Three months!
In just three months, the founding meritorious officials, wolves and tigers that they were, had swallowed the King of Yan alive and stripped him to the bone. The most terrifying part was that many of Yan State's subjects had not merely refused to resist-they had sold their king out outright.
The hearts of the people under heaven shifted like flowing water, different at every moment. Too many people had grown weary of endless war.
Especially when the King of Yan was a wreck of a ship plainly about to sink. The Han Emperor had not even brought Han Xin on campaign, an expression of supreme contempt. Even if they defeated Liu Bang, what would that accomplish? Once Han Xin arrived with his army, who under heaven could stop him?
Apart from a tiny handful of diehard loyalists, no one wanted to wait aboard for death.
Yan State, Ji City.
Liu Bang and his ministers looked at the tightly bound King of Yan. Liu Bang asked, "My ministers, how do you think we should deal with this rebel?"
The King of Yan had to die!
Everyone agreed on that. For any ordinary monarch, the leader of a rebellion had to die. This was an iron law of politics that no one would violate.
But after killing the ringleader, the reckoning against his family and the families of his trusted followers was open to discussion.
"Your Majesty, under the Han statutes, his three clans should be exterminated."
The current Han statutes were a provisional product of drastic cuts to the Qin statutes. Essentially everything from Luo Ling's Treading Down the Law had been removed, including restrictions forbidding private book collections and travel at will.
The King of Qin Dynasty's countless corvée obligations and military service requirements had also been drastically