The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

Heifu called out several times before Yang Xiong recognized that this lower minister wearing a pheasant crown was actually his former subordinate, Xiaotunchang Heifu...

Back then, Yang Xiong relied on his father's influence to join the army as a palace official, and only became a public official after the war to destroy Wei. In the following wars, he jumped three levels to become Zuo Shuchang, and then entered Xianyang to become the "Weinan Sima" of the Weiwei Army, leading 3,000 troops.

But Heifu was only a general at the time, and his rise was really amazing. However, Yang Xiong also heard that Heifu had captured the flag of Xiang Yan's army, and conquered Yuzhang in the south, opening up a thousand miles of land. Judging from this posture, he was appreciated by the King of Qin and was going to serve as a palace official in the court.

Being on an equal footing with his former subordinates, Yang Xiong felt a little complicated, but he was a man with deep thoughts, and he quickly covered it up with a burst of laughter.

"As a Lang, not only can you see the king often, but also serve as a guard when he enters the palace, and are the main source of county officials. Perhaps when you leave Xianyang, you will be able to pasture hundreds or thousands of miles away! Heifu, you should work hard!"

However, there is one more thing Yang Xiong did not say. Lang officials and guards are often strictly selected from the sons of military nobles in Guanzhong who have good family backgrounds and generations of loyalty. They are all arrogant. With Heifu's title, he should be able to hold a high position, but it is not easy for a boss like him who comes from the common people to convince his subordinates...

Heifu hurriedly said he dared not, and after a few polite words, he pointed to the Weiwei Army who guarded Baqiao tightly and did not allow officials and civilians to pass through and said: "Sima Yang, with such a scene, is there something wrong?"

After asking, he pretended to speak out of turn and said, "If it is a secret, just don't ask!"

Yang Xiong said: "It's not a secret. Soon, everyone in Xianyang and the world will know it, but the news has not come yet."

"Oh? What's the matter?"

"Don't worry, you can guess." Yang Xiong kept it a secret and looked to the east, which was the location of Hangu Pass.

An idea flashed through Heifu's mind, and he smiled and said, "Last year in the spring and summer, Yan and Dai perished. In May, the king announced a feast for the whole country, and there was no war in any place until the autumn harvest. Calculating the time, if we use troops in the east during the slack season after autumn, we will almost get results..."

Yang Xiong looked at Heifu in surprise and smiled, "You guessed it right. At the end of October, General Wang Ben, General Meng Tian, and General Li Xin went south from Yan to attack Qi. At the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, they arrived at Jibei of Qi. In the last ten days of the twelfth lunar month, Qi surrendered without a fight..."

"How fast!"

Heifu had heard about the affairs of Qi. Now that the Three Jins, Yan and Chu had been destroyed, the feudal lords, ministers, officers, soldiers, and rangers of the five countries had almost all fled to Qi, which had become the area with the most concentrated forces for restoring the country. They must have put all their efforts into a decisive battle with Qin, but unexpectedly, the King of Qi surrendered without even resisting.

"It's the credit of Qi Xiang Hou Sheng."

Yang Xiong laughed: "Over the years, when have we not sent him gold and jewels? Thanks to his mediation, Qi State would sit back and watch the princes perish one after another. King Jian of Qi has been on the throne for forty years, and Qi has not suffered from wars in forty years. The weapons are not repaired, and the people are not educated. When the army came to the gate, they all became spineless and dared not resist."

"And the Qin envoy Chen Chi was ordered by the king to lure him with a distance of 500 miles, and King Jian of Qi came to the door himself!"

As he spoke, he pointed to a group of people coming from the east to the west with rumbling cars and horses in the distance and said: "Look, the large group of people coming to the court of King Jian of Qi has arrived!"

...

On this day, thousands of people gathered at the Baqiao Bridge to watch the grand occasion of King Jian of Qi entering the court of Qin.

Among them were passers-by and local farmers. Everyone was very excited and pointed at the princes and grandchildren, palace maids, tall Qi women, and officials who stepped onto the Ba Bridge one after another.

"This is not entering the court, it is clearly prisoners."

Heifu's driver Sangmu shook his head, but saw that the princes and grandchildren wearing Qi silk and Lu silk were dejected, while the palace maids were crying and had messed up their makeup, and the officials sighed every three steps.

Earlier, Sangmu went over to ask about his title, and he claimed to be an "official doctor". The old farmer was also supported by his grandson, standing on tiptoe to watch this scene. His right arm was broken, so he had to put his left arm on his grandson's shoulder.

Hearing what Sang Mu said, the one-armed old farmer laughed and said, "Young man, you are right. It is not entering the court, but being captured! This scene has been seen for the sixth time since the 17th year of this king!"

