After the banquet, Li Si returned home and thought that it had been eight or nine years since the Qin State implemented the county system, the country had developed in a steady and orderly manner, and all walks of life were in ruins. But I never thought that there would be people who opposed the county system, which is really out of place. Suddenly, someone reported: "Zhou Qingchen is here to see you." Li Si let Zhou Qingchen come in. After Zhou Qingchen came in, he saluted and said: "Prime Minister, Chun Yuyue is too arrogant today, he dares to mention the sub-feudal system, isn't this right with the Prime Minister?" If His Majesty really listened to his suggestion to implement the feudal system, wouldn't the new county bureau that the prime minister had presided over for many years be ruined? Li Si patted the case and said angrily: "Lord Zhou, please rest assured, this prime minister will never let Chun Yuyue's conspiracy succeed!" After that, let Zhou Qingchen grind the ink, write by himself, and write it in one go. After Li Si finished writing, he asked Zhou Qingchen to read it. After reading it, Zhou Qingchen smiled all over his face and kept saying yes.

The next morning, the ministers presented the written folds one by one. Qin Shi Huang began to read, some praised the county system, and some praised the good system of sub-seals. Qin Shi Huang finally looked at Li Si's recital, which read:

Chen Li Si risked his life to advise His Majesty the Emperor: During the Zhou Dynasty, the princes of the world were fighting endlessly, and this was precisely because there were too many princes. There are many vassal states, their speech and doctrine will be disorganized, there are many sects, they use false words to cover up the mistakes of the war, resulting in a high degree of freedom of speech, so that there is a bad habit of randomly criticizing the current affairs of various countries, these scholars often comment on Zhou Tianzi and the princes and kings, often make the monarchs fall into an embarrassing state. Now that the world is unified, the affairs of the state should be decided by the emperor alone, and if people arbitrarily follow the doctrine of the princes to arbitrarily deal with current affairs, it will be very wrong and must be resolutely stopped.

At present, private schools have their own learning content. These contents are also inconsistent with the decrees, articles, and systems of the Qin State, so when people see the decrees of the imperial court, they like to comment on the opinions of the hundred schools of thought they have learned, and always think that the legal provisions of the Qin State are full of loopholes and are not worthy of scrutiny. The people talked a lot at home, and they had to talk about it when they went out of the house. These people appear to be praising Your Majesty, but in fact they are indeed in opposition to Your Majesty, and they are blaspheming the United States. In the long run, the minds of the people will be confused, His Majesty's prestige will be reduced, and the opposition of the people and the old forces of the Six Nations will also take advantage of the situation. Therefore, Your Majesty should preemptively stop the freedom of speech in advance, and resolutely suppress those heretics first, so that people's minds will not be confused.

So how can we unify our minds? The minister risked his life to offer a policy: books are the source of all ideas, and only by cutting off the source, people's thoughts will be exhausted, so the minister requested that all books and classics outside the Qin State be burned, which is mainly all the works of the sons of the Six Kingdoms, especially the books of Confucius and Meng. The specific measures are that except for the doctors and officials of the imperial court, the rest of the people can no longer be kept, especially the private collection of books by the people, which should be checked by local officials from house to house, and after the inventory is found, all of them should be sent to the government office for destruction in public. After the order of the imperial court was issued, if anyone dared to get together to talk about the "Book of Songs", "Book of Books" and Baijiayu, no matter who they were, they would be arrested and convicted. Those who admire the ancient and slander the present will be beheaded as soon as they are discovered. Even the officials of the Qin State were no exception, and if they knew that someone was slandering the imperial court but did not report it, they would be punished with the same crime. Those who did not burn books within one month after the edict was issued were to be sentenced to four years of forced labor in the frontier. Of course, there is no need to burn those books on medicine, divination, and planting, because these books are not harmful to people. If the people wanted to learn the written language and the law, they had to go to the government to learn it, and they had to take the officials as their teachers, and at the same time, they immediately banned private schools and forbidden home learning.

Through the above methods, people's minds will be united. Only if everyone weighs affairs according to the law, the Qin State will inevitably be ruled greatly, and the wind of sarcasm will stop. If the Qin State uses this method, it will definitely have a long period of stability, and His Majesty's great cause will be passed on from generation to generation. Please ask Your Majesty to advise the ministers, act vigorously and resolutely, and order the whole country.

The First Emperor finished reading Li Si's recital in one breath, and his heart was shocked. After the dispersal of the dynasty, he left Li Si behind and asked: "Will the prime minister's plan destroy the ancient cultural classics?" Will I be infamous for eternity? Li Sicheng replied with trepidation: "Destroying the people's books will not do any harm to the Qin State." The Qin State has always ruled the country strictly under the law, and only then did it develop from a small country to a Western power, and finally dominate the world. The subjects of the Six Kingdoms still miss their homeland and their former masters very much, and it will be difficult for them to rule the world without a decree to make them forget the past! Therefore, please make a decision as soon as possible. Since ancient times, great people have made great causes, and great things must be made by great people, what are you worried about? Your Majesty, please follow the trend of the times and launch a book burning campaign, right? When the First Emperor heard these words, Long Yan was happy, and immediately decided: "Qing's words are in line with the words of Shui De, quasi-play!" So he immediately ordered the whole country to start burning books throughout the country.

The eldest son of the first emperor, Fusu, was twenty-seven years old at the time, with a handsome face and a heroic appearance, and when he heard that his father was going to burn books throughout the country, he hurriedly entered the palace to admonish, and he said: "Your Majesty, books are the words of sages and sages, and the foundation of reason. Now that it has burned down, what will the state use to educate the people? Besides, if a person is not educated, he will not understand the reason, and if he does not understand the reason, he will be like a beast? The First Emperor laughed and said, "The reason why the beasts can be driven away is because they have no thoughts, if the leaders of the Qianqian do not know the reason, isn't it as easy and easy to drive as the beasts?" The common people can be expelled, but they can't be allowed to understand why they are expelled, there is a deep mystery here, you kid go back and slowly ponder the book of "Shang Jun"! Fusu didn't dare to say anything more, so he had to retreat.

Subsequently, the imperial court issued a book burning order. It didn't take long for the big square in front of Xianyang Palace to pile up the books handed in. The officials set fire to the sleepy books and burned them for more than ten days, choking people with smoke and wiping their tears. The fire started in Xianyang and spread to all parts of the country. Officials, who is not afraid of the emperor? Who is not afraid of the officials? Who would dare to invite disaster by keeping a few books in their possession? So they took out all the books in their homes and burned them in front of the door, and all the books and books of the people were burned. At that time, only in the family temple of Confucius in Qufu, Kong Kun secretly hid dozens of classic books in the mezzanine of a wall, which was preserved, and he himself fled to Songshan to live in seclusion. It was not until the time of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty that these books were able to reappear in the world, which is a later story. In addition, a few copies of the Book of Songs and the Book of Books were also preserved in some poor and remote areas, and the rest of the places were all burned. This is an unprecedented catastrophe in the history of human culture, which has completely destroyed ancient Chinese documents and ancient civilizations in this way.