Now that danger from the west no longer threatened Ko-gu-ryŭ, she turned to her neighbors and began to exercise her arms upon them. Păk-je also attacked Sil-la fiercely and soon a triangular war was being waged in the peninsula which promised to be a war of extermination unless China should interfere. Of course each wished the Emperor to interfere in her behalf and each plied the throne of China with recriminations of the others and with justifications of herself until the Emperor was wholly at a loss to decide between them. Perhaps it was not his policy to put an end to the war but let it rage until the whole peninsula was exhausted, when it would become an easy prey to his arms. At any rate he gave encouragement to none of them but simply told them to stop fighting. Ko-gu-ryŭ diplomatically added to her supplications a request for Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto teachers. The details of this series of hostilities between the three Korean states form a tangled skein. First one border fort was taken and then recovered, then the same was repeated at another point; and so it went all along the line, now one being victorious and now another. Large forces were not employed at any one time or place, but it was a skirmish fire all along the border, burning up brightly first at one spot and then at another. One remarkable statement in the records, to the effect that Ko-gu-ryŭ began the building of a wall straight across the peninsula from Eui-ju to the Japan Sea to keep out the people of the northern tribes, seems almost incredible. If true it is another testimony to the great power of Ko-gu-ryŭ. It is said the work was finished in sixteen years. In 632, after a reign of fifty years, King Chim-p’yŭng died without male issue but his daughter Tong-man, a woman of strong personality, ascended the throne of Sil-la, being the first of her sex that ever sat on a Korean throne. Many stories are told of her precocity. Once when she was a mere child her father had received from the Emperor a picture of the _mok-tan_ flower together with some seeds of the same. She immediately remarked that the flowers would have no perfume. When asked why she thought so she replied “Because there is no butterfly on them in the picture.” While not a valid argument, it showed a power of observation very uncommon in a child. This proved to be true, for when the seeds sprouted and grew the blossoms had no fragrance. The Emperor conferred upon her the title of royalty, the same as upon a male sovereign. The first few years of her reign were peaceful ones for Sil-la, and Păk-je, as usual when relieved of the stress of war, fell back into her profligate ways again. The king built gardens and miniature lakes, bringing water from a point some twenty _li_ away to supply them. Here he spent his time in sport and debauchery while the country ruled itself.