Qin Official

"Your Majesty, Confucian scholars are scholars, but not all scholars are Confucian scholars. Confucianism is one of the hundred schools of thought, but not all of the hundreds of schools recite Confucius and study Confucianism. Because a few Confucian scholars slandered and made false claims, they implicated all schools in the world and banned private study. Burning all the words of hundreds of families, will this bring disaster to the pond and implicate innocent people?"

After hearing these words, Li Si's eyes narrowed. He originally pointed his sword at Wang Wan, but unexpectedly, Wang Wan was still in a daze, but Hei Fu, who had always been close to him and kind, stood up first. .

"Boy, oh boy, after pretending to be moderate for so long, you finally can't help but want to make your own voice heard?"

Seeing Hei Fu talking there, a smile appeared on the corner of the old prime minister's mouth.

Today, Li Si made an impressive appearance and made the astonishing statement about "burning books". This was by no means a whim, but had been brewing for a long time.

The legalist rule of Qin swept across the world, which should have brought an end to the century-long dispute between Confucianism and Legalism. However, Qin Shihuang was a pragmatic emperor and did not completely abandon Confucianism. Instead, he recruited many literary Confucian scholars to study in Xianyang as Ph.D.

The venue for the debate between Confucianism and Legalism shifted from the people to the court. Although the Legalists completely scorned the Confucians every time, this group of people had Wang Wan as their backer, so they were safe every time and continued to talk in vain the next time.

This kind of overt and covert fighting reached a fever pitch when Mount Tai was enshrined in Zen. Li Si only used a small trick, but Wang Wan and the Confucian scholars and doctors were all defeated, and the emperor completely lost patience with them...

Li Si knew that his chance to completely defeat this group of people had come!

Looking back on his decades of career, the biggest threat to Li Si was neither Wang Wan nor Ye Teng, but Han Fei, who came from the same school.

Regarding Li Si, Qin Shihuang only regarded him as a tool to unify the world and monopolize imperial power, and promoted him to officials for this purpose. But for Han Fei, he admired it from the bottom of his heart, and even expressed emotion that "I will never hate this person if I see him hanging out with me." It seems that every word written by Han Fei was written by Qin Shihuang.

The fear of being squeezed out by Han Fei arose spontaneously. Li Si took advantage of Han Fei's petition to defend Han's fatal injury, and joined forces with Yao Jia. When Qin Shihuang was most suspicious, he first asked Yao Jia to destroy him, saying that Han Fei was the leader of Han. The young master is loyal to Korea and will never help Qin to destroy Korea. If he is such a great talent in the world, if he is allowed to return to Korea, he may become a serious trouble to Qin. It is better to kill him!

Li Si also praised Han Fei appropriately and praised him to the heavens, as if he was the reincarnation of Guan Zhong and Shang Yang. When he left Qin, Qin would be weak, just like Shang Yang left Wei. Finally, Qin Shihuang made up his mind to kill him if he couldn't get it!

When Qin Shihuang regretted it, Li Si had already galloped to Yunyang, killed Han Feiyao, and collected his body in tears.

Eliminating evil has always been the principle that Prime Minister Li adheres to, and this time is no exception.

Of course, he would not expose his selfishness so obviously. In the eyes of the emperor, Li Si's words were to realize the emperor's own ideas!

In the past, there were two people in the court who were always close to the emperor's heart. One was Zhao Gao, a thoughtful man who could always be trusted by the emperor. He served as a bodyguard all year round and was even qualified to hold seals. The second one is Li Si himself.

But Li Si's rank was obviously slightly higher than that of Zhao Gao. He did not try to figure out the details of the emperor's preferences, but focused on the general trend. Whatever Qin Shihuang wanted to do next, he was able to advise in advance. He could abolish feudal counties and counties, and write in the same text as the carriages on the same track. It was Li Si who put the words in the position where the emperor caught his eye, and respectfully invited His Majesty to make a move!

Who wouldn’t like such a courtier? It has almost reached the point where "ask Zhao Gao if you are not sure about internal affairs, and ask Li Si if you are not sure about foreign affairs."

