Qin Shi Huang Got Taken in by Charlatans Who Promised Him Immortality
Qin Shi Huang figured that bad spirits could not hurt him if they could not see him. So he ordered his palaces – over 200 of them – honeycombed with underground tunnels. That way he could travel beneath and between them, out of the evil spirits’ sight. Qin Shi Huang also patronized alchemists who claimed that they were close to inventing the Life Elixir, but that their R&D was held back by a lack of funding… hint, hint. They continued to milk him for more and more funding, and strung him along with promises that success was just around the corner.
The emperor responded with generous grants to further their research. However, it was not all a bed of roses for those who took advantage of the emperor’s belief in the mythology of immortality drugs. Qin Shi Huang would grow exasperated from time to time, and order the execution of some of the charlatans. In one of history’s more karmic plot twists, with a full measure of poetic justice, Qin Shi Huang’s manic quest for immortality backfired, big time. It was not only that all his efforts to find the mythological Life Elixir failed, as they were bound to do. It was that those insane attempts to live forever did the opposite, and actually shortened the life of China’s First Emperor.
