The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

Zhuo Tie's eyes widened. He was an old blacksmith who had been working for more than 20 years, but he had never seen so many weapons gathered together.

Cheng Zheng, who was standing next to him, also opened his mouth wide, and said after a while: "How many weapons are there!"

Zhuo Tie couldn't answer him. Just by visual estimation, there were more weapons than those stored in the Handan Arsenal during the Zhao Dynasty.

They saw that one heavy ox-horse cart after another drove westward along the Wei River. After arriving at the destination, the escorting Qin soldiers took down all the halberds, spears, swords, halberds, halberds, and halberds on the carts and piled them into many small hills with thousands of weapons piled up!

After being amazed, the question came, what was the Qin official's plan for letting the Shandong copper and iron craftsmen and merchants who moved to Guanzhong come here to serve?

The mystery was soon revealed. A Qin iron official named "Sima Chang" asked thousands of craftsmen and merchants to separate the tip of the weapon from the wooden handle.

Zhuo Tie and Cheng Zheng looked at each other, but under the whip of the Qin official, they did not dare to ask more questions and each stepped forward to get busy.

They were all Handan blacksmiths. They had been dealing with weapons for half their lives and had reached the point where they could judge the origin of the weapon by looking at the shape or the color of the metal.

"This is definitely a Han sword!"

Zhuo Tie held a two-foot sword with a gleam in his eyes. Since the demise of the Kingdom of Han, he had not touched a Han sword for almost ten years.

Although Han is a small country with few people and the weakest among the seven powers, there is one thing worth bragging about. The best weapons in the world are all from Han. It is said that "the strongest bows and crossbows in the world are all from Han", and "the world's most precious swords are from Han!" Especially the Tangxi sword of Han, after thousands of hammers and forgings by craftsmen, it has reached the level of "cutting cattle and horses on land, cutting swans and geese on water, and cutting through the enemy's armor and iron curtain"!

It's a pity that the best sword was bent by a hammer, separated from the hilt, and fell to the ground powerlessly.

He picked up another spear. The tip of the spear was made of iron. A closer look showed that there were inscriptions on it, bird and insect characters...

Although I couldn't understand what was engraved, at least it was confirmed that it was a spear from the Chu State. The Chu spear was not bad. People often say that a huge iron spear is as miserable as a bee. Zhuo Tie secretly said it was a pity, and removed the tip of the spear with force, throwing the long handle aside.

After that, they also discovered weapons and armor from Yan, Qi, and Wei.

Wei also had elite soldiers, especially the most famous halberd used by Wuzu.

Qi had fewer weapons, although Qi started to monopolize salt and iron as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, boiling the sea to make salt and mining the mountains to make iron, and ironware was the most popular. But after forty years of peace, even weapons were rarely cast, and only practical tools such as needles, knives, plows, hoes, kettles, pounds, saws, awls, and chisels were common. The iron hammers and saws held by Zhuo Tie and Cheng Zheng were from Qi.

There was also Yan, where hundreds of rusty helmets were seen. There was a saying in their craftsman community called "Yan has no helmets", which did not mean that Yan had no "helmets" to make helmets, but that in Yan, almost everyone could make helmets, and there was no need for "helmets" to exist. From this, we can see that the Yan people paid the most attention to protection when fighting. These iron helmets were probably taken away by the Qin people after the Yan army was destroyed. There were dried dark brown blood inside...

After sharpening the arrows for a whole morning, a small hill of weapons was empty. Zhuo Tie and Cheng Zheng walked to the next hill and found that it was full of Zhao weapons!

"This is the iron staff of Hengshan. I have made it for others!"

Cheng Zheng's hands trembled a little. The iron staff is the most famous weapon of Hengshan, Zhao. It is made of iron inside, with a copper cap on the top and covered with black lacquered rattan skin outside. Under the command of Wu'an Jun Li Mu, there is a Hengshan warrior with hundreds of people. They often wear iron armor and use iron staffs to fight, and everything they hit is broken and everything they rush into is sunken...

Thinking of that scene, the Zhao people burst into tears.

Unfortunately, everything has been reduced to ashes. The six kingdoms were destroyed, famous cities were destroyed, princes surrendered, heroes died, and even the weapons that lost their masters were not spared. They were brought here as trophies, their heads and bodies separated, and in pieces!

"What exactly did the Qin people want to do by collecting the soldiers of the six kingdoms here and sharpening their arrows?"

Zhuo Tie was also full of doubts. Three days later, when they were ordered to push the heavy arrows and walked to the north of the Wei River, the two suddenly realized.

In front of them was a huge construction site, with thousands of simple shacks on the outermost periphery. Tens of thousands of corvées lived here, most of whom were dark-skinned farmers from Guanzhong.

Further in, it was the smelting field that Zhuo Tie and Cheng Zheng were familiar with. Thirty-four oval smelting furnaces were erected on the ground, forming a circle. Not counting the convex rammed earth platform under the furnace, only the furnace body was counted, and each one was more than ten feet high.

