The emperors demanded more labor, with the empire secured he turned his eye to the fulfillment of his next ambition, sending thousand more workers to build his tomb befitting the first divine ruler of all China. The emperor sent more than 700 thousand convict to dig down three small rivers and fill it with bronze. On the floor of the vault is a map of his entire empire and jewels unto the ceiling to represent the sky(cosmos) and stream and ocean were filled with quick silver (mercury), and he had a machine that circulates the mercury to imitate the flow of the water. A bronze tomb filled with liquid mercury. The idea seems beyond fantasy. The weight of the mercury alone would be five hundred tons.
215BC the tomb it self is on way to completion but the man that intended to house, suddenly had a change of heart. The idea of eternal after life however grand is no longer enough. The first emperor of China is once again on the road. He know longer trust the security of his own court and he started taken practical steps to extend his life. His doctors prescribe a repeated doses of something believed to increase long juvenility (sex with multiple partners). But his new court physician Zhu fu has suggested something more chemical the mystical substance mercury.
The emperor had taken his first course of mercury pills if Zhu fu is right it might hold back the years. As a result he starts to withdraw into his own world giving greater power to those close to the throne. By 213 BC the prime minister Li Si has left free to took his totalitarian state beyond the mending rule of life. He decided it is now necessary to control thought. Free thought need to be suppress starting with an act of terrible destruction. The entire library of bamboo scrolls are burned. Each single copy of agricultural and medical text is keep and secured in the imperial archive everything else is destroyed.
There are worst shock to come those who tried to hide their works are rounded up to their thousands. Branded on the face and sentence to a life of forced labor mostly in the great wall. And those who resist further are buried alive.
And all the time the emperor contact with the reality been losens still further aided with his mercury consumption. The dose has been increased for the last five year, as his desire for immortality has become more obsessive. But far from prolonging his life the mercury is having the opposite effect.
Liquid mercury is known to the Chinese alchemist that the only substance that could dissolve the eternal incorruptible metal "gold". To the ancient mind it must be seen as an supernatural substance, their was nothing like it. And the intonation that it had a power, that if you took it into your body then it would pass it's supernatural powers on to you and perhaps help you prolong your life. Pure mercury cannot be absorb by the human body so the Chinese alchemist made a soluble compound that can be easily digested and this is the substance that the emperor took for years.
The more he took it the more dangerous it would become. As more and more mercury absorb into the body it would start to attack the central nervous system, slowly he had a slight tremors and get worst and worst. But the more damage is really being done to the emperors body is on his brain. He began to be talkative and later on he will be aggressive and confrontational, he is obsess of being watched and he had total paranoia.
Everyone revealing the emperors whereabouts is under instant sentence of death. Seven years after Ying Zheng quest for immortality the mercury began to poison his body as well as his mind among other things his kidneys is begin to fail. He knows his time is running out.....click here to continue
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