Outside Xianyang, on the banks of the Wei River, a young man named Ying Zhao tends a few meager fields and reads yellowed bamboo slips.
People laugh at him for being old-fashioned. In an age of endless warfare, can farming and reading put food on the table? Can they stand up to a ferocious army?
He says nothing. He seeks to understand the seasons while walking the field ridges and reads the human heart in ancient texts.
Then one day, war reaches his doorstep, his neighbors are driven from their homes, and bones lie scattered in the open.
Only then does he lay down his plow and take up his sword.
No one knows that this seemingly dull-witted farmer-scholar harbors a vision encompassing the four seas, or that his eyes reflect the ambition to unite the Eight Directions.
He has seen the six kingdoms’ ignoble ways and recognized the rot at the heart of the old system. So, stepping over the corpses of a chaotic age, he builds on agriculture and wields the law as his blade, making his way step by step to the King of Qin.
“Your Majesty, to bring peace to the realm, first secure the people’s livelihood. To secure the people’s livelihood, first establish just laws.”
From that day on, a name arose in Guanzhong that made the six kingdoms tremble.
He encourages farming and sericulture, filling Qin’s granaries. He strengthens the army until Qin’s troops are invincible. He devises far-reaching strategies, directing the sharp sword straight at the capitals of the six kingdoms.
Now witness how the spark passed down through generations of farming and scholarship becomes a wildfire sweeping across the realm, helping Great Qin’s iron cavalry crush the rival states and forge the glorious empire behind the words, “I am the First Emperor!”
