A Terrible Move

Qin Shi Huang had thought Zhao Gao would recommend Li You, Li Si's son. After all, he'd heard that Li Si and Zhao Gao were quite close. He hadn't expected Zhao Gao to recommend Wang Jian instead.

Qin Shi Huang finally felt relieved. Following that line of thought, he found himself rather tempted. But when he remembered that Wang Jian had nearly died of a cold not long ago, he hesitated.

Unable to make up his mind, Qin Shi Huang sighed. "Wang Jian himself is not the problem, but he only just recovered from a cold. To make him toil over the frontier again would be unfair to my old comrade, who has spent half his life on the battlefield."

Zhao Gao had been waiting for Qin Shi Huang to say this. Only then did he chuckle ingratiatingly and say, "As the saying goes, dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and a rat's son knows how to dig holes. General Wang's descendants must surely be talented, too. Why not have Your Majesty choose one of them to try it out? He needn't command all three hundred thousand troops; even thirty or fifty thousand would be good. With General Wang keeping an eye on him, surely nothing would go wrong."

Qin Shi Huang was tempted by Zhao Gao's suggestion, but he couldn't let a eunuch lead him by the nose. He waved Zhao Gao away and began to think in silence.

Although Qin Shi Huang trusted Meng Tian, having all three hundred thousand troops under one man's command was not ideal. It was time to divide them up. As Zhao Gao had said, it would be good to find two or three people to take half the troops.

Zhao Gao had only wanted a few tens of thousands of soldiers for