The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

On the second day after the collapse of the northeast corner of Daliang, a group of Wei people gathered in a village in the east of the city that had been flooded with muddy water and was completely inaccessible. They were all exhausted and depressed.

After three months of water siege, although there was enough food in the city and no tragedy of exchanging children for food, they had to hang pots to cook because of the lack of dry open space. And because of the lack of firewood, how to eat these food became the most difficult problem.

First burn the wooden furniture in the house, then burn the expensive lacquerware, and finally the gorgeous silk. These things are not worth a penny of firewood for cooking. When the silk and linen are burned, it is the turn of the high crown and wide sleeves to suffer.

This is the way of the rich family. The poor family is even worse and can only survive by chewing raw rice.

So this group of elegant and noble scholars in the past were all in rags, their hats and belts were missing, and their skirts were cut short. Like the mud-legged people they despised, they stood barefoot in the muddy water, but their words and deeds were still polite.

Their chat did not last long. As something was carried out in this yard, everyone went to help. Although they were all doctors and literati who did not work, they now rolled up their sleeves, worked together to carry an unpainted coffin, and then waded through the streets that were submerged in water to their calves, and walked towards the high platform palace in the distance that was much higher than the ground...

The high platform was called "Fantai", which was a palace built during the reign of King Hui of Wei. It was very high, with flowers and trees, birds singing and flowers fragrant, pavilions and towers, and it was beautiful. In those days, King Hui of Wei brought his two most beloved beauties, Baitai and Luxu, to Fantai for fun and enjoyment.

Nowadays, it is like an isolated island in the sea, and has become one of the few places to stay in the east of the city. During the siege, King Wei allowed the nobles and doctors in the east of the city to bring their families to take refuge here.

The nobles and doctors of Wei State flocked to it, but only one person did not leave. The 90-year-old Tang Ju stayed at home, vowed to share the hardships and life and death with the people of Wei State, and resolutely refused to go to Fantai.

When his children, grandchildren and disciples tried to persuade him, Tang Ju rebuked him:

"When I was 31 years old, the Yan army entered Qi, killed King Min of Qi, and captured more than 70 cities in Qi, leaving only Ju and Jimo. At that time, Tian Dan defended Jimo, holding a cudgel himself, sharing food and clothing with the soldiers, and working hard together, with his wives and concubines among the ranks! That's how he was able to defend the country for three years and then fight hard to restore the country!"

"Now Daliang is under siege and in danger. As a noble, how can you abandon the people and take refuge on the high platform? You must work together, and the nobles and the people are one. Only in this way can we gather everyone's will and build a city!"

Having said that, Tang Ju could persuade his children, grandchildren and disciples to stay, but he couldn't persuade the King of Wei and the nobles to run to the high platform of the palace, close the door, continue to feast and sing, get drunk all day long, so as to numb themselves and pretend that they didn't know the fate of Wei's destruction at any time.

The move by the nobles of Wei State made the people of Wei State more and more disappointed, and their morale was getting lower and lower.

Now, the wall of Daliang finally collapsed, and Tang Ju, the last spiritual pillar of the guards in the city, also swallowed his last breath with regret and unwillingness at the moment of hearing the collapse of the city...

The coffin carried by many people contained Tang Ju's body.

...

The group trudged to Fantai with difficulty. A few days ago, there were still many retainers and private soldiers of the nobles guarding here, not allowing the people to go up, but now, the palace gate is empty.

After the city was broken, the King of Wei immediately announced that the whole city would lay down their weapons and choose to surrender. Tomorrow, the nobles will follow the King of Wei to surrender and leave this drowned city, and the retainers and private soldiers will also scatter like birds and beasts, and go their separate ways.

Tang Ju's children, grandchildren and disciples plan to bury the old man's body here, because this is one of the few places with a touch of yellow soil.

However, a young man of 17 or 18 years old stood at the gate of Fantai Palace, stretched out his hand, and stopped everyone.

"Great-grandfather cannot be buried in Fantai!" he said loudly.

Tang Li is one of Tang Ju's many great-grandchildren. He has been with Tang Ju since he was a child. Some time ago, he was the one who took care of Tang Ju's daily life.

When Tang Ju was put into the coffin, everyone couldn't find Tang Li. He was probably crying somewhere, but who would have thought that he would run here to stop the coffin.

"Tang Li!" Tang Li's father, Tang Ju's grandson, angrily scolded him, "You unworthy descendant, how dare you block the coffin? Get out of the way!"

Tang Li knelt in the water and bowed his head, saying, "My great-grandfather kept saying on his deathbed that Boyi and Shuqi would not eat Zhou millet, and he did not want to be buried in Qin!"

