As we all know, the sword is a kind of weapon in ancient China, and most of the swords with excellent texture come from the south, mainly in the Wu, Yue, Chu, and Bashu areas, and the history of China's swords has a long history. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the sword was used as an important weapon in infantry warfare, and the ten famous swords recorded in ancient books were Xuanyuan, Zhanlu, Chixiao, Tai'a, Longquan Sword, Gan general, Mo Evil, Fish Intestine, Pure Jun, and Chengying. In most people's minds, the sword was supposed to be a weapon, but with the development of the times, it was later used as a ceremonial instrument.
At the end of the Warring States period, the State of Wu and the State of Yue fought a large-scale battle, and eventually the State of Yue was defeated and the King of Yue was captured. After three years of lying down and tasting courage, he was released back to the Country of Vietnam after offering the great beauty Xi Shi, and then reused Fan Li and others to gradually restore the national strength. In 482 BC, King Fuchai of Wu led his elite troops north to the Huangchi Huimeng, leaving only the old and weak and the crown prince to stay, and the king of Yue took the opportunity to send elite divisions to attack the state of Wu, kill the prince of Wu, and force the state of Wu to make peace. In 478 BC, the State of Yue once again led a large army to attack the State of Wu, and defeated the Wu army at Kasazawa, and the State of Wu has been in a slump ever since, and finally in 473 BC, the Vietnamese army captured the capital of Wu and the State of Wu perished.
In the 1960s, archaeologists unearthed more than 600 artifacts, including a sword, from a Chu tomb in Jiangling, Hubei Province. According to the archaeologists at the time, the team members accidentally cut their fingers when holding the sword, and the experts used this sword to easily cut through the 16 layers of white paper. This sword is 55.7 cm long, 4.6 cm wide, 8.4 cm long and weighs 875 grams, and there are two lines of bird seal inscription near the sword grid: "Yue Wang Dove Shallow Self-Use Sword" Eight characters, proving that this sword is the legendary Yue Wang Gou Jian sword. This sword is exquisitely crafted, cold and forced, and after more than 2400 years, it is still sharp and is known as the "first sword of the Son of Heaven".
The excavation of this sword has attracted great attention from experts, but what puzzles experts is that the Yue King's sword should be buried in the tomb of Gou Jian, why does it appear in the tomb of the Chu people? Later, after the study of archaeologists, it was found that this tomb was the tomb of the nobles of the Chu State. Experts on this sword have two opinions: first, Yue Wang Gou Jian once married his daughter to King Chu Zhao, and this sword was likely to be used as a dowry to come to chu; second, from 309 BC to 306 BC, chu sent troops to destroy yue and captured this sword and brought it back to Chu, eventually becoming a funeral product.
Later, in order to figure out the casting process of this sword, the expert took the sword to the laboratory for testing and analysis, and the test results made the expert call directly: This is impossible. It turned out that the reason why the Yue King's sword had been rustless for a thousand years was because the sword body was plated with a layer of chrome-containing metal, and the sharpness of this sword was because the blade and body of the sword were alloy materials, and its main alloy components were copper, tin, lead, iron, sulfur and so on. However, this sword-casting process has long been lost, and even today's craftsmanship is difficult to reach this level, which is why people have wanted it for more than 2,000 years.