Great Qin Shi Empress

==·dictionary·==

In fact, there has always been "Pinyin" in ancient China, but the Pinyin at that time was not called "Pinyin". People in ancient times did not summarize and separate "Pinyin" from the text, simplify the process of use, and reduce the cost of spelling. Awareness of difficulty—

They generally classify the characters with the same initials or finals that are already well-known in later generations into the same category as "tangent" and "fanqie". "Find out two or three words in the text of the pronunciation to mark the pronunciation of another text that you don't know.

For example, if modern people want to mark the pronunciation of "to", it is enough to mark it directly with "d" and "ao". Mark the pronunciation (the pronunciation of ancient and modern texts may not be the same, this is just an example).

That is to say, when marking, you must first disassemble the initials and finals of the text in your brain, find a text with the same initials, and then find a text with the same finals in the same way, and then mark the text.

Of course, if there is a pronunciation that is exactly the same as "dao", such as "dao", it can also be marked with one word-this kind of marking is called straight tone.

You can't say that this process is wrong, but obviously this method of marking pronunciation is much more complicated than directly marking pinyin.And this method of pronunciation marking must be established on the premise that you know quite a lot of characters, and you are familiar with the pronunciation of those characters, and you will not make mistakes.

If you don't know many characters, you can only memorize the pronunciation of the characters by rote, and then disassemble the pronunciation of the characters in reverse.

The process is cumbersome, and it simply increases the difficulty of literacy.

At this time, there was no concept of catalog index, no reference books like dictionaries, and Arabic characters that were simple, convenient and easy to write had not yet appeared in this land.

However, Lin Qian realized that if more people want to read and write, the emergence of dictionaries is imperative.

With the emergence of dictionaries, people only need to learn pinyin and some daily words, and they can basically rely on the dictionary to learn most of the characters by themselves, and the difficulty of reading and literacy will be greatly reduced.

In fact, the literacy work carried out after the founding of New China will achieve such great results. In addition to many scholars who voluntarily gave up a better life and went to the countryside to teach the people to read and write, dictionaries also played a very large role in it. effect.

Lin Qian told Ying Zheng her thoughts.

Almost after listening to Lin Qian's introduction of pinyin, Ying Zheng became interested in the dictionary in her mouth. After hearing the directory index and Arabic numerals, he instantly understood how good the dictionary will be in cultivating scholars. Effect.

He looked at Lin Qian: "Dictionaries should already exist in your era?"

Lin Qian nodded suspiciously: "Yes, not only dictionaries, but also many similar reference books."

Ying Zheng didn't ask about other reference books, but asked directly: "If the dictionary adopts pinyin, does it represent the era you live in? All scholars speak the same words? Write the same characters? Learn the same words. Knowledge?"

Lin Qian was taken aback for a moment, then suddenly realized what Ying Zheng meant——

[Do you want to tell the same story? 】

Ying Zheng paused, and looked at Lin Qian seriously: "The book is the same text? I really have this idea."

And it's not just books with the same text, but also cars with the same track, unified weights and measures...

Now Qi is the only remaining of the six kingdoms in Shandong. Although Qi is rich but not strong, it is not difficult to win it without other helpers.

In other words, it is not far away from Qin's unification of the world.

So recently, Yingzheng has been thinking about how to govern this world that has been ruled by various princes and kings for hundreds of years. Not only are their cultures and thoughts completely different from each other, but some people in some countries even have deep hatred among the people.

Obviously, letting everyone speak the same language, write the same words, and use the same tools to identify with each other's identities will inevitably alleviate some of the contradictions.

It's just that he didn't expect that Lin Qian would actually speak out his thoughts.

But after thinking about it, Lin Qian was able to say the words "Book Tongwen" in front of him, and the words were only surprises and no remonstrance, which shows that his ideas are absolutely correct and have been successfully implemented, and have influenced to later generations.

Thinking about it this way, Ying Zheng became more and more determined to implement policies such as "books with text".