Someone said, "How can there be Qin in Daliang City?"

The young man pointed to Fantai behind him and said, "Now the King of Wei has brought all the officials of the royal family and wants to go out of the city to surrender to Qin. After today, Wei will be destroyed. After tomorrow, this place will be Qin territory! My great-grandfather fought with Qin all his life. How can he rest in peace in the underworld?"

"Besides, Fantai was built by the foolish King Hui of Wei. King Hui indulged in wine and sex and delayed state affairs. My great-grandfather has always disliked it, and he cannot be buried here!"

"Then where do you think we should bury him?" Tang Li's father carried the heavy coffin, tears in his eyes, and said angrily: "In this area of 100 miles, where is there any land of Wei!"

Others also sighed.

"The country is gone, let alone the country!"

"The city is full of water and chaos. We can't wait to send it out of the city. Do we have to wait for the Qin people to humiliate the master's body?"

"Death is the greatest thing. We must be buried in the ground."

"I..." Tang Li had no good idea for a while, so he could only watch everyone carrying Tang Ju's coffin and climbing up the Fantai.

As a junior, his words were useless. In the end, he could only wipe his tears and follow everyone to bury the coffin in a corner of the Fantai and start a simple funeral.

The conditions in the city were simple, there was no plain silk or black cloth, but there was no shortage of people singing elegy, and there was an endless stream of people beating their chests and crying.

They were not only mourning Tang Ju, but also mourning for the impending extinction of the Wei Kingdom.

"More than four hundred years ago, Jin official Bi Wan was granted the title of Wei, and was the Wei family. A soothsayer predicted that the descendants of Bi Wan would be great. Wan means a full number; Wei means a great name. The emperor is called Zhaomin, and the princes are called Wanmin. Now the fate is great, and it follows the full number, so there must be many people..."

"Sure enough, two hundred years later, the grandson of the Wei family was called Wei Huanzi, who, together with Han Kangzi and Zhao Xiangzi, defeated and destroyed Zhibo and divided his land."

"Another fifty years later, Huanzi's grandson was called Wei Wenhou. He followed the emperor's order and led Han and Wei to attack Qi. He entered the Great Wall and fought at Bingqiu, beheaded 30,000 people, captured 2,000 chariots, and captured the Marquis of Qi and returned him to Chengzhou. He was then listed as a prince, and the Wei Kingdom began to rise!"

"During the reign of Duke Wen, Wei had Li Kui and Zhai Huang as prime ministers, who promulgated the Law and Classics. Ximen Bao ruled in Ye, and the people in Hedong and Henei were well-fed, and the government was harmonious. Zixia, Tian Zifang, and Duan Ganmu taught in Xihe, and at that time, all the scholars and scholars gathered in Wei. With Le Yang and Wu Qi as generals, they raised the Wuzu, defeated Qi in the east, forced Qin in the west, swallowed Zhongshan in the north, and defeated the powerful Chu in the south. At that time, Wei was worthy of being the hegemon of the world!"

"As for King Hui, he continued the hegemony of the three generations. There was a meeting at Fengze, and the twelve princes on Si River bowed their heads and submitted to him. Qin and Qi also paid tribute to Wei. Unfortunately, King Hui was dim and unclear. In his later years, he was defeated by Qi in the east, and his eldest son died there. In the west, he lost more than 700 miles of Qin territory and tens of thousands of soldiers..."

"By the time of King Xiang, Wei had lost its hegemony and was sandwiched between the three powers of Qin, Chu, and Qi, and became increasingly humble."

"Lord Tang was born in the year when Mencius met King Xiang of Wei." A doctor who was a family friend of the Tang family sighed.

"Lord Tang lived to be ninety years old and saw the decline of Wei. Although he assisted Prince Xinling in a temporary revival, Wei still could not escape the fate of national destruction."

"Fortunately, Lord Tang did not have to witness the scene of King Wei surrendering with his own eyes like us!"

More and more people gathered, most of them lying in front of Tang Ju's tomb crying about the pain of the country's demise. Seeing that everyone was getting more and more angry and sad, Tang Li could no longer listen. He bowed three times to his great-grandfather's tomb and left Fantai silently.

...

The four gates of Daliang were already open, but the Qin people had not yet entered. The city had been soaked for too long and the epidemic was rampant. The Qin people would not take this risk.

They wanted King Wei to surrender with everyone in the city. At that time, the royal family of Wei would be sent to Guanzhong as trophies, and the Wei people in Daliang would be separated and resettled.

