China’s First Emperor Sent A Bunch Of Alchemists To Find The Elixir Of Immortality

The man who first unified China in 221 BCE was so determined to live forever that he commanded a group of alchemists to venture to a mythical mountain in search of the source of eternal youth. Evidence of this harebrained mission has now been discovered on the shore of Gyaring Lake on the Tibetan Plateau, where researchers came across a stone inscription bearing details of the group’s journey.

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Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China and founder of the Qin Dynasty, is widely reported to have been obsessed with immortality and is thought to have commissioned numerous expeditions to find the elixir of life during his reign. However, direct traces of these wild goose chases are hard to come by, which is why this new discovery is so valuable.

Found at an altitude of 4,300 meters (14,100 feet), the engraving appears to be in the Qin Dynasty small seal script, and reads: "In the 26th year of the reign of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the Emperor dispatched Wu Dafu Yi to lead some alchemists on a chariot to Mount Kunlun to collect yao”, which may refer to herbs but can also be translated as “the elixir of immortality”. According to the text, the group reached their destination in the third month of that Chinese year – which probably corresponds to 221 BCE.

Initially discovered in 2020, the inscription didn’t gain much attention until June 2025, when Tong Tao from the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published an article about the relic. According to Tao, the engraved stone not only confirms the Emperor’s thirst for eternal life, but also reveals the location of Mount Kunlun, which appears in pre-Qin texts as a sacred place “where immortals gathered and rare and exotic animals bred.”

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However, not everyone is convinced by the high-altitude discovery, with some commentators pointing out that an expedition to the Tibetan Plateau would have been nigh-on impossible more than 2,000 years ago, leading to suspicions that the inscription may be a modern forgery. In response, the Chinese State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced last week that it had organized a multi-disciplinary task force to visit the inscribed stone and conduct two on-site investigations.

According to the Administration, the outcome of these analyses confirms that the discovery is genuine, and therefore provides reliable proof that Qin Shi Huang did indeed order the expedition. Speaking to the Xinhua news agency, archaeologist Zhao Chao, who took part in the analysis, said that “systematic  scientific methods were applied to date and authenticate this single ancient stone inscription, pioneering a new model for stone-inscription authentication in China.”

The team’s findings revealed that the inscription was made using Qin-era technology rather than modern tools, and that weathering patterns ruled out the possibility that the text could have been recently inscribed.

Unfortunately for Emperor Qin, though, the team never did manage to find that elusive elixir, and it’s thought that he eventually died due to an accumulation of toxins after repeatedly drinking a potion containing mercury in the hope that it would prolong his life.