He looked at Lin Qian, and nodded without hesitation: "Let everyone in the world write the same characters, it would be easier to screw them together, and reduce the prejudice and barriers against each other caused by the division of the world by the princes. "

Lin Qian was full of admiration: "Yes! You presided over the implementation of policies such as the same book, the same track, and the unified weights and measures. In the eyes of later generations, it is completely equal to the achievements of unifying the world. Many people even believe that Huaxia can become a country that has gone through thousands of years. In a hundred years, no matter what accidents happen in the middle, you will always be able to return to a unified country in the end, rather than a divided country like Europe, and these policies you are going to implement take great credit."

[Many people even think that without you, China would be divided and divided like the European continent. 】

Separate?Isn't that what Qin looked like after it destroyed other countries?

Thinking of this, a trace of disgust flashed in Ying Zheng's eyes.

On the contrary, the saying that policies such as Shu Tongwen are considered to be not inferior to the achievements of unifying the world made him a little concerned.

This was somewhat beyond Ying Zheng's expectations.

But after thinking about it, I think it is natural: the unity of the country and the unity of the people are equally important. If not, why did he implement these policies?Are you bored?

But in this way, it becomes more and more necessary for the dictionary to be compiled and implemented nationwide as soon as possible——

This is bound to be conducive to the promotion of his "books with the same text" policy.

He couldn't wait to call Wang Wan, Li Si and others.

Lin Qian was stunned. She didn't expect Ying Zheng to understand the significance of the dictionary after listening to the beginning. She had other preparations that she hadn't brought out yet.

She glanced at Ying Zheng, and finally chose to give up: she always felt that after he had figured out the benefits and meaning of the dictionary, it was not only redundant to take out his own preparations, but also suspected of underestimating the other party.

So, she knelt down and waited for others to come in.

……

After most of the civil servants arrived, Ying Zheng told the others about his plan to compile a dictionary for looking up and learning words.

The others looked at each other in blank dismay, unable to understand what "dictionary" meant for a while.

Ying Zheng looked at Lin Qian.

Lin Qian understood and took the initiative to explain: "A dictionary is a kind of reference book. If it is possible, it should collect all the current characters. The characters need to be marked with pronunciation, so that everyone can find a certain word through the pronunciation and understand it. the meaning of."

all text?

The ministers looked at Lin Qian in astonishment, and soon understood the function of this book called "Dictionary".

At this time, almost everyone is excited.

But soon, they realized that the existence of the dictionary was not only beneficial to them.

Because Lin Qian also introduced many components of the dictionary, such as "Pinyin" and "Content Index", as well as Arabic numerals, which are inconspicuous but also occupy an important position.

Pinyin is not difficult for these literate civil servants to understand. Almost immediately after she introduced the initials and finals, they corresponded to the pronunciation of "tangent and fanqie".

But after figuring out what pinyin is, this group of people instantly realized that pinyin not only makes literacy easier, but also makes it easier to impact today's civil servants.

All the ministers took a deep breath, and their eyes fell on Ying Zheng.

Seeing the undisguised satisfaction and excitement on Ying Zheng's face, all the ministers had no choice but to accept their fate——

Otherwise what can we do?

After the Qin State reformed from Shang Yang, the power was stripped from the hands of the nobles, and almost all of them were gathered in the hands of the king.The king of Qin monopolizes the power, and has been the wise lord from generation to generation. There is almost no situation where the power is lost, and the ministers are completely unable to compete with it.

And Yingzheng is the most capable and most credited King of Qin in the past. In addition, he is very popular with the people, and the power in his hands has almost reached the pinnacle of power in the hands of the Kings of Qin in the past.

As long as Ying Zheng is determined to do something, the ministers can't stop it.

Since you can't stop it, you can only join in.

At least joining them to serve His Majesty will allow His Majesty to remember something about them. After the descendants enter the official ranks, they will be promoted more easily than ordinary people by relying on this two points.

However, many ministers turned their attention to Lin Qian, with complicated eyes.

Lin Qian was stunned for a moment, and couldn't help but frowned.

However, Ying Zheng took everyone's reactions into his eyes, and then lowered his eyes, not knowing what he was thinking.

……

Pinyin is easy to understand. What needs to be done now is to separate the pronunciations of all characters by "initials and finals" or "tangent and antitangential", sum up how many different "initials and finals" there are at present, and then invent and design some symbols to represent these pronunciations. up.

This job is not difficult, but it is cumbersome and needs to be careful, and it doesn't take much time and energy.

