Quick questions on Qin Shi Huangdi's administration and Legalist reforms: HSC Ancient History

The Qin state had been shaped by Legalism (fajia) for well over a century before unification. In the fourth century BC, the reformer Shang Yang had remade Qin under Duke Xiao (with major reforms around 356 and 350 BC), abolishing hereditary aristocratic privilege, tying rank to military merit, registering the population into mutually responsible groups, and enforcing a strict, uniform law. The First Emperor and Li Si inherited and extended this tradition, giving it its most complete theoretical form through the writings of Han Feizi (Han Fei, died 233 BC), a prince of the state of Han and, like Li Si, a student of the Confucian-trained philosopher Xunzi.

The following year, 212 BC, tradition records an even darker episode, the keng ru, usually translated "the burying of the scholars." According to Sima Qian, two fangshi (alchemists and magicians), Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng, whom the emperor had employed in his obsessive search for the elixir of immortality, failed to deliver and fled, slandering him as they went. Enraged, the emperor ordered an investigation of the scholars in the capital; 460 were condemned and, in the traditional account, buried alive at Xianyang as a warning to the rest.