Shuoyuan mentioned: Ying Zheng learnt that Lao Ai was not really a eunuch, and had plotted with the Queen Dowager to make their illegitimate son become successor. In 238 BCE, Lao Ai launched a revolt in an attempt to seize power from Ying Zheng, but the rebellion was crushed and Lao Ai was executed along with three generations of his relatives. Ying Zheng stripped his mother of her position as the Queen Dowager and ordered the two sons she secretly had with Lao Ai to be put into sacks and beaten to death. Lü Buwei was implicated in the incident and was stripped of his posts and titles and banished to the remote Shu region in the south of Qin. Lü Buwei feared eventual execution so he committed suicide in 235 BCE by consuming poison. As a result of the Lao Ai affair, Ying Zheng removed power from most of Lü Buwei's retainers and followers (one notable exception being Li Si) and restored it to the hereditary Qin aristocracy. After Lü Buwei's death, the Lüshi Chunqiu fell out of favour with the Qin government, but was resurrected by the Han Dynasty later. Knoblock and Riegel describe the Western and Chinese historical perspectives of Lü Buwei as follows: In popular culture Lü Buwei is a major character in the 1999 Chinese film The Emperor and the Assassin, which focuses on the events just before the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang. The true nature of the relationship between the Emperor and Lü Buwei is a major plot point in the story. Lü Buwei is played by Kwok Fung in the 2001 Hong Kong television series A Step into the Past, which is based on a novel by Huang Yi. In the series, Ying Zheng is Lü Buwei's biological son, but the revelation is that Ying Zheng had already died in his youth. A young man called Zhao Pan takes on Ying Zheng's identity and, with the help of Xiang Shaolong (a 21st-century Hong Kong policeman who travelled back in time), knocks Lü Buwei out of power. Zhao Pan reveals his true identity to a shocked Lü Buwei later and kills him. Lü Buwei is a major character in the historical novel series The Jade Disk by José Frèches. The story of Lü Buwei is retold in graphic form, partly framed as a romance comic, in the second volume of The