The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

The two-foot-four-inch long bamboo slips were neatly placed on the table. The morning sun shone in from the window, and the smooth bamboo pieces after being burned and baked reflected the faint light.

Zhao Gao, the commander of the Central Chariot House, knelt in front of the table, took a deep breath, dipped the pen in his hand into ink, calmed his mind, and began to write small seal characters on the bamboo slips stroke by stroke...

The three great calligraphers of the Qin State had different handwritings. Li Si was a Chu person, and he had been studying in the princes for a long time. His calligraphy was extensive and combined with the characteristics of Chu characters. His calligraphy was vigorous, strange and bold.

Hu Wujing was a typical student of the Qin State Academy. His calligraphy was peaceful and natural, and extremely stable.

Zhao Gao was different. He was illiterate when he was young, and he studied hard on his own when he was more than ten years old. Therefore, he was a little bit unconventional. His calligraphy was delicate but powerful, and his style was thin and beautiful. This is the characteristic of Zhao Gao's calligraphy.

Soon, as his wrist moved, three beautiful seal characters appeared on the first bamboo slip.

"Yuanli Pian!"

This was the literacy textbook that Zhao Gao wrote on the emperor's orders. He wrote very slowly. First, it was because the matter was of great importance and he tried to make every word perfect. Second, bamboo slips and brushes were difficult to write quickly: the left hand pressed the slip and the right hand wrote, one line of words per slip. After writing, he pushed the slips to the right one by one to arrange them.

If you want to take notes quickly, you don't need bamboo books, but wooden slips.

The Qin State has always had regulations on the carriers of official documents: counties and capital officials use willow wood or other soft wood that can be written on as slips. Official documents are cut into two feet and four inches, and private letters are one foot long, so they are also called slips. These wooden slips are all sealed with sedge, cattail, orchid and hemp.

Bamboo books are one level higher than wooden slips because they are more complicated to make. They need to be cut, chopped, and killed before they can be made into slips. After writing a chapter, holes are drilled and they are stitched together with "Wei", which is tanned cowhide cut into strips. Correspondingly, the price is several times more expensive than wooden slips!

So reading is really an expensive thing. Only rich officials with a family fortune of 100,000 yuan can prepare all the writing materials. In the study room, it is usually a volume of books that everyone passes around to read until the handwriting is blurred and the solid cowhide Wei strap breaks.

These days, having a few volumes of books of your own is a sign of being a "literary scholar". People are reluctant to lend them to others to read. They must first become disciples and call themselves disciples. If you can load your collection of books onto several carts when moving, you will be praised as "a man of five carts of learning" and be compared with the erudite Wei Xiang Hui Shi.

The bamboo slips were hard to come by, but they were consumed quickly. Zhao Gao only wrote about 500 to 600 words, and finished the first chapter. He asked the servants to blow the words on the bamboo slips gently dry, and then took them down to compile them into a book. It would take more than a quarter of an hour to finish.

He also took the soup handed over by his younger brother Zhao Cheng and drank it to rest.

Zhao Cheng was dressed in military uniform. He was a five-hundred master, under the command of the Wailang Jiang, and was ordered to guard the Linguang Palace. At this moment, he came to serve Zhao Gao soup and whispered:

"Brother, have you heard about the advice given to His Majesty by Zhonglang Huling Heifu yesterday?"

Zhao Gao naturally knew that Heifu presented the official script on behalf of Cheng Miao, thinking that it could be used together with the small seal script and the emperor agreed.

He also said that bamboo slips were heavy and silk was expensive, so he volunteered to make a writing material that combined the advantages of both for the emperor...

Zhao Cheng knew his brother very well. Although Zhao Gao was polite to Heifu on weekdays, he secretly regarded him as a competitor, so he approached him and said:

"Brother once warned me that the Qin law states that when a wise ruler keeps a minister, the minister cannot exceed his official position to gain merit, and cannot make inappropriate statements. If he exceeds his official position, he will be killed, and if he does not make inappropriate statements, he will be punished!"