However, the concept of catalog index was not proposed until modern times. People in the Warring States period could not find the corresponding concept in real life, so it was difficult to understand.

Lin Qian had been prepared for a long time, and immediately took out the modified "Han Feizi" jointly edited by Wang Wan and Li Si from his sleeve: "The so-called index is to list the content of the full text in front of the content of the main text, and then mark it The page the content is on."

"For example, the book "Han Feizi" is a book composed of many articles, and each article exists independently and is not completely related. If we don't want to read other articles, but only want to read one , you can find out where the article is in the book from the table of contents, without having to scroll through it slowly from beginning to end, and you can easily find what you want to read.”

"For example, if I want to read the article "Lonely Wrath", I can find the page where it is located in the catalog..."

Lin Qian opened the title page of "Han Feizi" and took out a handwritten table of contents from it.

Before looking for the article "Lonely Anger", she first submitted the catalog to Ying Zheng and other courtiers to read it, and then took it back into her hands.

Ying Zheng and the others glanced at each other, and immediately understood what the so-called catalog consisted of——

For example, in the title of an article like "Lonely Anger", there are straight lines of different lengths after the title, and a strange symbol behind the straight line.

The topic is easy to understand, and everyone can basically understand the function of a straight line, but that strange symbol...

Lin Qian stretched out his finger and slid down the title of the first article, and soon found the title of the article "Lonely Anger", then swipe left along the straight line, looked at the number "56" behind and explained: "This is The Arabic numerals I mentioned earlier are equivalent to 56 in Chinese characters. Here it represents six pages of a book."

As she spoke, she held the corner of the book and quickly flipped through it, and soon found the page that was also marked with "56".

Lin Qian stretched out her hand to open it, and an article with the word "solitary anger" at the beginning appeared in front of everyone, and the whole process of searching for the article plus her explanation took only a few moments, and the speed was so fast amazing.

Everyone recalled the difficult process of finding a certain article, and then saw Lin Qian's relaxed and freehand movements, and instantly understood how convenient and necessary it is to add a table of contents in front of the text of each book.

Li Si was curious: "Did Gu Fenghou write the pages of this book by himself?"

Lin Qian was helpless: "Everyone has never been exposed to these things before. If you want to let everyone know what is going on with the directory index, you must show an example."

"What is the difference between the Arabic numerals mentioned by Nagu Fenghou and our Chinese numerals?"

"The advantage of using Arabic numerals to represent page numbers in dictionaries is that it is easier to write, and it is not easy to take up space." Lin Qian smiled, "If you use Chinese characters to mark the serial numbers of the pages, the numbers within one hundred are fine. Not too much space; but once the number exceeds a hundred, five numbers must be printed in the footer; not to mention that the pages of reference books such as dictionaries are often as high as several thousand. If Arabic numerals are not used, the footer position may Printing a long string of words is not beautiful and takes up space.”

Some courtiers were curious: "Shouldn't it be enough to reduce the size of the text?"

Lin Qian didn't answer, and looked directly at Wang Wan and Li Si, who were in charge of printing the books.

Sensing Lin Qian's gaze, Wang Wan said helplessly, "The smaller the text, the harder it is to engrave. Once a mistake is made, the whole template will be useless; the more words, the greater the chance of making mistakes, and the same result will be the same after making mistakes. If a page needs to be marked with numbers, this kind of...Arabic numbers are indeed more suitable than Chinese characters."

Lin Qian smiled, and took out the "Han Feizi" that he had sorted out yesterday: "If you are curious, why don't you see the effect for yourself?"

Li Si was about to take it, when Ying Zheng said, "Show the book to the widows first."

Lin Qian glanced at Ying Zheng suspiciously, then handed him over to the servant.

After Ying Zheng took "Han Feizi" into his hands, he combined Lin Qian's handwritten catalog and read it for a while before saying: "If this kind of catalog index is used on the dictionary you mentioned, it will complement each other."

Lin Qian nodded: "A dictionary is a reference book, and its original purpose is for people to look up, so the index is essential."

"It's not just a summary of pinyin. When using pinyin as an index, you should also add a search for radicals, because sometimes you will see a word you don't know, and no one around you knows the pronunciation of the word, or recognizes it. The text does not know the pronunciation."

