Prince Li You of the Great Tang Dynasty begs the noble families to their deaths!

"That's right, this sea is called the Mediterranean Sea. It is surrounded by land and connected to other seas through two straits."

"Alright, this is the whole world we live in, with all sorts of different countries..."

At this point in the lecture, several students in the classroom suddenly burst into tears.

Li You paused for a moment, then realized that the crying students were several women from Hu.

"Why are you crying?"

"...My lord, we come from Sassanid Persia. Our country is about to perish; it is no longer as large as it once was. We weep because we think of our people who have fallen on hard times."

These women from Hu (Central Asian) didn't speak fluent Chinese, but it was clear they were trying to express that the Sassanid Persian Empire was on the verge of collapse and was no longer the vast empire depicted on the map, which saddened them greatly.

Upon hearing this, Li You couldn't help but sigh.

When a country is on the verge of collapse, its people often lose a great deal of dignity.

These Sassanid Persian women, sold and resold, are clear evidence of this.

Li You announced the suspension of classes and sent Wang Sanwa to his thatched hut to fetch a few silver coins.

"These are Sasanian Persian silver coins that we minted. Each of you take one, in the hope that you will remember your country."

The women from Hu took the silver coins and cried even louder.

Yan Jiu and the other girls rushed over to comfort them.

"Alright, alright, you've joined Huang Chao's army. No one here will bully you..."

Yan Jiu was good at coaxing people, and before long, the classroom returned to silence.

Li You looked at Yan Jiu approvingly and gave her the remaining silver coins in his hand as a reward.

Yan Jiu was very happy to receive the reward.

"Alright, let's get back to the main topic. Besides the major countries I've mentioned, there are many other regions and continents that don't have countries yet and are mostly inhabited by savages."

"This region is called Europe, and it is inhabited by Slavs, Vikings, Ansars, and Germans."

"This region is called Africa, and it is inhabited by Libyans, Bantu people, and some other ethnic groups."

"This place in the ocean, let's call it Australia for now, is currently uninhabited by humans, but it has a lot of high-quality iron ore."

"On the other side of the ocean, to the north, is a place called North America, inhabited by Native Americans. To the south is a place called South America, where a mysterious empire called the Maya exists, as well as the Tiwanaku Empire located high in the mountains, where potatoes and corn are very high-yield food crops."

"At the very bottom is Antarctica, a vast, icy wasteland inhabited by only a few animals."

"Alright, that concludes my second lesson."

"I have had many copies of this world map drawn for everyone to review and use."

"The third lesson we're going to teach will use the knowledge from the second lesson."

Including the minor incident in the middle of class, Li You's second class lasted about twenty minutes, the same as the first.

Although the presentation was short and not very vivid, the students listened with great interest.

The knowledge that the King of Qi shared was simply unbelievable to them.

Those with more insight, such as Yin Hongzhi, Dou Jun, Gao Shen, Zhang Lan, and Master Mingjing, had a different experience after listening to this lecture.

It turns out that the Tang Dynasty was not the only empire in the world, and there were also conflicts between other empires.

The sudden weeping of the Hu women in the classroom, and the Hu merchants traveling along the Silk Road, all testify to the authenticity of the knowledge taught by the King of Qi.

After the first batch of students left, another batch came in.

Li You repeated the lesson five times, and approximately 1000 students attended.

Once these 1000 students hear the knowledge, they will spread it to others in the camp.

Meanwhile, the teaching of simplified Chinese characters in the "university" continues.

People with some education, like Dou Jun and Yin Hongzhi, would occasionally take on the role of teachers to help Yin Shaojue with his work, since the latter was just a child and had a lot to learn himself.

Li You's goal was not to train scholars, but to train literate soldiers and mid-level officers. Therefore, this continuous and relatively easy teaching was sufficient for most of Huang Chao's soldiers.

Basic education is actually not difficult to do.

Further education at the intermediate and advanced levels becomes much more difficult.

At this time, secondary and higher education was controlled by powerful and influential families.

As the saying goes, a distinguished family is one that has been prominent for generations, inheriting its legacy through virtue, with its descendants continuing the lineage.

Those so-called children from poor families are actually "quasi-aristocratic families" who have access to secondary and higher education.

……

In early spring, March, the grass grows and the orioles fly.

The assassins Li You sent to gather intelligence throughout the Tang Dynasty gradually returned.

They brought back a lot of intelligence, covering many aspects.

Li You had to carefully analyze and verify every piece of intelligence.

Last August, news about the Jiangzhou Shipyard that Wu Hong, a member of the assassin team, learned directly changed Li You's decision.

According to the latest intelligence obtained by the assassins, the Tang Dynasty has changed its strategy against Goguryeo and is now preparing to resolve the Xueyantuo issue this year.

However, this does not mean that Li Shimin did not deal with Goguryeo; he simply postponed the campaign.

There were many places in the Tang Dynasty where ships could be built, not just Poyang Lake.

Li You learned that the imperial court had issued orders to the shipyards in the five prefectures of Yazhou, Qiongzhou, and Meizhou in Jiannan Circuit, Yangzhou in Huainan Circuit, and Huzhou in Jiangnan Circuit, which had been given new shipbuilding tasks.

While attacking Xueyantuo, they continued preparations for the war against Goguryeo, managing to do both without neglecting either task.

From the court's arrangements, Li You could see the Tang emperor's desire for victory in war, especially the war taking place on the northern grasslands.

Another major news story that happened in Chang'an also caught Li You's attention.

That was the return of the Venerable Xuanzang.

This is also a well-known historical figure. I wonder if I will ever have the chance to visit him in my lifetime and ask him who the prototype of Sun Wukong really was, and whether there really was a Women's Kingdom in the Western Paradise.

Li You merely glanced at the information regarding culture and then let it go.

Another piece of news, also about Buddhism, might prompt Li You to adjust his next course of action.

Two assassins, while "wandering" in the Xuzhou area north of the Yangtze River, stayed overnight in many Buddhist temples in the area.

The monks in these Buddhist temples did not commit any evil deeds, but when the assassins chatted with people inside, they unexpectedly discovered a special group of people in the temples: monk slaves.

Monastic slaves were a type of slave within the Tang Dynasty, and were not fundamentally different from other slaves, except that their control belonged to the temple.

Li You was already aware of these slaves who belonged to the temple.

The problem was that the two assassins discovered that the number of monks' slaves in the temples within the Xuzhou area was quite large.

"...The poor, burdened by heavy taxes and corvée labor, sought refuge in temples...The wealthy, who also supported temples, sometimes donated their slaves to them..."

Intelligence indicates that some of these individuals were originally commoners who sold themselves to temples to become slaves of monks because they could no longer survive.

Others were slaves elsewhere, donated to temples by their devout masters, thus becoming monastic slaves.

There were fifty or sixty monks in the temple, but a full five hundred servants in the monks' quarters.

Among these monks' servants, some served the elders directly inside the temple, while others farmed fields or managed other businesses for the temple, and so on.

Recalling the events that had occurred in Xiangzhou, Li You couldn't help but realize that monks and temples seemed to be a very special wealthy class in the Tang Dynasty at that time.