The Butcher of Wu’an

In the final years of the Warring States period, mighty Qin marched east. Bai Qi rose through the ranks of the Qin army, winning more than seventy battles without a single defeat and forging his name as the God of War, Lord Wu'an.

At the Battle of Yique, he spotted the rift between Han and Wei, won against the odds, and took 240,000 heads, opening the way for Qin to march east. At Yan, he flooded the city, diverted the Man River to breach Chu's capital, and burned Yiling, destroying Chu's ancestral temples. From then on, Chu lost its power to contend for supremacy. At Huayang, he led his troops on a thousand-mile forced march, crushed the combined armies of Zhao and Wei, took 130,000 heads, and drowned 20,000 soldiers, leaving the Three Jin states terrified at his name. At Changping, he lured the Zhao army deep into his territory and encircled it, cutting off its supplies for forty-six days before burying 400,000 surrendered soldiers alive. The whole world was shaken.

But his achievements made the ruler wary, and discord grew between him and the chancellor. When he refused to attack Handan, he broke completely with King Zhaoxiang of Qin and Fan Ju. In the end, he was granted a sword at Duyou. Before taking his own life, he sighed, "I deserve to die. I buried hundreds of thousands of soldiers at Changping. That alone is enough to warrant death."

A generation's greatest killer rose on the battlefield and died in the world of political scheming, leaving his legacy of glory and guilt for posterity to judge.