She said all the content related to the dictionary in her impression, and then added: "I personally don't think there is much need to expand the content when I first compiled the dictionary. The whole book only has words, pinyin, radicals and The basic meaning of words and one or two related phrases are enough, the main purpose is to let more people know the characters.”

"As for other content, whether it is to wait for the dictionary to be compiled and then gradually increase it, or to publish a few supporting dictionaries, allusions and other related reference books."

Lin Qian explained seriously: "Because the most important thing for a reference book like a dictionary is to have complete content and be completely correct, so it usually takes three to five years to start compiling a dictionary."

At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the state ordered and presided over the compilation of a dictionary with strong enough practicality.

At the beginning, Mr. Ye Shengtao was in charge of compiling it. Starting from 1950, it took a full three years to compile and publish the first edition of the dictionary in 1953.

However, although this dictionary released in 1953 caused a sensation and was sought after by the people as soon as it was put on sale, this set of dictionaries was only circulated in the market for two years, and it was abandoned because of the nationwide promotion of simplified characters. After that, it took many years , and finally in 1957, the first edition of the widely acclaimed Xinhua Dictionary was published.

And this is not the end.

Since then, the dictionary has undergone more than a dozen revisions, and will obviously continue to be revised in the future.

Even when Mr. Ye Shengtao led other people to compile the first dictionary, the number of employees in charge of the compilation was no more than a dozen people at most, while the number of followers, subordinates and others under Wang Wan, Li Si and others directly broke through a hundred, Lin Qian also It is never certain that Wang Wan and Li Si will spend less time compiling a dictionary than Mr. Ye Shengtao.

Because the collection and compilation of texts is not a job where there are enough people, the efficiency can be doubled.

What's more, modern transportation is far more developed than that of the Warring States Period, and the collection of books and materials is much easier.

If you want to compile a qualified dictionary, even if Ying Zheng is willing to invest more manpower and material resources, it is absolutely impossible without a year or two.

But this is also the reason why Lin Qian brought up this matter before the unification of Qin State——

Make preparations in advance, and when Yingzheng officially ascends the throne and starts to promote policies such as "books with the same text, cars with the same track", dictionaries can play the greatest role.

Ying Zheng looked at Wang Wan: "Leave this matter to Xiangguo, maybe you can do it well?"

Wang Wan took the order: "This humble minister will definitely live up to His Majesty's trust!"

== Literacy ==

The dictionary found someone in charge, and Lin Qian immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

Ying Zheng turned his head to look at Lin Qian: "Even with a dictionary, don't the common people know and spell Pinyin? What can Marquis Gu Feng do?"

Lin Qian was taken aback, and looked up at Ying Zheng: "There is a way..."

After a pause, she said, "People don't know Pinyin and can't read Pinyin, so send people to set up literacy classes in various places so that more people can learn."

Ying Zheng looked at Lin Qian: "Literacy class?"

Lin Qian nodded: "It is to send some scholars to various places..." She suddenly remembered something, "In fact, there is no need to send more scholars to various places to teach the people to learn pinyin and simple characters. Haven’t many officials been dispatched to various places to set up schools? As long as the masters of the schools can spare an hour or two every day to teach the local people to learn pinyin and simple characters, wouldn’t it be great?”

Qin’s school system was ahead of this era. If it wasn’t for the teaching of law, it was established in almost every county and county, and it could be compared with the county schools and prefecture schools that appeared after the imperial examination system matured .

Ying Zheng frowned: "You mean, let the teachers in the academy set aside an hour or two every day to teach the local people how to read?"

Lin Qian looked at him hesitantly: "Is it not possible?"

Ying Zheng shook his head, lost in thought.

After a while, he looked at Wang Wan: "Xiangguo thinks how long it will take to compile this dictionary."

Wang Wan paused, then said after thinking, "Return to Your Majesty, the shortest is one year, and the longest is two years."

This is Haikou boasting on the premise that most of the writing has been collected and sorted out when they improved the writing. If His Majesty is not satisfied, there is nothing he can do about it.

