If It Is Not Given, Take It

In 361 BC, Ying Quliang, twenty-one years old, ascends the throne before his father's coffin.

A Wei envoy presents a letter demanding that the Qin people kneel to receive it. The eastern lords hold an alliance meeting without even giving Qin a seat. Ying Quliang responds with a single order calling for worthy men: "Whoever can devise extraordinary plans to strengthen Qin, I shall grant high office and share my land with him."

That autumn, the Mohist disciple Ying Yu sets out west with a sword on her back. A piece of jade hangs around her neck. She has worn it for fifteen years. Someone burned down her home and killed her father for it. And that person is still in Qin.

One is a young ruler wagering his state on a gamble. The other is a Mohist swordswoman hoping to uncover the cause of her father's death through reform. They look at each other, and at this state, mocked by the Central Plains for three hundred years, as it slowly becomes a blade.

Reform gives the people of Qin life and takes it from the old nobility.

This piece of jade has passed from one generation to the next. It has revealed everything except the answer.

Between giving and taking, the world changes hands.