The Revenge Assassination of Duke Yi of Qi by Bing Chu and Yan Zhi

Before becoming Duke Yi of Qi, Prince Shangren had a land dispute with Bing Chu's father and lost. After ascending the throne, he dug up the father's grave, severed the corpse's feet, and forced Bing Chu to serve as his charioteer. He also seized Yan Zhi's wife and made Yan Zhi his spearman attendant. In the summer of 609 BC, while bathing at Shen Pool with the two humiliated men, they taunted each other as "son of the footless" and "cuckold." Realizing their shared grievances, they conspired and murdered Duke Yi in a bamboo grove, hid his body, and fled. The Qi people subsequently installed Prince Yuan as Duke Hui of Qi.

No formal trial took place. Bing Chu and Yan Zhi escaped and were never brought to justice by the Qi state. The new ruler, Duke Hui, was installed without pursuing punishment against the assassins, effectively allowing the regicide to stand as a political fait accompli.

Whether the tyrannical and humiliating conduct of the ruler justified private revenge and regicide; the tension between the Confucian duty of loyalty and the right to resist a cruel sovereign.

The case became a classic historical parable on the collapse of ritual propriety and the consequences of a ruler's cruelty. It was frequently cited by chroniclers to illustrate that a sovereign who treats his subjects with contempt risks being treated as an enemy, reinforcing warnings against tyranny in Chinese political thought.