Chapter Twenty-One: The Dream of the Martial King

Afterward, Zhao Hong told me a legend about the Seventy-two Peaks of Yimeng Mountain that he’d heard as a child.

It was a tale of landslides, ghostly soldiers, and spirits. According to him, the Seventy-two Peaks of Yimeng Mountain were also known as the Seventy-two Square Mountains or the Seventy-two Table Mountains. There were many stories about their origins and descriptions, but the most puzzling aspect to people was why none of these mountains had summits; instead, they were all as flat as tables or the bottom of an overturned basin.

The ancients offered many explanations and conjectures. Some claimed these mountains were once the shattered sky-supporting pillars of the ancient world; others said they were remnants from the Eight Immortals’ acts of benevolence; still others believed they were the traces left after the Empress of Mount Tai and the Jade Emperor engaged in a magical contest. The stories were endless.

But Zhao Hong’s grandmother had told him a story about the Seventy-two Peaks that was unlike any other.

She said that every few decades, the Yimeng Mountains would experience several landslides, neither too great nor too small. And these landslides, she claimed, occurred when fox spirits underwent their tribulations.

“What? Fox spirits?” I scratched my head. I could hardly believe Zhao Hong would choose this moment, amid such chaos and uncertainty, to tell me a ghost story like this. What was he trying to say?

Zhao Hong ignored my reaction and, over the course of one cigarette, continued his tale.

The story was ancient—so old, in fact, it began with King Wu of Zhou overthrowing the Shang dynasty.

In pre-Qin times, after King Wu of Zhou, succeeding his father, vanquished the tyrant King Zhou of Shang and unified the realm, he captured the stunningly beautiful demoness Daji, who was said to be a celestial fox in disguise.

Daji, the infamous consort, possessed breathtaking beauty and a cruel, perverse nature. She delighted in devising new tortures for amusement, personally inventing atrocious methods such as the Scorpion Pit and the Roasting Cylinder, using them to torment the loyal and righteous. Her cruelty was rivaled only by Empress Lü of the Han dynasty, over a thousand years later.

Such a venomous enchantress, once captured by the Zhou army, stood no chance of survival. Yet to King Wu’s utter astonishment, even though he ordered her execution three times in one day, Daji inexplicably survived each attempt.

Why? According to the executioner’s report, it was not for lack of trying but because Daji’s allure was so overwhelming—especially her bewitching eyes. Any man who looked into them would feel his entire body go weak and numb, his strength dissipating, as if his very soul were drawn out by her gaze.

In short, no one could bring themselves to strike the fatal blow.

When King Wu heard this, he grew anxious. Things could not continue this way, and to claim that a woman’s gaze alone could stay an execution would bring shame to his royal authority.

With no alternative, King Wu sought counsel from his chancellor, Jiang Shang, who was both mentor and minister to him.

Jiang Shang—better known as Jiang Ziya—was renowned as the Grand Master of a Hundred Schools, a man mightier than any immortal. Dealing with a fox spirit was a trivial matter for him.

Thus, Chancellor Jiang accepted the task and personally oversaw the execution. First, he used the “Five Tigers Coiling Dragon Shackles” to pierce the charm bones of the fox spirit, then blinded Daji’s captivating eyes with the “Four-Pillar Soul-Sealing Cover.” Finally, using trigrams and divination, he ordered the execution at exactly three-quarters past noon, when yang energy was at its peak. In that instant, Daji’s three souls and nine spirits—twelve lives in all—were severed, her remnant soul cast into the nethermost hell, never to rise again.

With this, peace was restored; the Zhou king’s wisdom unified the land, and the executioners established the custom that only at the hour of greatest yang should the gravest criminals be beheaded—so that all evil souls would be cut down and forever unable to reincarnate.

Yet even so, seven days after Daji’s execution, King Wu dreamed a monstrous dream—a dream of the demoness Daji.

In the dream, King Wu, fully armored and sword at his waist, traveled the realm, receiving homage from vassal lords. Suddenly, he found himself at the shore of the Eastern Sea. It was midday, the sun blazed fiercely, and as he walked the beach, the heat was unbearable. Yet he could find no tree or rock for shade.

Helpless, King Wu removed his royal robes and continued his search for relief from the sun.

Before long, he did indeed find a patch of precious shade.

After walking precisely two hundred and seventy-six steps along the shore, King Wu discovered a rare shadow on the sand. Overjoyed, he hurried into the shade to rest.

But as soon as he sat down, he sensed something amiss.

He suddenly realized the shadow was exceedingly strange—it was merely a shadow, with no visible object casting it.

As the saying goes, “where there’s a shadow, there must be a pole.” Yet here was a shadow without a source—a phenomenon King Wu had never before encountered.

Bewildered, he looked all around, searching for the source of this shade, but after a moment, he realized he could find nothing that could possibly cast it.

As he sat in confusion, a chilling woman’s laughter echoed above his head. King Wu looked up sharply and finally saw the thing casting the shadow.

It was a skull, as large as a millstone, tinged with rouge, its eye sockets glowing coldly as it hovered in the air, sneering at him.

