. Even the strongest city walls cannot stop an incompetent general. Back then, when Geshu Han guarded Tongguan, he had an army of 200,000 men. Relying on the natural defenses, he was forced out of the pass by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang to fight and his entire army was wiped out.'"

"Farewell to the Newlyweds. A woman has been married for only one day, and her husband is to be conscripted into the army the next day. She tells him, 'Take care of yourself in the army.' 'Marrying a daughter to a conscripted husband is worse than leaving her by the roadside.' This is a bride's monologue, not because the groom is bad, but because the groom is destined never to return."

"Farewell in Old Age. An old man was conscripted, and his old wife saw him off by the roadside. Her clothes were too thin, and she was shivering from the cold. The old man urged her to go back, but his wife endured her grief and only told him to eat more on the way and take care of himself."

"The Farewell to the Homeless. A soldier escapes from the battlefield, his family gone, his village empty. When the county official learns of his return, he conscripts him again. When asked why he is sad, he replies, 'I have no home, and now I have no myself.'"

-

Inside the Taiji Hall, the candlelight was almost gone.

Looking at those people, Li Shimin suddenly felt that all the victories he had won, all the systems he had established, and all the respect he had received in his life had vanished in an instant.

The prosperous era he created, a hundred years later, couldn't even be protected by an old woman.

His eyes reddened. "It is I who have wronged you, it is the Tang Dynasty that has wronged you."

Fang Xuanling turned his back, his shoulders trembling. He had managed household registration and land records his whole life, but in the end, every number on those pages turned into homeless people in the sky.

Tears streamed down Wei Zheng's face and fell onto his official tablet.

No one spoke again; only extremely low sobs could be heard in the hall.

In Liang Garden, Du Fu sat under an old locust tree, and one poem after another appeared on the sky that he had not yet written.

His eyes were terribly red, but there were no tears.

He suddenly turned to look at Li Bai, then at Gao Shi, his voice hoarse and almost unlike his own: "My poems...are they of any use?"

He had asked this question once before, the last time he had only muttered it to himself. This time, he looked at his two friends and stubbornly waited for an answer.

Li Bai placed his hand on Du Fu's shoulder and opened his mouth.

He was a poetic genius, arrogant throughout his life, never hesitating when it came to words. But at this moment, looking at the sentences formed from blood and tears on the sky, he felt for the first time that his "laughing loudly as he went out the door" was as light as a breeze in the face of "life has no home to return to".

Gao Shi's hand was still gripping the sword hilt. He had returned from the military camp in Youzhou. He would later become a general and lead troops into battle.

Looking at the old woman pleading at the entrance of Shihao Village in the sky, he suddenly realized something: the soldiers he would fight in the future would be recruited from villages like this.

He hesitated for a few seconds, seemingly wanting to say something, before finally speaking.

"Each of the poems 'The Three Officials' and 'The Three Separations' contains no more than 150 characters, but when these six poems are put together, we see how ten million families at the very bottom of the Tang Dynasty were crushed one by one during the eight-year war."

"But we must ask a question," her voice suddenly rose, "why did this suffering last for eight long years?"