The only thing that Li Si lagged behind was the expansion of the west. He originally thought that the emperor wanted to conquer Lingnan and arranged for his son Li You to go to Changsha County. Become famous.

Especially Heifu! Although he was careful not to make too many military exploits and let Li Xin steal the spotlight, Li Si knew that Hei Fu was the initiator of all this.

Jian has one more person in the emperor's heart.

Moreover, the advantage of Heifu is that he can often induce the emperor to deviate from his original intention and divert his attention elsewhere. Li Si didn't know that Hei Fu was cheating, so he won prizes again and again. He thought he had extraordinary abilities, and his vigilance towards Hei Fu gradually deepened as Hei Fu's status was respected.

But this time, according to Li Si's original thought, Heifu had been away from the court for too long and was too far away to be involved, but unexpectedly, he still intervened.

Li Si glanced at Tingwei Ye Teng not far behind him, and thought to himself:

"Is it Ye Teng's instruction? Did Tingwei want to show that he has different ideas from me and is eager to establish political opinions so that he can win the position of prime minister of the left or even prime minister of the right in the future, so he instigated his son-in-law to take the lead?"

No matter what the reason was, Li Si decided to teach the young people a good lesson today, and at the same time, suppress Ye Teng's little thoughts. Let Heifu know that Jiang is still old and the expansion to the west is just a coincidence. The emperor's thoughts are much more complicated than you think!

The Feng Chan incident made Li Si certain that Qin Shihuang's next focus would be on unifying the hearts and public opinion of the world. His proposal to burn books was to cater to the emperor.

At this time, Hei Fu also finished speaking, and Li Si shook his head and said: "The Jiaodong County Sheriff's words are just based on an official lawsuit. He thinks that only the Confucian scholars and scholars involved in the case are guilty, and the others do not need to be investigated. It would be too glaring. Qian, you still didn’t stand from the perspective of national affairs. Do you know why Lord Shang burned poems and books back then?"

Heifu handed over his hand: "I heard it was to clarify the law..."

"Of course, the purpose of burning poems and writings is to clarify the law!"

Li Si's voice became louder: "Xia uses force to violate the ban, and Confucianism uses literature to disrupt the law. These are all prohibited by laws and regulations. Using force to violate the ban is easy to understand, but using literature to disrupt the law, how can there be chaos? They rely on their "law" ancestors 'Say!"

This word made Heifu stunned. Zhang Cang once told him that "faxian king" is a common opinion of hundreds of schools of thought, which likes to refer to ancient times and even to restore ancient times.

Needless to say, Confucianism, no matter which sect, all believe that the three generations are the best golden age. The present is not as good as the past, and the future is not as good as the past. All future generations have to do is to imitate, restore and continue the ruling model of the ancient three generations as much as possible. , and finally achieve "self-denial and restoration of propriety".

Like the disciples of Confucius and Mencius, they will always praise Yao and Shun when they talk, and they will talk about benevolence and righteousness when asked. If you ask him how to enrich the country and strengthen the army, he will reply to you, "The disciples of Zhongni have no way of doing things like Huan and Wen." If you ask him how he can dominate the world, he will reply, "It's not easy to kill people who can dominate the world." Although the words sound nice and are morally correct, does it really have any practical significance to the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period, whose survival is at stake and the enemy is approaching the city?

Although the Taoists of the Lao-Zhuang sect do not like Confucianism, they also believe that it is best to return to the era of small countries and few people where "we hear the sounds of chickens and dogs, and people do not interact with each other until they grow old and die"...

After criticizing the stubborn "Faxian King" of various schools, Li Si said: "Nowadays, people think that the past is not the present, and this is the trouble. It's like weeding in the field. If you don't kill the roots, you only pull out the leaves. Not long after, weeds will grow in the fields again, and the seedlings, millet and wheat will all wither! Therefore, we must pursue his evil deeds and burn down all the houses of the late king of France, as well as his "Poems" and "Books" that advocated restoration, so that no one can survive. No one dares to change the past from the present!"

