Chapter 15 Chapter Four

A year later, in 227 BC, another extraordinary event happened that made Yingzheng's character more suspicious and even more grotesque and cruel. This is the famous Jing Ke Assassin Qin in history. Tracing back to the source, this extraordinary incident seems to be related to Zhao Guo. Jing Ke's assassination of the King of Qin was sent by Crown Prince Dan of the Kingdom of Yan in order to repay Prince Dan's kindness.Prince Dan and Ying Zheng were once inseparable good friends. At that time, Prince Dan, who was only a child, was sent by his father Wang Xi to Zhao Guo as a hostage, that is, in Handan, he met Ying Zheng.The same people who have fallen in the end of the world, why should we know each other when we meet?The two of them fell in love at first sight, fell in love with each other, and soon became good friends. They also played together by the Zhangshui River and the streets of Handan, which became a rare bright spot in the bleak years of Yingzheng's childhood.

Although they are both princes, their fates are completely opposite. Yingzheng returned to Qin, and Prince Dan also returned to Yan.Soon, Yingzheng succeeded to the throne very smoothly; and the father of Prince Dan was still alive and well, so he continued to be a prince.As a hostage who has been humiliated, Prince Dan is already content to return to Yan Kingdom to live comfortably for a few days.Unexpectedly, not long after he stayed in his hometown, a political game was played between the Qin State and the Yan State, which made him "return to his old business" - he was sent to Qin State to continue to be a hostage.

Turning around, Prince Dan entered Qin from Zhao State and Yan State from the west. Although they are both hostages, the current King Qin is his good friend from the past. He should always take care of him. .However, this is just Prince Dan's wishful thinking.Ying Zheng is a typical tyrant with the heart of a tiger and a wolf. He doesn't talk about kindness and friendship. What he pays attention to is reality, and what he talks about is politics.Otherwise, it is impossible to cast a generation of kings through the ages, how can the kindness of mother-in-law and mother-in-law make a great achievement?The friendship and friendship of the past has turned into a cloud of mist in the blink of an eye. Today, one is the king of a strong country, and the other is a hostage of a weak country who is no different from his servants. There is no equality between them. It can be said that there are only relationships and words such as master and servant, vassal, and obedience.

Of course, Prince Dan didn't know what kind of face Ying Zheng had for a while, until the day when he naively wrote to the King of Qin, asking for mercy to let him return to his homeland, he woke up to this former partner and friend.After reading the letter, King Qin replied: "Prince Dan, don't you just miss home? I can let you go back." When Prince Dan heard this, he immediately burst into tears of gratitude. Yes, we are still old friends after all.However, before he could finish his joy, King Qin said again: "However, you have to wait until the horse grows horns, and the rain that falls from the sky will be full of millet!" Not only did Prince Dan fail to return home, but he was ridiculed And humiliation, he had truly experienced Ying Zheng's meanness and ungratefulness.From hope to disappointment to hatred, it was only a step away, but Prince Dan, who was teased and insulted, vowed revenge.

In 233 BC, Prince Dan took advantage of the opportunity when the Qin army sent troops eastward to cross the Yellow River to launch a fierce attack on the land of the Three Jin Dynasties, pretended to be sick and escaped from Xianyang. . Prince Dan's talents and virtues are mediocre, and his greatest ability may be that he can only be a hostage.Not long after he was born, he was sent to the State of Zhao, and then to the State of Qin. When he fled back to the State of Yan, he was almost fifty years old.But it was such a seemingly incompetent and mediocre person who, in a fit of anger, did an earth-shattering event that has been passed down through the ages.

As soon as Prince Dan returned to Yan, he began to implement a revenge plan, and the way he chose was to assassinate. Everything was ready, when his "agent" Jing Ke brought the head of Fan Yuqi, the most wanted enemy of the Qin State, and the map of Dukang of the Yan State, into the Xianyang Palace to present to the King of Qin, Yingzheng was very happy and proud. But it quickly turned into embarrassment and embarrassment.If it wasn't for the imperial doctor Xia Wujue's improvisation, he threw the medicine box in his hand at Jing Ke; if Jing Ke didn't want to capture him alive, he used violence as a hostage to return Prince Dan to force him to hand over the territory of the princes and countries invaded by Qin; It wasn't that the sleeves were torn off suddenly, if the dagger thrown by Jing Ke hadn't missed and stabbed the copper pillar on the side of the hall... Yes, if there wasn't the series of ifs and chances we imagined, Ying Zheng's life might have been cut off abruptly or he had to be killed. change its direction of development.

However, in fact, it was King Qin who drew his sharp sword and killed Jing Ke. Jing Ke's assassination of the Qin Dynasty was undoubtedly a great stimulus and influence on Ying Zheng's body, mind and personality. He became suspicious, always suspicious, and always suspected that something terrible that would endanger his life suddenly appeared.He has become more sensitive, suspicious, and neurotic; he has also become more cruel, he wants to use other people's blood to save his own life that may die; Sword, no one can save him; in order to carry out more cruel revenge, his process of exterminating the six countries has also accelerated.

There have been several other assassinations like this since then. For example, Gao Jianli used Zhu to pounce on Yingzheng, and the Korean prince Zhang Liang bought the assassin and smashed his auxiliary vehicle on the way to pieces with a 120-jin sledgehammer... … The outbreak of these assassinations, to a large extent, prompted Yingzheng to start some philosophical thinking about the nature of life.In the human world, he has had failures, bullying, and frustrations, but it seems that he has never met any real opponents. The final winner is always Qin Wang Yingzheng.The main way he used to overcome his inferiority complex and obtain compensation was to make contributions and pass them on to future generations.He pursued it with all his strength, like his biological father, Lu Buwei, who was like a spinning top all day long, working overloaded.He no longer trusts others, he alone decides all the big and small things in the world; he is willing to give up after reviewing the bamboo slips and documents sent from all over the world every day until he reaches a certain weight; Start pro-government.As he reached the pinnacle of success step by step and walked towards the established goal step by step, because of the series of assassinations in his heart, he couldn't help doubting his own life: although he escaped the secrets of assassins one after another, And cunning action, but, did he escape death in the end?Can he defeat the adversary of death?

Once this idea came up, they hovered in his heart relentlessly and could not be dispelled.This is the thought that many great figures in history have had. For example, Genghis Khan once said after his triumphant return: "Until today I have not met an opponent who defeated me. Now I only hope to conquer death. "Not long after he said this, he died of illness while camping in Qingshui County.Qin Wang Yingzheng and Genghis Khan, although there is a distance of nearly 1,500 years between the two giants, the situations and essential thinking about life they faced are not different. Attempts to conquer and surpass death will inevitably change Yingzheng's relevant political strategies and attitude towards life.He later reused alchemists, sought the medicine of immortality, built mausoleums on a large scale in pursuit of eternity of life, and murdered Confucian scholars who have been criticized for thousands of years, all of which seem to be closely related to these assassinations.

His pursuit of immortality also influenced generations of feudal emperors, and the consequences often backfired. These emperors who tried to live forever often died prematurely because of long-term use of toxic chemicals—the so-called "elixir". End of Life. As long as you are a human being, no matter how great you are, you cannot resist the natural law of birth, old age, sickness and death. The endless chanting and shouting of "Long live, long live" in Chinese history is actually just a farce staged by the emperors to deceive themselves and others.