Before he turned seventy, he was a butcher in Chaoge and a peddler in Mengjin. He spent half his life drifting from place to place and achieved nothing. Everyone laughed at him for studying all his life only to end up poor and old, his talent wasted. In the year he turned seventy, he fished on the banks of the Wei River, and one cast hooked the eight-hundred-year dynasty of Great Zhou, along with a legendary life that would resound through the ages! He was Lü Shang, revered by later generations as Jiang Taigong and Qi Taigong, the progenitor of military strategists and the founder of the hundred schools of thought. As King Zhou of Shang lost virtue and chaos engulfed the realm, Lü Shang drew on the wondrous schemes in his mind to help Ji Chang cultivate virtue and win people’s hearts. He allied with the feudal lords, weakened the Shang court, laid secret plans, and devised brilliant strategies. With every step carefully planned and without anyone noticing, he hollowed out the six-hundred-year kingdom of Shang! At the Battle of Muye, he commanded the army with battle-axe in hand, crushing Shang in a single campaign and personally ending the tyrannical dynasty of Emperor Zhou! Granted lands and fiefs, he received Yingqiu on the East Sea. He pacified the Laiyi, secured the borders of Qi, promoted industry and trade, and prospered fishing and salt. He brought peace to the realm through benevolence and secured the state with an iron hand, laying the foundations for Qi’s eight-hundred-year hegemony! With secret stratagems, he brought down Shang; with virtue, he founded Qi! Behold how the ancient progenitor of military strategists rose from an impoverished commoner with white hair to become a founding hero who held power over Shang and Zhou, and the founding ancestor of Qi on the East Sea!
