Killing a concubine will trigger a melee among the six ministers; guarding an isolated city will establish the division of the Jin into three families.
At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, six ministers of the Jin Kingdom stood side by side, and undercurrents surged.
In order to consolidate the foundation, the leader of the Zhao family, Zhao Yang (Zhao Jianzi), ordered the 500 guard families who were temporarily sent to Handan to be moved back to Jinyang. Handan doctor Zhao Wu disobeyed his orders and secretly colluded with his mother's Zhongxing clan. Zhao Yang was furious and killed Zhao Wu with his own hands in the Jinyang ancestral temple. This sword cut off the civil strife in the Zhao family and also cut off the all-out civil war in Jin that lasted for eight years.
The allied forces of the Zhonghang family and the Fan family surrounded Jinyang, and the Zhao family was in danger. Zhao Yang personally went into danger and lobbied the three families of Han, Wei, and Zhi to form an alliance of the Four Ministers at the cost of ceding territory. In the battle of Tiedi, Zhao Yang boosted morale with the astonishing reward of "those who defeat the enemy are exempted from slavery", defeated Zheng's army and turned the tide of the war. However, after the victory, the ally Zhishi used the "source of trouble" as an excuse to force Zhao Yang's most loyal arm, Dong Anyu, to death.
Twenty years later, Zhiyao, the new leader of the Zhi family, was arrogant and domineering. He failed to seize land from the Zhao family and took advantage of the Han and Wei families to flood Jinyang. Zhao Yang's son Zhao Wuxie inherited his father's ambition and trapped the isolated city. Finally, he sent Zhang Meng to talk to Han and Wei at night. The three families joined forces to kill Zhiyao and carve up their land.
From then on, the Jin State existed in name only. In 403 BC, the Emperor of Zhou enthroned Zhao, Wei, and Han as princes - the three families were divided into Jin, and the Warring States Period began.