Ying Zheng did not comment on this time, but turned his head to look at Lin Qian: "If so, it is not impossible to temporarily let the officials in the academy who are responsible for teaching Qin Law teach those who want to read and write. But that's all. In two years, after the dictionary is compiled and more scholars are trained, those who are still in the stage of literacy must be separated from those who learn Qin law, so as not to delay the training of Qin officials."

In fact, they shouldn't be mixed together now, but there really aren't enough literate people in Qin, so that's the only way to go.

The other ministers nodded in agreement.

Lin Qian was a little puzzled, but she couldn't directly refute Ying Zheng, so she asked in her heart——

【Aren't you interested in compiling brand-new textbooks so that more scholars can learn Qin history and other knowledge? 】

Ying Zheng glanced at Lin Qian, but didn't answer for a while.

When the others were about to retreat, Ying Zheng asked Lin Qian to stay, and then looked at her seriously: "You never realized that before, whether it was promoting cheap books, promoting paper production methods, or today's dictionary compiling, There are quite a few courtiers who are unwilling, but they never objected because of the power of the widow?"

Is it because of this?

Lin Qian nodded suddenly: "I understand that as a person with vested interests, he is always unwilling to share the benefits he has already obtained. Nowadays, whether it is cheap books, papermaking methods or dictionaries, they are only indirectly affecting the cultural level of the people. Opening a school will directly affect the interests of others?"

Ying Zheng glanced at her and laughed, "You're not stupid."

Lin Qian was speechless: "I have read so many books anyway, of course I know these basic truths."

and so……

She looked at Ying Zheng: "Are you planning to open the school after dominating the world, or do you decide to wait until a more suitable time to open the school?"

Ying Zheng pursed his lips: "What do you think?"

Lin Qian: "???"

Ying Zheng restrained his expression and said calmly: "You can't bring up the matter of the school, otherwise your life safety will not be guaranteed. Moreover, Qi State has never really won, so we can't make too much effort for the time being, lest the country is unstable and many people will be born for nothing. twists and turns."

Lin Qian was taken aback: "So you are planning to wait until Qi is captured before..."

Ying Zheng glanced at her: "We'll wait until the dictionary is compiled."

It takes one or two years to compile a dictionary, but it is not difficult to summarize the pinyin and find the representative symbols.

Because Yingzheng mentioned before that people should learn pinyin and simple Chinese characters before compiling a dictionary, so Wang Wan and Li Si directly recruited half of the staff from Cheng Miao, who has been obsessed with researching fonts that are simpler and easier to write than official script.

This group of people has improved two fonts, and it is easier to summarize the pinyin and create a new symbol to represent a certain pronunciation.

After all, practice makes perfect.

And the fact is exactly the same. After improving and completing the two sets of characters, this group of experienced disciples and subordinates summed up the pinyin very smoothly.

In less than half a month, they sorted out all the initials and finals——

After all, when they improved the fonts before, they were already familiar with most of the characters that are in use today. Some people even felt sick when they saw some characters, or felt "wrong" when they saw familiar characters. to the point.

It's just sorting out the pronunciation, it really doesn't take much time.

If they were not confused by the "intermediate sound" in the pronunciation of Chinese characters for a period of time during the process of summarizing, they could even sort out the pronunciation of these characters in a faster time.

After that, mark symbols for each initial, final, and medial.

Originally thought that there were only a hundred or so phonetic symbols, and they could get all the phonetic symbols out in two or three days, but they didn't expect that the multiple sets of solutions they came up with during this process failed to get everyone's unanimous approval, and in the end it was a lot of tossing Months, it took longer than summarizing and summarizing the pronunciation of the text before I really settled on the phonetic symbols.

A group of people reported the results to Ying Zheng.

After reading it, Ying Zheng suddenly became curious about the pinyin Lin Qian had learned before, so he invited him to the main hall.

Lin Qian: "..."

She looked at Ying Zheng helplessly: "After thousands of years of development, the pronunciation of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese have undergone considerable changes, and the pinyin I learned is even based on the language in Yandi area. The resulting pronunciation is simply not suitable for today's spelling."

But Ying Zheng insisted on listening.

Lin Qian shrugged, and started from "aoe", recited all the initials and finals of the modern Chinese pinyin to Ying Zheng. While reciting, she also wrote the pinyin on the paper with a pen.