The 17th year of King Zheng of Qin was exactly the year when the Kingdom of Han was destroyed.

"You are old, have a high title, and have broad knowledge." Hei Fu praised the old farmer, but the old farmer started to talk nonstop.

"The first one to come was King Han An. The team was playing the music of Zheng and Wei. Zheng Jun, who was in charge of the ditch, came to meet him. He bowed his head at the bridge and said that he could no longer be a minister of the King of Han. He was very emotional. By the way, the one who captured the King of Han was the Nei Shi who just came last month... What was his surname?"

"Ye." Hei Fu took over for him.

"Yes, it was Ye!"

The old farmer patted the back of his graying head with his one arm and laughed, "A few years later, the King of Zhao also came. It is said that the King of Zhao is the son of a prostitute. The king was also the most rude to Zhao. He made him wear a coarse cloth and a sheepskin coat, and even had no carriage. He walked all the way into the pass. After more than a thousand miles, his shoes were gone, and his feet were full of blood. Every step he took left a blood mark on the bridge, but it's a pity that it's no longer visible now because of the vehicles and people stepping on it..."

He showed his missing teeth again: "I don't pity him, I also hate the people of Zhao. I lost my right hand in Changping forty years ago!"

Hearing that he was an old soldier who had fought the Battle of Changping with Bai Qi, the Marquis of Wu'an, Hei Fu couldn't help but respect him and asked the old farmer to sit in the carriage, and he didn't mind his nagging.

The old farmer was very satisfied with Heifu's attitude. His age and experience were comparable to Wang Jian's. Not to mention the Zuo Shuzhang, even if the prime minister came, he might not give him a good face.

"But then again, we killed Zhao people a lot, more than 400,000, and we killed them so hard that the heads filled the valley and the bodies could not be buried. In the end, even the Dan River was blocked. But the Zhao people are always like crops in the field, and they can never be killed. After killing one crop here, another crop will grow in Handan. Whatever, in terms of hatred, the Zhao people hate the Qin people even more."

"Then it was the King of Wei. The King of Wei cried so miserably. I heard that his capital was flooded and washed away by the flood. Many people died. Boats could be sailed in the streets, but the land could not be planted. It was really sad."

Heifu participated in the war to destroy Wei and saw the scene of the King of Wei surrendering to Wang Ben.

"Then came the King of Chu... What was his name? It was a two-character name, but the Chu pronunciation was difficult to pronounce, so I don't remember it. The King of Chu brought back the Chu Kingdom after his inspection tour in the east. There were also thousands of Chu people. The women were all petite, and the men all wore bright crowns with tassels and red robes. But in my opinion, such a high Chu crown would be a target on the battlefield. Not to mention the women, even the men had such thin waists, how could they fight? No wonder they were always chased by the Qin Dynasty."

"And there was King Xi of Yan who was captured last year. He had the least number of people and wore the Chu clothes of a prisoner. I don't remember anything else, but I remember the hundreds of fine horses captured from the Donghu."

"Finally, it was the King of Qi..."

The words of the old farmer in Baqiao reminded Heifu of a sentence he had learned in the textbook: The collections of Yan and Zhao, the management of Han and Wei, the elites of Qi and Chu, for several generations and years, they have been plundered and piled up like mountains. Once you can't have it, you will lose it...

The old farmer was thirsty, Heifu smiled and handed over his leather pot. The old farmer took a sip and complained that this was not wine.

While they were talking, most of the people had passed, and the carriage of the King of Qi also came...

...

King Jian of Qi surrendered voluntarily, and his treatment was better than that of King Qian of Zhao. He also had a carriage to sit in, but there was no canopy or even curtain on the carriage. Maybe it was intentional to make him accept the contemptuous eyes of the Qin people.

In Heifu's eyes, the King of Qi was just an old fat man, wearing a high crown and a wide belt, and a purple dress. Although purple was not a formal color in the old-fashioned Qin State, the people of Qi liked it. Purple clothes were the most expensive in the country.

In front and behind the King of Qi's carriage, in addition to the Qin soldiers escorting him, there were also several people dressed like doctors. They had no carriage to sit in, so they could only walk. Several people couldn't walk anymore, and regardless of the etiquette between the monarch and his subjects, they pulled the shaft of the King of Qi's carriage for leverage.

Only a tall doctor from Qi walked in front of the carriage with his head held high. Hei Fu saw that he was still wearing shackles.

When he arrived in front of Ba Bridge, he stopped, raised his bloodshot eyes, looked at the looming Xianyang City in the distance, and smiled miserably.

He seemed to have made up his mind, rushed to the front in a few steps, and stopped the carriage of King Jian of Qi!

The Qin official who was driving the carriage quickly reined in the horse, and asked the Qin soldiers guarding the bridge to drive the man away.

