When we were children, we all learned the story of lying down and tasting courage, and in the era of frequent wars at that time, Vietnam was a weak country, and many countries were eyeing it. In 494 BC, war broke out between Wu and Yue because of a small grudge, and Wu defeated the Yue state and incidentally took the yue king back. The Yue king in the kingdom of Wu suffered great humiliation, enslaving people and making cattle and horses. He completely gave up his dignity as a king, just to survive and look forward to one day being able to restore the country again.
King Yue was enslaved in the Kingdom of Wu for three years, and with amazing perseverance and perseverance, he survived, and eventually he was released back to the Kingdom of Yue. But when he returned to The Kingdom of Vietnam, instead of living in the ornate palace, he chose the dilapidated stables, where he slept on firewood and tied a rope to the house with a very bitter gall. Every morning when he woke up, Gou Jian always tasted this bitter gall first, and after decades of ups and downs, the thunder could not move, in order to hope for a comeback.
During this period, in order to curry favor with King Wu, Gou Jian elected beautiful women in the country and planned to send them. Elected are Xi Shi and another woman, named Zheng Dan, whom we know. Xi Shi and Zheng Dan were originally from the same village, because they were all beautiful women with good faces, they were selected as gifts and became victims of exchanges between countries. But at the same time, they both shouldered the mission of revenge, and Gou Jian demanded that they both use all means to make Wu Wangfu lose his mind and thus abandon the government. Zheng Dan looked like Xi Shi and was also dedicated to King Wu, why did few descendants know about her?
Xi Shi and Zheng Dan were very favored by King Wu, and other harem beauties were not comparable, and they also successfully achieved the purpose of making King Wu not think about the government. But the beauty of Zheng Dan and Xi Shi is different, or in terms of talent, Zheng Dan is even more than Xi Shi. Xi Shi's beauty is lovely, she herself is weak and weak, and she looks delicate all the time. Unlike Zheng Dan, she was enthusiastic, lively and cheerful, always full of youthful vitality, and she was good at dancing swords, which was a good talent at that time. But King Wu seemed to prefer Xi Shi's morbid beauty, especially the kind of pity when she was really sick, which haunted King Wu's soul.
Perhaps it was because she had been trapped in the role of Wu Wang's pet concubine for too long, and Zheng Dan, who had been coldly treated, began to feel dissatisfied, and she began to be jealous of Xi Shi, so she said bad things about Xi Shi in Wu Wang's ear, hoping that Wu Wang could snub Xi Shi and make herself able to return to the position of pet concubine. However, he did not succeed, and King Wu loved Xi Shi even more, and Zheng Dan was depressed because he did not achieve his goal for a long time.
Xi Shi fulfilled his mission as he wished, and in 473 BC, the Yue army broke the Wu capital, forcing the King of Wu to commit suicide, and the Yue State annexed the State of Wu and dominated the crowd.
Therefore, most of the later generations only remember that the beautiful woman who helped Gou Jian eliminate the Wu Kingdom was Xi Shi, and they did not know that there was another zheng dan who was more beautiful than Xi Shi. Unfortunately, Zheng Dan was blinded by jealousy, but forgot his real mission. After the destruction of the State of Wu, some people said that Xi Shi was forced to jump into the river and be martyred, and some people said that she lived happily with her sweetheart Fan Li, but history has passed so long ago, and there is no evidence to examine.