When she finished writing, Ying Zheng asked directly: "What kind of symbol is this? It was also invented by later scholars?"

Lin Qian froze for a moment, then shook his head: "That's not true. This kind of symbol is called the English alphabet, which is part of the language of a country called Eagle Country outside Qin. All the characters in their country are spelled out of 26 letters."

Ying Zheng glanced at the pinyin written by Lin Qian, and handed the phonetic symbols sorted out by Wang Wan and others to Lin Qian: "It seems that the pinyin you wrote is not as good as that summed up by Xiangguo and the others?"

Lin Qian explained: "In order to lower the threshold of literacy, many remote characters and variant characters have been deleted, and the pronunciation has also been partially simplified. With the set of pronunciation I took out, there is no way to mark the pronunciation of all the current characters. Wang Xiangguo The set designed by others is more suitable for the current situation."

Ying Zheng nodded, and then stopped talking.

On this day, the sheriffs of Sishui County and Dang County just organized the people to harvest the corn, potatoes and grains in the fields. Before they had too much rest, they received an order from Xianyang——

His Majesty ordered the school palaces in all counties and counties to reduce the study time of students studying Qin Law by one hour, and make room for the illiterate people to learn to read.

When Zhang Liang first received the news, he was in a daze, and didn't understand what was going on at all.

Until, he got a thick stack of phonetic notation forms from Xianyang.

At the beginning, the form introduces the use of pinyin and the spelling method, followed by a long list of phonetic symbols for several pages, and each phonetic symbol is followed by a long list of words with the same initial consonant or the same final consonant...

After Zhang Liang got the phonetic notation form, it took him several days to finally figure out how to spell the phonetic symbols.

Thinking of Yingzheng's order, Zhang Liang decisively sent all the officials in Sishui County——

Especially the officials in the academy who were in charge of teaching students Qin Law were called to the county town, and then distributed a phonetic notation form to everyone.

When they were at a loss, Zhang Liang spoke out His Majesty's order.

The other officials were fine, but those officials who would usually come to the academy to give lessons suddenly widened their eyes, their faces full of disbelief.

After Zhang Liang asked, he discovered that many of these officials hadn’t learned how to annotate other characters with the method of tangent and antitangent, so when they saw the phonetic symbols, they didn’t know how to pronounce those phonetic symbols——

They used to learn characters by rote.

Zhang Liang was a little helpless, before letting the officials go to the school to teach pinyin, he became a teacher himself, and gave a spelling class to all the officials.

When the officials learned pinyin, Zhang Liang, as the county guard, was still a little worried, so he took advantage of the first day of the school to teach the common people to read, and deliberately took the time to wander around the school in the county.

……

The news that the academy taught people literacy for free soon spread all over the place.

Maybe it was because the government of Qin State had accumulated enough reputation among the common people, so after the news spread this time, most people went to the government to sign up, except for the common people who were not interested in reading and literacy, or were unable to go out due to illness.

However, the number of students that the academy can accommodate is limited, so after the government registered the names of all the common people who came to sign up, they divided everyone into several batches by drawing lots, with a one-month deadline, one batch for another.

The common people are very happy if they can follow the officials to learn how to read, so naturally they have no objections.

But when the school formally registered for the day, the school was still crowded with dense crowds of people: Because the students who originally studied in the school didn't know pinyin, they all stayed together after the class started.The little official in charge of this matter never considered this point, so this result was caused.

Fortunately, no one minds too many students.

Many people even took the initiative to talk to the students in the academy, and crowded together with them, sharing a small table.

Soon, the teacher came in.

A group of people looked up instantly, and all of them looked at the teacher who was giving the lecture. Everyone still held charcoal and paper in their hands, and their attitudes were frighteningly focused and serious.

If they didn't understand or missed a sentence from the teacher, the expressions on the faces of these "students" seemed like the sky was about to fall, and they sat or stood in their positions scratching their heads, but I can only worry myself and dare not disturb others.

And outside the academy, there were still quite a few people who hadn't had their turn outside curiously looking around on their tiptoes.

Looking at Zhang Liang not far away, he felt a bit sour for no reason.

He thought that after the students in the academy learned pinyin, they could actually find a few rooms nearby so that these students could teach those people who wanted to learn, without making them wait too long.