This man held the Huabiao at the bridge head tightly and shouted:

"I once told the king that Qi has thousands of miles of territory and hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The warriors of the Three Jins all refused to surrender to the Qin invaders, and there are tens of thousands of them between A and Juan. The king should recruit them and give them 100,000 people to restore the old land of the Three Jins, and then the Linjin Pass can be entered. The officials of Chu and Yan do not want to be captured by Qin, and there are hundreds of them in Chengyang. The king should recruit them and give them 100,000 troops to restore the old land of Chu, and then Wuguan can be entered! In this way, the prestige of Qi can be established and the five countries can be restored!"

"But the king did not listen to me, but preferred to believe Hou Sheng's words and serve Qin in the west. Do you regret it now? Where is the 500 miles of land promised to the king by the Qin envoy? If you had listened to my advice earlier, we would have passed the Ba Bridge and drank the Wei River by now. How could we be captured by Qin!?"

This was a Qi dialect, which the Qin people could not understand. As they looked at each other, the fat King of Qi in the carriage had been feeling aggrieved all the way. Now he could not hold it back any longer, and he stood up with tears in his eyes and said, "Doctor Jimo, I..."

It was useless to say anything now. Doctor Jimo stopped him and sighed, "In the past, my ancestor King Wei wrote an inscription saying, "Steam and taste, keep the Qi state, and make it a permanent rule for all generations! The king is established for the sake of the country! The minister is also established for the sake of the country. But now, the country of Qi has perished, and the Tian clan's ancestral temple has ceased..."

"I didn't dare to die, but after coming here, I really don't want to be a captive in Xianyang and be laughed at by the Qin people. I deserve to die!"

After saying that, he slammed his head against the stone Huabiao he was holding, with great force, as if he heard the sound of a watermelon being split open. Doctor Jimo was instantly covered in blood and his body was limp. It was obvious that he was not going to live...

The Qin people who were watching cried out in surprise, and King Jian of Qi was very sad. He choked up a few words and wanted to get off the car, but was stopped by the Qin officials.

He could only cover his face, ashamed to see his ministers again, and asked Yang Xiong who came to check to bury the doctor of Jimo properly.

Yang Xiong was dismissive and casually ordered his subordinates to say: "Find a local miser to dig a hole and bury him!"

After the soldiers dragged the body of the doctor from Jimo away, leaving only two blood marks, the one-armed old farmer who was silent for a long time said faintly: "Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, Qi, although the kings of each country are not virtuous, and the generals are also cowardly, they all have loyal ministers."

Hei Fu was also quite touched and thought secretly: "However, if the kings of the six countries had learned to love each other more than a hundred years ago, why would it be like this..."

However, even if King Wei and King Xuan of Qi were wise and intelligent, they could not avoid having descendants who were either stupid and arrogant or short-sighted. For a country like Qin, which has produced six or seven generations of wise kings since Qin Xian Gong, it is really a chance to win a big prize.

Besides, if all the six kings were wise, Hei Fu would not have been able to get promoted to Zuo Shuzhang so easily, and his Nanjun children would have suffered heavy losses.

The old farmer shook his head and sighed for a while, but soon became happy again: "My eldest grandson also followed General Meng Tian to fight Yan and Dai, and went to Qi. Since there is no need to fight, he will be able to come back soon!"

After saying that, he also lost interest in watching the excitement and let his grandson help him leave.

Hei Fu had to wait to cross the bridge, so he waited until the tail of the caravan. The wind blew through the bamboo mat covering the car, revealing a golden corner, which amazed everyone.

Ironically, these dozens of carts of gold were all given to Qi Xiang Hou Sheng by the King of Qin who sent Li Si and Wei Liao to him over the past decade to ask him not to help the five countries resist Qin. Now, Hou Sheng has returned the principal and interest...

After all the carriages and horses escorting the King of Qi passed, Yang Xiong lifted the martial law at Baqiao. As the mulberry wood flicked a whip flower in the air, Hei Fu's carriage set off again.

Driving on the Ba Bridge, looking at the queue of Qi people not far ahead, Hei Fu felt that a piece of history had come to an end under his own eyes.

His six-year expedition to the east and south finally came to an end.

With the demise of Qi, the 550-year war in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period also came to an end!

Hei Fu looked to the north, he saw the billowing smoke on the north bank of the Wei River, where a huge golden man was being cast, and also saw the majestic and magnificent palace on the Xianyang Plateau under the blue sky and white clouds!

The First Emperor was waiting for him to report there.

A new story was also waiting for Hei Fu to start!

Hei Fu smiled, patted the shaft of the car gently, and made a summary of his busy years.

"Six kings are gone, and the world is one!"