As a man of a fallen country, Tang Li didn't know where to go. After being soaked in water for more than two months, the demoralized people of Daliang Wei no longer had the will to resist. He could only wade through the water and walk home in a daze, pushing open the door of the study...

This place was also flooded, up to the soles of his feet. In order to let his family have a hot meal, all the dry things in the house were burned as firewood, even the bamboo slips that Tang Ju had collected for many years were not spared. But there was only a pile of old bamboo scrolls wrapped in hemp cloth in a corner of the bookshelf, and Tang Ju said that they were not allowed to be burned.

Tang Li walked over and opened them.

There are "Short and Long", "Zhang Zi", and "Su Zi" in it, all of which are the deeds of the strategists, recording the lobbying of Zhang Yi, Su Qin, Su Dai and others, and their arrogant words and deeds. It is a must-read for every young person who wants to learn the theory of weighing the short and long.

Tang Li had such a dream. Since he was ten years old, he read these books as stories, admired Zhang Yi and Su Qin's feat of prying the balance of the princes with their own strength, tried to imitate and excerpt them!

He hoped that one day he could also master such skills, inherit his great-grandfather's career, lobby the princes, initiate the coalition, and save the Wei Kingdom from danger!

Unfortunately, before he could finish learning his great-grandfather's skills, Tang Ju had passed away, and the Wei Kingdom was about to perish...

Tang Li closed the bamboo slips and took out the bamboo scrolls that he had kept in his arms and had not taken out at the funeral just now. He originally wanted to burn them for his great-grandfather.

This is "Tang Zi", which Tang Li secretly wrote before the war began. He wanted to record the deeds of his great-grandfather who did not disgrace his mission through his own pen, so that his great-grandfather could be remembered by future generations like Zhang Yi and Su Qin...

But just as he finished writing, Daliang fell into siege.

He unfolded this half volume of "Tang Zi" on the table, and saw that it had already written three stories, "Qin Wei as a country", "Tang Ju persuaded Xinling Jun", and "Tang Ju met Chunshen Jun", all of which were real events in which Tang Ju cleverly used the words of vertical and horizontal to lobby King Zhao of Qin, Chunshen Jun, and persuade Xinling Jun.

Logically speaking, Tang Ju died, Wei was gone, and the story of "Tang Zi" would come to an abrupt end.

But, is it really over?

Big drops of tears fell on the bamboo slips, moistening the already yellowed bamboo slips.

"I'm not willing!" Tang Li gritted his teeth, thinking of his great-grandfather who passed away regretfully, and thinking of the fact that the Wei Kingdom, which he had tried his best to save all his life, had now fallen, Tang Li's heart was bleeding...

He was somewhat unwilling to accept this fact, and wanted to do something to make himself less uncomfortable.

Driven by this unwillingness, Tang Li found a pen, ground the ink with the muddy water below, rolled up his sleeves, and began to write a new, but fictional story on the bamboo slips...

"The King of Qin sent someone to tell Lord Anling: I want to exchange 500 li of land for Anling, Lord Anling, will you agree to it..."

He put the beginning of the story in Anling, a place where Tang Ju had taken him to visit a few years ago. Lord Anling resisted the Qin army at the beginning of the war, but his small armed forces were quickly wiped out, and Lord Anling had no choice but to surrender.

Tang Li reshaped Lord Anling and made him a wise and wise prince that the people of Wei had longed for...

Then, in Tang Li's writing, his dead great-grandfather Tang Ju was resurrected and appeared on the stage.

"Tang Ju replied: Lord Anling received the land from the previous king and guarded it. Even if it was a thousand miles, he would not dare to change it, let alone five hundred miles?"

Tang Li held back his tears, as if he really saw his great-grandfather still sitting in front of him, telling him the pros and cons. He made his grandfather, under his pen, say the words he often said to Tang Li in the past when the King of Qin tempted him.

I dare not abandon the land of my ancestors!

This is in sharp contrast to the successive kings of Wei who regarded the land of their ancestors as not very precious and compared me with Qin.

He got stuck when writing this, but after biting the pen and thinking about it, and then flipping through some passages in "Zhang Zi" and "Su Zi", Tang Li's eyes lit up, and the pen in his hand became faster and faster, and a thrilling conflict appeared on the bamboo slips.

The King of Qin was domineering and wanted to seize any piece of land in the world. Since soft tactics didn't work, he wanted to use hard tactics!

He arrogantly called himself the emperor, and said that the emperor's anger would be "millions of corpses and thousands of miles of blood", trying to intimidate Tang Ju!

However, the 90-year-old Tang Ju had seen the world, so how could he be afraid of him? He asked back: "Have you ever heard of the anger of common people?"

