Zhao Fu did not particularly like these scholars. They seemed too steeped in bookishness, too ill-suited to survival. This was the Warring States era, after all, and they could not contribute much combat strength either.
Yet scholars truly were not to be offended, from ancient times to the present. Take Qin Shi Huang's burning of books and burying of scholars, for instance. To unify thought, burning certain books was understandable, but he had never burned practical technical works on medicine, agriculture, animal husbandry, and the like.
The burying of scholars had merely been caused by the fangshi. The old Confucians, during the Qin Dynasty, had wanted to emulate the Zhou Dynasty and divide the realm through feudal enfeoffment. Yet the feudal system was precisely the main cause of the Warring States era—how could Qin Shi Huang possibly agree? Later, the fangshi grew greedy for vast amounts of wealth and slandered and spread rumors about Qin Shi Huang, ultimately forcing him to bury the scholars.
Moreover, those buried alive had overwhelmingly been fangshi; only a very small number of Confucian scholars had been implicated. Even then, there had only been a little over four hundred people.
A mere four hundred people was truly nothing. For example, when Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, he slaughtered meritorious officials to consolidate his rule, massacred dozens of cities, and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet not many considered him a tyrant.
The blood on the hands of many wise rulers surely exceeded that number as well, yet they were still regarded as wise rulers.
Qin Shi Huang had merely done this tiny thing, yet it was remembered so firmly because the people he had offended were scholars. They were the most important spreaders of thought, and countless books had been preserved or written