Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 774 National Power Competition
"what?"

Liu Xie raised his head from his contemplation, with obvious shock and confusion still remaining on his face.

He ignored Zhuge's suggestion for the time being, and turned to ask Liu Bei impatiently:
"What the emperor's uncle said before didn't deceive me?"

Liu Bei smiled gently, shook his head and said:
"I have said before that I have served the Han Dynasty with sincerity from the beginning to the end, and I have never lied."

"This light curtain is truly a thing for future generations..."

"nature."

"That…"

Thousands of questions suddenly popped up in Liu Xie's mind, and he finally asked with a trembling voice:

"I and Fu Shou..."

Liu Bei sighed softly, which made Liu Xie's heart feel like it was falling into an icy cave. Soon his hands were pulled up by his uncle.

"According to later records, I was defeated at Yiling and died of illness. I was unable to help Your Majesty, which led to the theft of the Han Dynasty."

"When the year was young, all the things Your Majesty said in the quiet room were true."

Listening to the emperor's uncle's soft voice, Liu Xie gradually recalled that at that time he had lamented that he was trapped in Xuchang without any help. He even laughed and sighed that if the emperor's uncle had taken action earlier, he might have suffered less.

But at that time, the emperor's uncle just smiled and said that he was also a successful person. Then he talked about the death of his brother and the defeat in the fire, as well as the perverse actions of the Wei and Jin dynasties that harmed the country and the people. At that time, he just thought that the emperor's uncle was exaggerating and comforting him, but now it seems...

After sitting there for a while, Liu Xie turned his head stiffly and looked carefully at Zhuge Kongming, whom the emperor's uncle had emphasized. Then he raised a sincere smile from the corner of his mouth:

"I don't know anything about the light curtain, so I shouldn't say more."

"But if you have any request, Zhuge Military Advisor will present it to the Emperor's uncle for decision, and then leave a memorial to me."

These words made everyone in the hall look different. Ru Xinbi, Gengji and others were even hesitant to speak. However, seeing the light curtain in the center of the air that could not be explained by common sense, they really couldn't say what they were hesitant to say.

On the contrary, Liu Xie seemed to have really unloaded a heavy burden, and pulled Liu Bei back and said:
"After today, my uncle will tell me in detail about the future. I am extremely curious - it should not be like this foreign country..."

Liu Xie tried hard to organize his words, trying to find a suitable word. Fortunately, Liu Bei saw the dilemma and continued:
"The scenery of China's future will surely open your Majesty's eyes."

"That's good." Liu Xie breathed a sigh of relief, looked behind the light curtain again, smiled and nodded to the emperor's uncle and Kong Ming, then stood up and sat back in his seat.

Then he leaned back a little closer to his wife Fu Shou, and whispered in her ear in a voice that only the two of them could hear:

"We Han are fortunate that the Mandate of Heaven has not been lost."

"Fortunately, I am not destined to be the one."

An ordinary person would feel extremely disappointed when saying this.

But in the twenty years since Fu Shou became the queen, this was the first time she heard her husband speak in such a relaxed tone. It was as if he had truly unloaded a huge burden.

They even started to point fingers at the painting on the screen that was said to be from the Ming Dynasty:

"This painting is quite good. This Ming dynasty looks similar to my Han dynasty. I haven't played the game of pitching pots for a long time."

Fu Shou raised her head together. The Ming Dynasty scroll on the screen gradually became larger, and the voices of people from later generations, which the emperor's uncle said were from later generations, also began to sound.

[Although "The Pleasures of Emperor Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty" is often brought up when there is a sporting event, we must first make it clear that among the sports that Emperor Xuanzong enjoyed and participated in in this painting, the competitive nature of the sports is very weak. However, we will discuss this later and take a look at these sports first.

The content of the picture is relatively simple. It basically shows Emperor Xuanzong in casual clothes and a brim hat watching various sports performances in the Imperial Garden, and occasionally participating in them himself.

The order was archery, cuju, polo, chuiwan and touhu. Before returning to the palace, he looked back reluctantly, seeming that he was still not satisfied.

The first activity that Xuanzong played was archery, which is familiar to everyone.

After all, looking through history, we Chinese have many sharpshooters of our own, such as Yang Youji, the origin of the term "shooting an arrow through a willow tree from a hundred paces away", and Li Guang, who was said to be able to destroy a stone with one arrow. In addition, there is Lu Bu who shot the halberd at the gate, Xue Rengui who conquered Tianshan with three arrows, and so on.

Therefore, it is inevitable that some people would be curious. If these ancient archery masters had the opportunity to compete with modern people, would they be able to easily win all the medals or would they be beaten by modern training methods?
But this question is actually a question that cannot be answered, because from our historical perspective, we always think that archery is a sport that requires talent, but from the experience accumulated in modern competitions, archery is actually a sport that tests a country's national strength.

There is a common saying in modern archery that archery is about consistency, that is, an excellent marksman can shoot every arrow with the same posture, thus ensuring the arrow hits the target to the greatest extent, that is, the reproducibility of the hit.

If we break it down from here, we will find that the content of archery competition is not complicated. First of all, it is boring and requires persistent training to engrave the posture, muscle strength and breathing when shooting into your bones.

The next most important thing is the equipment. In order to ensure the hit, modern recurve bows have a lot of optimization content compared to ancient traditional bows, including but not limited to sights, balance bars, counterweight bars, arrow rests, arrow side pads, etc. As for arrows, from carbon fiber materials to streamlined arrowheads that reduce wind resistance, to the adjustment of the center of gravity of the arrow in millimeters, etc., all of this is to assist archers to improve their hits.

On the basis of archer training and equipment assistance, a large number of staff will use specific venues to calculate more reasonable force and breathing methods for archers, and to correct invalid and redundant movements in each bow drawing process, so as to ensure the consistency of the final target shooting.

It can be said that every time an archer draws the bow at the Olympics, there is the joint efforts of hundreds of people in dozens of venues, the calculation of thousands of mathematical models, and tens of thousands of auxiliary corrections.

From this point of view, it is not just archery, but almost all sports competitions are comprehensive competitions of national strength. This is why in the modern Olympics, small countries can only excel in individual events, but the top few in the overall medal table have little change.

This perspective is actually also applicable when viewing "Emperor Xuanzong's Pleasures".

The decline of bows and arrows in the Ming Dynasty was partly due to firearms, which is understandable.

The fact that Cuju and polo became performances actually gives us a glimpse into the root cause of the decline of the Song and Ming dynasties.

In a sense, this can also be regarded as looking at history through sports. 】

In Ganlu Palace, Li Shimin stretched out his hand and made a bow-drawing gesture, then looked at the scene on the screen with a mixture of laughter and tears:

"So, I can't even shoot arrows anymore."

"But... I really want to compete with the archer as people say in later generations."

(End of this chapter)