In Tang Li's writing, Qin Wang Zheng, who was born with a villain and nouveau riche face, waved his hand disdainfully and said: "The anger of common people is also to take off their hats and go barefoot, and hit the ground with their heads..."

The real climax came, Tang Li bit his nails while writing Tang Ju's answer: "This is the anger of mediocre people, not the anger of scholars..."

So, what is the anger of scholars?

The images of those chivalrous assassins who were not afraid of violence in history appeared in front of Tang Li.

When Zhuan Zhu assassinated Wang Liao, a comet hit the moon; when Nie Zheng assassinated Han Kui, a white rainbow pierced the sun; when Yao Li assassinated Qing Ji, a hawk hit the palace!

In Tang Li's opinion, the times need such a lone hero. When the army and national strength cannot compete with Qin, he kills the greedy King of Qin with his own strength and takes out his tiger and wolf heart!

The first Jing Ke fell, but there will definitely be a second and a third Jing Ke!

At this point, Tang Li was completely intoxicated. For the plot he wanted, he ignored the facts and logic and directly let Tang Ju stand up with a sword!

"If the soldiers are angry, two corpses will be buried, blood will flow for five steps, and the whole world will be in mourning. Today is it!"

What? You can't bring a sword when meeting the King of Qin? It doesn't matter. Tang Ju's "sword" is not hidden, nor is it carried in, nor is it taken from others. It is the sword of people's sympathy for the weak, and it is a sword of justice that falls from the sky!

"Great!"

He laughed loudly, as if he really saw that his great-grandfather, though white-haired, exuded the heroic spirit of a commoner, which frightened the King of Qin and made him kneel down to apologize...

Tang Li, a man of a fallen country, relied on his pen to win a victory for the people of Wei that could not be obtained in reality on this bamboo slip.

"Hahahaha, so satisfying, so satisfying! The King of Qin, who has a heart of a tiger and a wolf, would also be forced into such a mess by my great-grandfather!"

But his laughter became smaller and smaller, and more and more unpleasant, and finally turned into a howling cry.

Didn't Tang Li know that this was all fake?

The ancestral land had long been cut off piece by piece by the King of Wei. His great-grandfather had never seen the King of Qin in his life. Anling Jun had surrendered long ago, and there was no commoner who drew his sword to force the king...

Made up, all made up by him!

Faced with the passing of his great-grandfather, the pain of losing his country, the ruined city of Daliang, and the cruel reality, Tang Li could only comfort himself with exaggerated stories and flamboyant writing.

"What's the use?"

He broke his pen, slapped the table, and shouted hoarsely:

"Liangdu has collapsed, and the King of Wei will take all the people in the city out to surrender to the Qin army tomorrow!"

"The Wei Kingdom of two hundred years ago is gone! Got gone!"

After returning to reality, Tang Li began to look for knives and candles everywhere, wanting to destroy what he had just written.

But when he pressed the knife on the first ink character, he hesitated. After a difficult choice, he finally threw away the knife, put away the bamboo scroll, and put it together with the other three chapters of "Tangzi".

Forget it, regardless of whether it is true or not, the Wei Kingdom is gone, Tang Ju is gone, what does it matter whether it is true or not, just keep it.

Perhaps, letting it spread out can balance the hearts of many people who have lost their country and are about to die.

Perhaps, it can inspire more people like it inspired me today, telling them that even if the country is destroyed, the country collapses, and the homeland is deserted, don't forget the heart of the soldier who is not afraid of violence!

Tang Li tightly grasped the bamboo scroll and swore: "As long as this heart is not dead, I believe that one day, the Wei people will be able to restore their country and recapture Daliang. By then, the Fantai will no longer be Qin land, and my great-grandfather can rest in peace!"

Then, give this story a name.

Tang Li has thought of it.

"Tang Ju, you have fulfilled your mission!"

…

Unlike the hearty stories written by Tang Li, the winner is always the winner, the loser is always the loser, the winner is the loser, the reality will not change because of an article written by a strategist or a diary.

On the third day after the collapse of Daliang City, bells and drums rang out outside Daliang City, and the Qin army lined up neatly here, with their general Wang Ben riding a four-horse carriage in front in a majestic manner.

Standing in the pile of soldiers watching the excitement, Hei Fu kept tiptoeing, and he finally saw that inside the open west gate of Daliang, the last King of Wei was naked and bound, holding a sheep in his left hand and a straw in his right hand, walking on his knees in a foot-deep water, kneeling all the way to the outside of the city gate and surrendering to the Qin army...

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