In 259 BC, a boy was born in Handan, Zhao State. There are no auspicious clouds, no red light, just a night abandoned by his father, and an alley where he is chased and beaten by his peers.
His name is Zhao Zheng.
It took him ten years to go from being an abandoned child in Handan to the throne of Xianyang Palace. It took another ten years from the destruction of Korea to the defeat of the six countries. He cast all the swords in the world into bronze figures, unified all the characters in the world into small seal scripts, and built all the roads in the world into Chidao. He stood on the top of Mount Tai and offered sacrifices to Heaven alone. He didn't need anyone to teach him how to talk to Heaven.
But he couldn't control his body slowly rotting in the sand dunes. Three years after his death, the empire fell. Four years after his death, Xianyang Palace was burned to ashes by Xiang Yu.
Then Liu Bang stood up from the ashes, picked up the laws, writings, weights and measures, and the system of counties and counties he left behind, and changed the name of the country. The Han Dynasty inherited the Qin system. The man died, but he lived for two thousand years according to the rules he set.
From the unification of Liuhe by Qin Shihuang, to the bloody struggle between Chu and Han, to the rule of Wenjing and the rest of the people, to the prosperity of Han Dynasty and the expulsion of the Xiongnu from the north, to Wang Mang's usurpation of the throne and the division of the world, to the restoration of Luoyang by Guangwu, and the collapse of the building in the late Eastern Han Dynasty - this book tells the whole process from the birth to the decline of the first unified empire in Chinese history with the attitude of looking at the emperor levelly and the tone of a storyteller who mixes narrative and discussion. This is not a genealogy of emperors and generals, but a group portrait of how a group of people chose, lived, and died in the face of power, betrayal, loneliness, and death.
From Zhao Zheng to Liu Bang, from Xiang Yu to Han Xin, from Wei Qing to Huo Qubing, from Wang Mang to Liu Xiu - their blood is still flowing in our veins.
