Mavericks › Knight-errant / Assassin
Nie Zheng
Warring States assassin from Zhi who, to repay Yan Zhongzi's kindness, killed the Han chancellor Xia Lei and then disfigured himself, until his sister claimed his body
On a moonlit night in a bamboo grove, a covered wooden bridge crosses a misty gorge with glowing lanterns hanging along it, and a small figure in a wide hat stands in the middle of the bridge; a cloak and a wine gourd hang on the railing in the foreground.
Nie Zheng, from Shenjing village in Zhi in the state of Han, killed a man and fled with his mother and sister to Qi, where he worked as a butcher. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says that Yan Zhongzi of Puyang, an enemy of the Han chancellor Xia Lei, sought him out and offered a hundred yi of gold for his mother's birthday, which Nie refused because his mother still needed him. When she had died and the mourning was over, he went alone to Han with a sword, burst into the chancellor's residence and killed Xia Lei along with dozens of guards, then flayed his face, gouged out his eyes and cut open his belly. Han displayed his corpse and offered a reward for his name; his sister Nie Rong came, wept over him, refused to let fear of death bury her brother's name, and died beside the body. The Shiji chronicle of Han places the killing in the third year of Marquis Lie, 397 BC.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–c. 397 BCE