In Li Si's view, most of the hundreds of schools of thought are "the ancestors of the law." From the perspective of national affairs, those people of the hundreds of schools of thought and the books they wrote are all guilty! Even if some schools of thought do not have the plot of King Fa Xian, they are like weeds in the field. Which farmer would squat down to see their varieties? It is often better to kill the wrong ones than let them go. It would not be a pity to go down with a hoe and eradicate them all!

Only by getting rid of these schools of thought of the former kings can the "King of the Queen of Law" and "King of the Present Law" advocated by Legalism become truly popular!

In the Legalist view, with the changes of the times, the way of governance is also constantly changing. There is no consistent way of the previous kings that remains unchanged for hundreds of generations. Even the deeds of those previous kings were made up and imagined by Confucian scholars. In an era when the whole world is competing for strength, the monarch should aim at enriching the country and strengthening the military, implement severe punishments, and use rewards and punishments to mobilize the power of the entire people.

In terms of future generations, it would be "advancing with the times"!

Therefore, from the perspective of Legalism, as the times go by, the best era is always the present, the world ruled by the "King of the Present", that is, the First Emperor of Qin!

"What should not be left behind are books of medicine, divination, and tree planting. If you want to learn laws and regulations, take officials as your teachers. In this way, public opinion can be unified."

Li Si said this to the arbiter.

Qin Shihuang nodded slightly, what public opinion did he want? Is the present worse than the past? Is it Qin who inherited the cause of three generations? no no! The emperor engraving a stone on the top of Mount Tai made the meaning very clear:

"Before Qin Tian, ​​the world was dim and chaotic. From then on, the world entered a new stage of new light!"

In short, if you don’t follow the law of the previous king, you should follow the law of the current king!

This coincides with Li Si and the political orientation of Legalism! Therefore, Li Si's proposal to ban hundreds of schools of poetry and calligraphy moved Qin Shihuang, who had undergone a major change in his thinking after becoming Zen.

After that, Li Si began to talk about the history books of the Six Kingdoms.

"The head of Guizhou has not yet gathered, and people's hearts miss their homeland. This is all due to the historical events of the Six Kingdoms."

He began to list recent events. Didn't the scholars and scholars captured in Linzi often talk about Duke Huan of Qi, Yan Ying, and Tian Dan in the streets of wine shops? When the people hear this every day, they may miss their past life, and the ghost of the restoration of the country will always hover over the six countries.

In the history books of the Six Kingdoms, there are often vicious slanders against Qin. The people of Chu called the Qin people "Rong of Qin", and the princes of Guandong also said that Qin "had the same common customs as Rong and Di", as if they were a foreign race that drank blood like hair - really there is no such thing. The people of Shao Six Nations still think so.

In Li Si's opinion, this matter is easy to handle. First, burn the looted history books of the Six Kingdoms, burn all the private histories among the people, and then strictly prohibit talking about the historical events of the Six Kingdoms. In this way, no one will remember it in a generation or two. Yan Ying, Tian Dan?

If you want to destroy your country, you must first destroy its history! Li Si's solution is simple and crude. Some people's names must be erased from historical records and from people's memories. It is best for the books about them to disappear silently and disappear forever.

In the end, only Qin is left, only now! Only the great Qin Shi Huang!

"Burning its history will cause people's hearts to become unified!"

After Li Si explained the idea he had been pondering for a long time, he looked at Heifu who came forward rashly:

"Young Master Zao, do you still believe that all living beings are innocent, books cannot be burned, and the opinions of hundreds of schools of thought cannot be forbidden?"

Hei Fu suddenly became downcast and submissive: "The Prime Minister has far-reaching concerns...Public opinion and people's hearts are indeed very important, and it is also what the court needs to do most now."

But he raised his head again and glanced at Qin Shihuang, who was gradually tilting the balance in favor of Li Si. His smile remained the same: "However, I have a way. You don't have to ban hundreds of private schools and burn all the books to achieve the public opinion that the Prime Minister said. , The effect of people’s hearts!”