On the seventh day after Qin Shihuang unified the six kingdoms, he dreamed that he entered a boundless palace. There are countless bamboo slips and stone tablets standing in the hall, which are covered with words. He reached out and touched it, and those words came into his mind——
That is the entire content of two thousand years of official history.
He saw the end of "The Chronicles of Qin Shihuang": the changes in the sand dunes, the secret of mourning, and the stench of abalone.
He saw "The Chronicles of Xiang Yu": The people of Chu were torched, and the earth was pitifully scorched.
He saw "The Chronicles of Emperor Gaozu": A Sishui pavilion chief walked into the empty Xianyang Palace.
He saw the rise and fall of all subsequent dynasties—Han, Jin, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming—each repeating a similar trajectory: founding, prosperity, decline, and destruction.
He saw the evaluation of him by later historians: "The world was founded with tyranny", "Abolish the way of the previous kings and burn the words of hundreds of families", "If benevolence and righteousness are not practiced, the offensive and defensive momentum will be different."
He saw the full text of Jia Yi's "On the Passage of Qin", word for word, and it was engraved in his heart like a knife.
When he woke up from the dream, he was covered in cold sweat and sat alone until dawn.
He told no one about the dream. But he knew that from today on, what he wanted to do was not "unify the world", but "defend the world."
