Records of Troubled Times

There are also unparalleled heroes in unknown history. ... When Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Empire, was about to be executed, he thought of being a common man, wearing cloth shirts with his son, leading a yellow dog, and going out to Cai Dongmen to hunt freely. Before Lu Ji, a famous scholar in the Jin Dynasty, was killed, he was thinking about raising a glass in the wind at Huating in Songjiang when he was young, listening to the distant cries of flying cranes in the sky. Before Gao Changgong, the most magnificent King of Lanling, drank the poisoned wine, he burned all the IOUs that were owed money to his family. At the same time, perhaps all his hopes and enthusiasm, as well as his brilliant but short life, were turned into ashes. What was he thinking about at the last moment when he was approaching the end of his life? Was it the moment at the foot of Mang Mountain when Liu Fuchu led five hundred cavalry and prancing horses towards the enemy's spear points like a forest? Su Shi, the most talented scholar in the Song Dynasty in later years, wrote a poem in his later years: Literacy begins with worries in life. For Lanling King Gao Changgong, a born warrior, perhaps it was when his father carried him on horseback. From the moment he was riding in the wind-swept suburbs of Jinyang, it must have been the beginning of his life's troubles.