As if to prove the conversation between King Zheng of Qin and Chen Cuo in the great hall that day, Qin won battle after battle over the next few years. By the end of that year, its armies had the Eastern Lands in their grip. Zhao, Wei, Han, Yan, Qi, and Chu all feared for their own survival, and none dared face Qin's advance!
King Jian of Qi even came to Xianyang in person to pay court to King Zheng of Qin!
The ruler of a kingdom had humbled himself enough to visit another kingdom's capital and seek an audience for peace of mind. It showed just how powerful Qin had become—and how grave a crisis the eastern kingdoms faced!
In the hall, this eastern king adopted a deeply deferential posture before King Zheng of Qin. There was even a faint echo of the days when the feudal lords had served the royal house of Zhou.
King Zheng of Qin reassured him, declaring that Qin's campaigns sought above all to establish order in All Under Heaven. They were undertaken to honor the king and drive out the barbarians. The king of Qi bore a noble Royal Bloodline, unlike the Common Folk. The struggles between kingdoms were contests among nobles; fortunes might rise or fall, but the lives of the Central Plains aristocracy would not truly be threatened.
At least for now, apart from Ba and Shu in the Shu region and the many tribes of the northwest, Qin had not truly wiped out any great kingdom of the Central Plains. Even the ruler of Wei, whose kingdom had already been annexed, had merely been moved to Ye Wang City. His line had not been cut off, nor had he lost his standing.
The King of Qin's assurances did much to