My hotel is full of emperors throughout history.

Longyou Circuit, Hezhou, a military town.

The night wind was biting, and the campfire on the training ground crackled.

Three hundred soldiers sat on the ground in a circle, listening to the garrison commander read out the military orders from Chang'an.

When the text read, "The Japanese delegation attempted to assassinate the emperor in front of the palace, startling the emperor and killing him," the young soldiers erupted in uproar.

"Startled the Emperor? Does that mean they're going to kill him?!"

"Those damn Japanese, they're tired of living!"

The garrison commander raised his hand to quell the commotion, finished reading the military order, closed the scroll, and remained silent for a long time.

Most of these soldiers were in their early twenties, and the furthest they had ever been was Longxi; they had never even seen the sea.

They didn't know where Japan was, how to board a ship, or even whether their journey would be one of life or death.

The garrison commander looked at the young and excited faces and remembered how the old captain had looked at him in the same way when he first went to the battlefield.

He didn't say anything grand or impressive; he just asked one question.

Are you afraid of the sea?

The soldiers chattered amongst themselves:

"What's there to be afraid of! I grew up by the Yellow River, haven't I seen enough water?"

"The Japanese also have two arms and one head; they'll die just the same if you cut them down!"

"If the garrison commander goes, I'll go! If the garrison commander doesn't go... I'll still go! To avenge His Majesty!"

The town general nodded.

"it is good."

He turned and looked eastward.

There lies Chang'an, Dengzhou, the endless sea, and the island nation beyond.

"Pass on the order!"

His voice wasn't loud, but it drowned out the howling wind.

"At dawn tomorrow, all personnel will prepare for battle and await orders from the Ministry of War."

"yes!"

Three hundred voices, merging into one.

Shandong Circuit, Dengzhou.

This is the closest place to the battlefield, and the front line where the atmosphere of war is first felt.

On the day the proclamation arrived, the governor of Dengzhou immediately ordered a hundred copies to be made and posted on the city gates, docks, and streets.

The crowd of onlookers was packed in layers, with literate people reading aloud and illiterate people listening intently.

When the text read, "The Dengzhou naval patrol fleet was surrounded and provoked in the waters west of Tsushima Island, and Tang soldiers were captured," a long-suppressed roar erupted from the crowd.

"It's those Japanese pirates!"

"My cousin's ship was hijacked in those waters six months ago! The cargo was gone, and he never came back!"

"The government says they're pirates, but where did those pirates come from? Aren't they just dogs kept by Japan!"

At the dock, an old fisherman with three missing fingers listened silently, his cloudy eyes gazing at the horizon where the sea met the sky.

His name is Zhao Laojiao. He is over sixty years old and has been begging for food at sea for forty years.

His ship was hijacked by Japanese pirates three times. The last time, the pirates thought he was too old to fetch a good price, so they chopped off three of his fingers and threw him into the sea.

He clung to a broken plank and drifted for three days and three nights before being rescued by a Goryeo merchant ship and eventually returned to Dengzhou.

The officers and soldiers came to question him and draw up a diagram, but then nothing more was said.

He knew that the imperial court couldn't control the sea that far away.

But now, the imperial court is going to take charge.

He had no son, no savings, could not donate money or food, and could not go to the battlefield.

He simply returned to the ship and pulled out an old, dusty flag from the hold—it was the flag he used when he was young, with a red background and black lettering that read "Zhao of Dengzhou, Great Tang Dynasty".

He hoisted the flag onto the mast.

The wind comes from the sea, the old flag flutters, its tattered parts like torn silk.

The young fishermen on the nearby boat saw this, paused for a moment, then turned around and pulled out their own boat flags that had been sealed away for many years.

One side, two sides, ten sides, a hundred sides.

At dusk, hundreds of ship flags were raised simultaneously in Dengzhou Bay.

Red background with black lettering, facing the sea breeze, like thousands of silent vows.

The news spread to even more distant states and counties.

Taiyuan, Youzhou, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, Yizhou...

The proclamation was being read in every city across the ten circuits and more than three hundred prefectures, and the matter was being discussed in every market town.

Anger spread like wildfire, sweeping across the north and south.

Some elderly people frowned and said old sayings like "Weapons are instruments of death, which even sages use only when they have no other choice," only to be contradicted by their own younger generation.

"The Japanese are riding roughshod over our necks, and we're not going to fight them? Does Grandfather want his descendants to laugh at our Great Tang Dynasty?"

The old man choked, and after a long while, he sighed and said nothing more.

More voices converged into a torrent:

"beat!"

"Let's march on Japan!"

"Avenge Doctor Wang!"

"Avenge our captured brothers!"

"To avenge the merchants and civilians who have died unjustly at sea over the years!"

The few lines of ink in the manifesto mentioning gold and silver mines were hardly noticeable amidst the fervent emotions of revenge.

At that moment, no one cared about the profits, no one cared about the costs, and no one cared what the young Japanese man was shouting when he drew his sword.

Everyone only sees one thing—

A minister of the Tang Dynasty was assassinated by Japanese pirates in front of His Majesty, in front of all the officials, and in front of the envoys from all over the world.

That's enough.

How dare this tiny, insignificant country challenge the might of my Chinese Heavenly Dynasty?

You've given him too much credit!

Let alone assassinating a minister!

Even if someone dares to kill a Tang Dynasty person in public, they will have to pay the price!

Chang'an, Taiji Palace.

The first batch of elite troops for the eastern expedition, five thousand Zuo Xiaowei soldiers, donned armor and wielded weapons, marched out of Chunming Gate in formation.

Li Shimin did not see him off; at that moment, he was in the Taiji Palace discussing the deployment of ships with the Directorate of Works and the Naval Commander-in-Chief.

But half of Chang'an was empty.

People, young and old, crowded both sides of Zhuque Street.

Some people stuffed eggs, dry rations, and amulets into the soldiers' arms; some knelt by the roadside burning incense and praying; and some simply shed tears silently.

Cheng Yaojin, riding on his horse and carrying his iconic mountain-splitting axe, surprisingly didn't shout.

Looking at the unfamiliar faces along the way, he suddenly cursed in a muffled voice.

"Damn it."

Then he dismounted and solemnly clasped his hands in a military salute to the people on both sides of the road.

Five thousand soldiers dismounted in unison and clasped their fists in unison.

The clanging of armor caused a mass of people to kneel down.

Someone in the crowd burst into tears first.

Outside Chunming Gate, the post road leads north and then east.

There is sea, ships, war, and countless unpredictable destinies.

But no one turned around.

Everyone in the entire Tang Dynasty had only one thought—to utterly destroy that damned Japanese nation!