Along with the countless arrows, there were also firewood and charcoal. The prisoners kept placing fuel under the smelting furnaces, and the newly delivered copper and iron were put into the furnaces without distinction, and smelting continued day and night.

The boiling hot copper, iron and gold liquid flowed along the copper channel to the pit surrounded by the smelting furnaces.

Zhuo Tie approached carefully and found that it was several feet deep, and inside was a huge mold that had been made! Looking at the appearance, it seemed to be a giant being cast, with a high nose and deep eyes, wearing Di clothes, standing with his hands folded, and looking respectful...

Zhuo Tie, Cheng Zheng, and Shandong craftsmen were all stunned. Cheng Zheng even sat down on the ground in a daze. When he looked up, he found that the smoke from the surrounding smelting furnaces rose to the sky, merged into a stream, and rushed straight to the sky!

…

Standing on the top of Zhangtai Palace, Heifu's vision was much wider than that of Shandong craftsmen, so he could see that there were a total of twelve smelting sites on the north bank of the Wei River. Twelve black smoke gathered to form a dark cloud, as if to cover the sky of Xianyang!

"It's really spectacular..." Heifu took a deep breath, and even looked forward to what the scene would be like when the golden man was placed in the Xianyang Palace?

These twelve golden men were not cast for no reason, but originated from an "auspicious sign". In the month when Qin Shihuang officially became emperor, a giant five feet long, wearing Di clothes, appeared in Lintao, the western border of Qin State, but soon disappeared, leaving only a six-foot footprint...

After the Lintao commander reported this to the emperor, it attracted the attention of the emperor and those Qi Yan Yin-Yang masters, who thought this was a good omen for Qin to unify the world and become emperor! So in order to commemorate this event, Qin Shihuang ordered that the weapons of the six countries collected be transported to Guanzhong to cast twelve golden men five feet high and weighing a thousand stones!

In addition, Hei Fu guessed that Qin Shi Huang also wanted to use this as a ceremony. First, he followed the example of King Wu of Zhou who released his horse to the southern mountains and collected weapons from all over the world, which was equivalent to announcing that there would be no more wars in the nine states. At the same time, the weapons used by the six countries to resist Qin were gathered together and melted into golden men who surrendered to Qin and guarded the palace for Qin, symbolizing the fusion of the world.

Third, in the eyes of the emperor, as long as there were no weapons, the survivors of the six countries would be like beasts deprived of their claws and teeth, and they would no longer have the power to resist Qin.

The first two purposes are understandable, but for the third point, Hei Fu could only shake his head.

"The hoe is not as sharp as the hook and the long blade of the halberd..."

"What Qin Mo said is not without reason. If we don't cast the golden man, but cast farm tools instead, I don't know how many old wooden and stone tools will be replaced. If the 120,000 farmers and tens of thousands of craftsmen and merchants who served this corvée were allowed to reclaim wasteland instead, perhaps millions of acres of fertile land would be opened up..."

A few days ago, Qin Mo Chengshang came to visit. His implication was that he wanted Heifu, the Zhonglang Huling who could often see the emperor, to advise Qin Shihuang: Casting golden men is neither beneficial to the country nor to the people. It is useless to cast them, so it is better to stop...

Heifu could not agree immediately, so he could only tell him to let him think about it.

"What can I say?"

While taking turns in the palace, Heifu pondered secretly.

"Your Majesty, will wonders harm the country?!"

"Isn't this courting death..." Hei Fu shook his head. Qin Shi Huang was still a man who allowed his ministers to meet him. He would not die, but he would lose trust and be driven away.

He saw that the emperor's endless desire to conquer the world was shifting to his hobby of collecting: collecting concubines from the six countries, collecting palaces from the six countries, and even collecting weapons from the six countries to cast large-scale figures, and later there would be terracotta warriors. Qin Shi Huang was in high spirits, and he rarely gave up halfway through his decision. It was impossible to persuade him, so he should not offend him.

Moreover, without these wonders, the color of the Qin Dynasty would seem to have lost a lot...

So, Hei Fu did not persuade the emperor to stop casting golden men, but instead made a small suggestion in his memorial.

"Your Majesty, you can ask the craftsmen to use fierce fire to melt the swords of the six kingdoms into a thousand iron couches, and the blades will be stretched out like a peacock screen. Place them in the palace, so that the descendants of the future generations can sit on them, and they will know that it is difficult to gain the world, and it is even more difficult to keep the world..."

After submitting the memorial, Hei Fu began to imagine that if Qin Shihuang approved this, there would be an extra couch made of steel, full of ferocious spikes and horns and weird twisted metal in the Qin Palace.

It is not appropriate to call it the Iron Throne, how about the Iron Emperor's Couch?

Seven kingdoms, one emperor, it seems that there is nothing wrong with it...

Unfortunately, his mischievous suggestion was eventually rejected.

In June, as the twelve golden men were cast, they began to be slowly transported to the Xianyang Palace. The emperor also brought civil and military officials from the Zhangtai Palace in Weinan to Xianyang City to witness this grand occasion!

It was in the Xianyang Palace that Hei Fu saw the emperor's descendants for the first time...