Warring States Power Broker: Forging a Hostage into Qin Shi Huang

At the end of the Warring States period, the tycoon Lü Buwei recognizes the potential of the Qin hostage Yiren in Handan, seeing him as a rare commodity worth investing in. He spends his entire fortune to build a reputation for virtue around Yiren, who has fallen on hard times, and even offers up his beloved concubine, the peerlessly beautiful zither player Zhao Ji, as bait. Just as Lü Buwei’s plan to turn Yiren into a “rare commodity” advances step by step, the bloody shadow of the Battle of Changping falls over Handan. The wronged spirits of four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers ignite the nation’s hatred. Yiren falls from the heights, besieged and reviled by the people of Zhao, while the retainers whose reputations he bought with lavish rewards scatter in flight. The enraged King of Zhao wants to kill him to vent his fury, but Crown Prince Ji Dan of Yan risks his life in protest, arguing that Yiren should be kept alive to counterbalance Qin. Yiren is imprisoned in the gilded cage that once sheltered him, reduced to a captive of Zhao.

With the road back to Qin cut off and his life hanging by a thread, Lü Buwei takes a desperate gamble. He hastens to bribe key figures at the Qin court, including Lady Huayang and her Chu faction, while secretly establishing a network of hideouts on the outskirts of Handan. In despair, Yiren licks his wounds of humiliation, and the tyrannical blood of King Zhaoxiang of Qin awakens within him. Zhao Ji gives birth to Ying Zheng while adrift in hardship, and suspicions that the baby was born prematurely take root. At the same time, Zhao Gao is born as one of a pair of twins. Lü Buwei stakes everything on a daring escape plan. Amid the smoke of war, Yiren slips away alone and flees to Qin, leaving Zhao Ji and her child to flee for their lives and endure every hardship. Tempered by bloodshed and lies, the young Ying Zheng will one day trample over mountains of bones to become Qin Shi Huang, the eternal emperor who unifies the six states and burns books and buries scholars alive. And behind him, the sun of the Great Qin Empire will crash beneath the horizon.