"Now Heifu is the Zhonglang Huling, and his duty is to guard the Forbidden City, but he talked about the work of craftsmen. This is considered exceeding his official position. Do you want me to instruct the censors I know to criticize him?"

"My brother, you have been hanging around in the officialdom for so many years in vain."

Zhao Gao put down his cup, glanced at his brother with his narrow eyes, and sneered: "According to you, as the Minister of the Imperial Chariots, I am in charge of the imperial carriage, but I often write imperial edicts and edit texts. Am I also exceeding my authority?"

"This..." Zhao Cheng raised his head: "This is different. Brother has the permission of His Majesty..."

"Finally you are right."

Zhao Gao stood up and said with his hands behind his back: "Like the hat official of Han Zhaohou, he did it on his own without informing the monarch. That is called exceeding authority."

"But if you report to His Majesty before doing it, or get His Majesty's appointment, then it is not exceeding authority, but obeying His Majesty's orders."

Zhao Gao was not only proficient in writing, but also proficient in laws and regulations. The more he thought about it, the more he found that at the grassroots level of the empire, the laws and regulations were harsh and inhumane.

In the county, if a person did not work hard on farming and wanted to be a merchant or craftsman, he would be doing his job and would be reprimanded by the Qin officials.

In the county, if a petty official does not do his job well, but does irrelevant things all day long, it is also an violation of the law and will be punished by the supervisory censor.

However, when a person's official position reaches the court and is beside the emperor, his authority will become vague. The position of the Grand Marshal has been vacant for a long time, the Right Prime Minister is a decoration, the Court Justice Li Si often does the work of the Prime Minister, and the Minister of the Central Chariot House Zhao Gao also works as an envoy.

Strictly speaking, these things are not in accordance with the law, and the reason why they are open and aboveboard is just because of a word from the emperor.

Zhao Gao asked: "Do you know who lived in the cell where Cheng Miao lived in Yunyang Prison before?"

Zhao Cheng shook his head and didn't know.

"Han Fei, Han Fei was also imprisoned in Yunyang, but his fate was not as good as Cheng Miao's."

Zhao Gao said calmly: "Han Fei's crime was not punishable by death, but Your Majesty found that he was loyal to Han and could not be used for his own purposes, so he still decided to execute him. Cheng Miao's crime should be executed according to the law, but Your Majesty thought that his revision of the text might be useful one day, so he spared his life."

There is also his own example. Zhao Gao was sentenced to death for his crime, but it was still the emperor who rejected Meng Yi's judgment with just one word, and Zhao Gao was reinstated.

Is it legal? Obviously not, but it is a manifestation of the monarch's power, and no one dares to say it is not.

In the Qin Dynasty, the emperor can kill whoever he wants!

In the Qin Dynasty, the emperor can use whoever he wants!

The emperor is above the law! So whether an official exceeds his authority is up to His Majesty, and the law must stand aside.

"You don't understand His Majesty's intentions. You want to accuse Heifu of the crime of Yueguan. What's the point except to alert the enemy? Besides, such a small matter can be solved as long as His Majesty transfers Heifu to the Ministry of Personnel or the Ministry of Works."

After Zhao Gao taught his useless brother a lesson, he asked him to spread the new bamboo slips on the table and continue to write the next chapter.

Before he put pen to paper, he pointed at Zhao Chengdao and said, "Remember this: those who obey the law and orders are rewarded without fail, and those who break the law and disobey orders are punished without fail. This is called law. Distinguishing between loyalty and treachery, and giving unpredictable rewards and punishments is called tactics. Holding power and position, holding the power of life and death, and the ability to defeat the masses is called momentum!" "Your Majesty is a wise ruler who takes Shang Yang's law as the basis, and also uses Shen and Han's tactics, and holds power to deal with momentum! Things decided by a wise ruler must not be questioned, just watch carefully." He was secretly happy in his heart: "That Hei Fu is eager to make achievements, but he doesn't know that after losing the post of Zhonglang Huling, he will be far away from Your Majesty. Even if he succeeds by chance and gets promoted, what can he do? It's really not worth the loss." Han Fei said it well, flying dragons ride on clouds, soaring snakes swim in the fog, and when the clouds are gone and the fog is clear, dragons and snakes are the same as insects and ants, and they have lost their ride. If a virtuous person is subservient to an unworthy person, then his power is weak and his position is low; if an unworthy person is able to obey a virtuous person, then his power is great and his position is high.

