CONTINUEA Perfected Being enters the water without getting wet; he goes through fire without getting burned; he rides the clouds and through the air; he is as eternal as the sky and the earth [SJ 6:257/MH 2:177].
The emperor, explains the Taoist sage, should be such a godlike being. But not until he disappears will he attain that state of eternity. Not until his whereabouts in the palace are concealed from all will the elixir of immortality be his [SJ 6:257/MH 2:177]. The emperor was willing, for "he could not bear talk of death" [SJ 6:264/MH 2:191].[28]
The palaces were connected, the emperor hid, and divulging his whereabouts was made a capital crime. But the elixir was not found.
A shooting star fell from the sky he should fly through without falling. A carved inscription appeared on it: "When the First Emperor dies, the territory will be dismembered" [SJ 6:259/MH 2:183].
The emperor had a dream in which a "human fish" rose up from the water he should swim through without getting wet. He slew it with a mighty cross-bow. "The gods of the sea," explained the scholars, "are invisible but may take the form of giant fish." Earlier expeditions to the Eastern sea had been prevented by sea monsters from crossing to the isles of immortality, and had therefore failed to obtain the elixir. Evil spirits were standing in the emperor's way to eternal life. The obstacle would have to be removed. He ordered a mighty cross-bow made, then traveled to the sea where, as predicted, he encountered a giant fish. He shot it, promptly fell ill, and died [SJ 6: 263/MH 2:190-91].
On the long trek back to the capital, his body began to decompose. To disguise the stench of death, dried fish were heaped in his coffin [SJ 6: 264/MH 2:193]. When his body was sealed in the tomb, it was lit by long-burning torches fueled by "human fish" oil (presumably seal oil) [SJ 6:265/MH 2:195].
Fish are to the ocean as feet are to the army. Fish are pre-amputated sea organs. Their identity with emperors is expressed by their fragrance and shared place of final rest. Emperors are human land-fish.
The elements of smoothness promising the immortality of absolute union speak death and dismemberment through meteors and sea monsters. When the emperor strikes forth into smoothness to find eternal life, he encounters his death in the form of his own evil fish-twin, ultimate enemy of the State. The sea-god met by the would-be land-god is following an equal and opposite trajectory to his: from invisibility to the rigidity of organic existence. Their paths cross at the shore. The emperor slays his death, but dies nonetheless. Having pre-disappeared, like his mirror-image twin, he did not have a leg to stand on.
True to the oracle, when the First Emperor died, the empire crumbled, taking his son down with it. He was not equal to his father [SJ 6:267/MH 2:198]. Unable to continue his work, he joined him in death.
A FISH IS A FOOT. The First Emperor's fateful battle with the fish involved the firing of one of the most extraordinary machines of war of his day. He is the first man known to have fired an arcuballista. This was a massive crossbow mounted on an eighty pound brass stand. The weapon simultaneously shot ten ten-foot harpoons, fitted with ropes. The harpoons were loaded onto the crossbow with a winch, and were pulled back in with the same winch after firing [Yates 1980:43-44]. The footsoldier's crossbow was one of the machines of war used by the emerging empire to fight its archenemy, the nomadic mounted archer, whose methods the state adapted to its own eastward campaigns of conquest. Here at the end of his spiral of self-destruction, the First Emperor fires upon the great fish, an organ of the sea, and a watery nomad.
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