==·Unity·==

Qin's domestic literacy campaign was vigorous, but Qi's people finally came to their senses after Chu's demise, realizing that Qin's next goal might be their own country.

Only their own country.

But the long-term comfortable life has corroded the minds of the Qi State from the king to the people——

When Qin State attacked other countries from time to time, Qi State established good diplomatic relations with Qin State and was willing to give money to other countries, so it would not take the initiative to provoke other countries. Therefore, Qi State has not had a war for more than 40 years. up.

Based on the average life expectancy of the people in ancient times, almost all the people in Qi State have completely changed a batch.

The people living in Qi State today have never fought in the battlefield at all.

In addition, Qi State's minister Hou Sheng, who is now highly valued by the king, is the same as Guo Kai in essence. He is an ungrateful person who has accepted Qin State's bribe and then devoted himself to doing things for Qin State.

Moreover, apart from Hou Sheng, any officials from Qi State who go to Qin State will receive bribes from Qin State, and will speak for Qin State when they return.

With the efforts of these people and the erosion of the long-term peaceful life, the whole country of Qi has no sense of urgency, and never even thought that one day war will happen in their own country.

As the king of a country, King Qi, who has no vision, not only neglected the training of soldiers, but also never sent people to inspect the city defense buildings and fortifications all over the country.

Therefore, even if it is known that Qin State is likely to send troops to attack Qi State in the near future, except for a few ministers in Qi State, few people in Qi State are too worried about this.

Because they know very well that it is useless to worry.

But even so, everyone was just waiting for Qin to send troops to attack Qi. They never thought of surrendering, let alone directly bowing their heads to Qin.

Xu, the subjects of the Qi State, never thought that the first person who wanted to bow down to King Qin Yingzheng would be the King of Qi.

And the time when he came up with this idea was even long before the fall of Chu State——

After the state of Qin successively captured the three countries of Han, Zhao, and Yan, the King of Qi was terrified, and he almost immediately ordered people to pack their bags and prepare to go to Xianyang to pay homage to Ying Zheng.

If King Qi hadn't been dissuaded by a certain city guard official from Qi State when he was about to leave the city, saying that Qi State "established the king for the country, why did the king go to the country and enter Qin", it is impossible to say that Ying Zheng would have fought without bloodshed long before the demise of Chu State He conquered the state of Qi.

Not sure though.

Some people may think of Wei State, which had already become a vassal state of Qin State, but was still destroyed by Qin State.

But these two countries have very different attitudes towards Qin because of their respective geographical locations: even though Wei State bowed to Qin State early, but because it was too close to Qin State, although it dared not attack Qin State, it always fought against Qin State in other countries. When there was a conflict in Qin State, it was behind the scenes; Qi State and Qin State did not border each other, and they were the farthest away from each other, with several countries in between, so the two countries have never interfered with each other.

It's a pity that everything is hypothetical. King Qi was blocked and never surrendered to Qin State, and Qin State will soon attack Qi State.

And this time is just after the autumn harvest and before the Spring Festival.

The weather is beautiful this year, and it is another bumper harvest year for Qin.

After this year's cultivation, the corn and potatoes that were first planted are now in surplus, and the price of grain seeds has dropped, and the people no longer sell most of them to earn some income; except for the people who only planted a crop of corn and potatoes In addition, most people now put corn and potatoes on the table.

Today's most valuable grains have become sweet potatoes and cotton, which is still scarce.

But even sweet potatoes and cotton have had big harvests this year.

The sweet potatoes have even been cut into the ground again. As long as there is no heavy snow this year like last year, the second crop of sweet potatoes will definitely be full.

Under such circumstances, Qin had almost no worries about launching a war.

Therefore, Ying Zheng took advantage of the last few months of this year to directly send Wang Ben to lead troops to attack Qi.

He originally thought about sending a few more generals to lead troops, but then he thought, if Wang Ben couldn't even take down Qi's dilapidated defense, then he wouldn't have to lead troops to fight anymore.

When Wang Ben learned of Yingzheng's thoughts, cold sweat dripped down his forehead.

Just in case, he even asked his father Wang Jian how to fight this battle.

Unexpectedly, Wang Jian only glanced at him indifferently: "As Your Majesty said, if you even