Where does the power of the court officials come from?

It is just the leftovers of the monarchy. The emperor is high above, and there is no need to shout "Please give me food!" The people of the world will crawl at his feet eagerly.

Zhao Gao has seen through the power structure of the Qin Dynasty. No matter how meticulous the laws and regulations are, no matter how strict the titles are, no matter what the prime minister must rise from the state and the fierce general must rise from the ranks.

The only thing that ultimately determines the power of a person is the trust of the emperor. This is the cloud and mist position that these flying dragons and soaring snakes rely on!

Bai Qi and Wang Jian, seemingly the achievements of slaughtering people and destroying countries, are actually castles in the air, like floating shadows on the wall. Once the birds are gone and the rabbits die, they will lose everything.

Once you cling to the imperial power, even if you are short like Youzhan, with power in hand, you can cast a huge shadow like the Twelve Golden Men!

"Go, go, Li Xin, Meng Tian, Li You, Heifu, these officials who are keen on fame and fortune, all flow away like water, only I, Zhao Gao, firmly occupy the position of a close minister."

As a close minister, without great achievements, occasionally small achievements, shouldering hard work, and no promotion for ten or twenty years, it is the safest to follow your majesty closely!

He smiled, continued the previous chapter, and wrote on the bamboo slips, "Relinquishing the throne and giving up the country, You Yu Tao Tang".

But what Zhao Gao was thinking was:

"Yao was a common man who could not rule three people, and Jie was the emperor who could cause chaos in the world. I know from this that power and position are enough to rely on, but wisdom and merit are not worth admiring!"

...

At the end of June in the 26th year of Qin Shihuang, when Zhao Gao was writing calligraphy in the Linguang Palace and thinking about the source of the power of his ministers, Heifu returned to Xianyang in a light carriage.

As soon as he got off the car, he went to the office of the Internal History and found Zhang Han, who was transferred back to Xianyang last month and served as the Left Minister of the Internal History.

After Fusu's persuasion failed, Guanzhong had begun to build a large-scale project. Zhang Han, as the Left Minister of the Internal History, was responsible for supervising the construction of the palace. He had just returned to the office from the construction site. He was exhausted in the hot weather and was resting indoors.

Hei Fu came in a hurry. When he pushed the door open, he saw Zhang Han being served by two slave concubines soaking his feet. His hand had already reached into the collar of one of them...

Hei Fu coughed lightly, said sorry for disturbing him, and then asked the slave concubine to leave and told Zhang Han the reason for his visit.

After hearing this, Zhang Shaorong almost jumped up. He wiped his feet and cursed: "What? Three months! You have to make the thing you said in three months! Otherwise, you will be blamed? And you drag me into it? Heifu... Zhonglang Huling, I finally returned to Xianyang as an official after accumulating merits. I am so busy just supervising the construction of the palace. Why do you want to harm me?"

Heifu shook his head: "Good Zhang Shaorong, I give you the credit, but you blame me for harming you?"

After saying that, he became serious and said with his hands behind his back: "I have been transferred by your majesty to the position of Shaofu Cheng, with a rank of Qianshi. In the next three months, you will be my deputy, commanding the officials and craftsmen to help me complete the papermaking! This is your majesty's edict, and you cannot shirk it!"

After showing his sullen face, Heifu smiled and fooled Zhang Han: "Shaorong, what you and I are going to do is no less than the eternal achievement of Cangjie's creation of characters!"