What to Do When Facing Difficulties? The Choice of the Qian Hexagram Before Jing Ke's Assassination of the King of Qin

By the Yi River in the late Warring States period, Jing Ke was squatting on a stone twisting hemp rope. The third envoy of Crown Prince Dan had just left, and every word of his was urging Jing Ke to set off—Qin troops had already reached the southern border of Yan, and if they delayed any longer, everyone would have to go to Xianyang to sing *The Loess Plateau*.

Jing Ke wasn't being cowardly; he was waiting for someone. That friend lived far away and traveled slowly. They had agreed to go to Xianyang together, for working as a team was always more reliable than going it alone. But Crown Prince Dan was so anxious that he was practically spitting fire, and his words constantly implied that Jing Ke might be afraid. Enraged, Jing Ke slammed the hemp rope onto the ground: "What kind of talk is that? Am I, Jing Ke, the sort of person who fears death? I'm waiting for—"

Before he could finish, he choked on his own words. Waiting for what? For his friend to arrive? What if his friend never came? What if his friend came but turned out to be a useless teammate? What if Crown Prince Dan lost patience and sent that kid Qin Wuyang with him instead? The thought of Qin Wuyang—who had dared to kill someone in the street at the age of twelve but was actually a rash youth who had never seen a grand occasion—made Jing Ke's head ache.

He recalled that not long ago, he had listened to a Jixia scholar from Qi explain the *I Ching* at the Jixia Academy. The scholar had said that the second yang line of the Qian hexagram means "The dragon appears in the fields; it is beneficial to see the great man." Back then, Jing Ke had laughed and said what was so good about a dragon being in the fields—better to fly in the sky. The scholar had stroked his beard and said, "What do you know? When a dragon lurks in the abyss, it suffers from being cooped up; when it flies up to the sky, it is too conspicuous. Only when it is in the fields, having just emerged, is it the right time to find a reliable great man to team up with, so as to accomplish great things."

Jing Ke hadn't taken it to heart at the time. Now, squatting by the Yi River with the cold wind blowing, he suddenly understood. Wasn't he that dragon that had just crawled out of the abyss? In the past, he had been a vagrant in Wei; in Zhao, he had run away after being glared at by Gai Nie during a sword contest; and when he arrived in Yan, he spent every day getting dead drunk in taverns with Gao Jianli, crying in each other's arms when the singing moved them—to put it nicely, he was a man of talent who had never gotten the chance to shine; to put it bluntly, he was just an idle drifter in society.

Now Crown Prince Dan treated him as a scholar of state, feeding him well, housing him in the finest guesthouse, giving him the sharpest dagger, and even serving up the liver of a thousand-li horse as a side dish for his wine. It would be a lie to say he wasn't moved by this favor. But moved as he was, whether the task could be accomplished depended on whether his teammate was reliable.

Recently, he had felt that everything was going wrong. First, the person he was waiting for kept delaying; then Crown Prince Dan was hounding him every day; even the wine he drank didn't taste as good as before. He even began to wonder if he was having a streak of bad luck, which was why everything was getting stuck? Back when he was singing with Gao Jianli in the taverns of Yan, although he was poor, he was happy every day. Why was it that when it came time to do something big, he was held back at every turn?

"How do you adjust when you feel like you have bad luck?" he muttered to the Yi River. The fish in the water scurried away in fright, probably afraid he would ask an even harder question.

Just as he was lost in thought, footsteps sounded behind him. Jing Ke turned around and saw Gao Jianli standing there with a wine gourd, followed by a dusty man—exactly the friend he had been waiting for half a month.

"What took you so long?" Jing Ke stood up with a start, forgetting to pick up the hemp rope.

The friend was panting as he threw the bundle on his back to the ground: "Don't get me started. I ran into Qin troops checking passers-by on the road and had to detour three hundred li. What, is Crown Prince Dan urging you?"

Jing Ke didn't speak. He turned to look across the Yi River. The wind flapped the corners of his clothes with a rustling sound. He suddenly thought of the "it is beneficial to see the great man" that the Jixia scholar had said—so the so-called "great man" was not some noble with high position and generous salary, but one of your own people who can bear hardships with you. He used to always ponder how to make the right decision, always afraid that choosing left would be wrong and choosing right would also be wrong. In fact, how could there be so many right and wrong choices? If you pick the right person to walk with, you're already halfway down the right path.

He bent down to pick up the hemp rope on the ground, patted the dust off it, and said to his friend with a smile: "Come on, let's go drink. Tomorrow, we'll go to Xianyang."

The wind by the Yi River kept blowing, rippling layer upon layer of waves on the water, as if a dragon had just swum past from the bottom, and with a flick of its tail, it had stirred up the entire chessboard of the Warring States period.