Startled, King Wu knew at once he was facing a demon and drew his sword.

Before he could strike, the skull burst into a blaze of red light and shrank, transforming into the beautiful head of a woman.

Though eyeless, her face was stunningly beautiful, radiant as a goddess. Even King Wu was taken aback and hesitated for a moment before lowering his sword.

Just as he was about to strike, the woman’s head spoke: “You killed me once, seven days ago. Do you wish to kill me again now?”

Her words made it clear—this was the vengeful spirit of Daji, come for revenge. But King Wu, being the chosen Son of Heaven, was unwavering even in the face of such evil. Without a word, he summoned his strength and brought the sword down. Thus, in his dream, he slew the nine-tailed fox a second time.

As the woman’s head was split in two, it dissipated into a wisp of green smoke. From the clouds above came a cold, solemn voice: “You have ruined my cultivation; I cannot beguile you now. But do not rejoice too soon! The retribution that befell King Zhou will one day come upon your descendants. After two hundred and seventy-five more steps, I swear I will see your ancestral shrines destroyed…”

King Wu awoke abruptly from the dream, only to find that, at some point in his sleep, he had drawn his sword and severed the bloody, mangled head of a fox.

What followed was a series of strange events in the Zhou dynasty.

The next day, a soldier reported to King Wu that the head of Daji, which had been displayed on the city gate for seven days, had vanished in the night. Worse still, some palace staff claimed to have seen a hundred foxes howling in mourning beneath the eastern gate beneath the moon, their cries heartbreakingly mournful.

All of this King Wu connected to his dream, and he grew increasingly fearful of Daji’s prophecy:

“After two hundred and seventy-six steps, the ancestral rites of the Zhou would end”—was this not an omen of dynastic doom?

Though now the Zhou house was guided by a wise king and aided by the sage Jiang Ziya, what of a hundred years hence? What if another “Daji” arose to corrupt the court—what then?

Desperate, King Wu summoned Jiang Ziya once more, seeking a way to avert disaster.

Upon hearing of the king’s dream, Jiang Ziya stroked his beard and laughed, first reassuring the king: “It is but a lingering resentment. The demon fox’s three souls and nine spirits—twelve lives—have been utterly destroyed by my hand. She cannot return. But her fox offspring and kin—those must be suppressed.”

He then interpreted the dream for King Wu.

He explained that the two hundred seventy-five steps in the dream represented years—two hundred seventy-five years. “The shore of the Eastern Sea, with the sun at its zenith in the south,” meant the ancestral shrine would move eastward. The beautiful woman’s head symbolized a fox spirit, like Daji, disturbing the court.

Taken together, the dream was Heaven’s warning: after two hundred seventy-six years, another fox-spirited beauty would bring chaos to the realm. At that time, the Zhou dynasty would falter. If Heaven showed mercy, the ancestral rites might continue in the east; if the ruler was foolish and unheeding, the royal line would perish.

Jiang Ziya’s words filled King Wu with alarm, and he immediately asked his chancellor to devise a plan of salvation.

Jiang Ziya proposed two strategies, internal and external.

Internally, he advised King Wu to cultivate virtue, spread benevolence, and govern with filial piety, thereby aligning with Heaven’s mandate.

Externally, he recommended enfeoffing members of the royal Ji clan throughout the land, and dispatching capable ministers to perform exorcisms, using divine and ghostly forces to eradicate the fox spirits and restore peace to the world.

Jiang Ziya’s advice delighted King Wu. He set about spreading righteousness, enfeoffing vassals, and gave Jiang Ziya full authority to use supernatural methods to hunt down the fox spirits who had aided the tyrant Zhou.

At last, the demons across the land were either destroyed or subdued by Jiang Ziya—except for the fox clan entrenched in the Yimeng Mountains. Out of loyalty to their kin, Daji, they refused to surrender, choosing death over submission. Using their knowledge of the mountains and their burrowing skills, they resisted the Zhou forces to the bitter end.

Faced with such stubborn opposition, Jiang Ziya responded in kind.

Though not a god himself, Jiang Ziya possessed two precious artifacts: the Investiture Scroll and the Deity-Whipping Whip. With these, he drew upon divine power at Mount Tai, invoking the Lady of Azure Clouds and the Earth Office Star Lord. With their assistance, Jiang Ziya flattened all seventy-two peaks of Yimeng, unearthing every fox den. He summoned underworld soldiers to seal the fox spirits’ souls forever, bringing eternal peace.

Thus, the seventy-two peaks of Yimeng Mountain were all leveled by the Earth Office Star Lord. The Lady of Azure Clouds brought stones from Mount Tai to suppress the spirits for all eternity, ensuring the foxes could never reincarnate. Still uneasy, King Wu later enfeoffed Jiang Ziya and his lineage as kings in the land of Qi, Shandong, so that they and their descendants would forever guard the fox spirits' place of imprisonment for the Zhou house.

As Zhao Hong finished his tale, his cigarette burned down to the end. He stubbed it out, watching as the black dog Dudu furiously dug beneath the white rock.

I looked at his pensive expression and couldn’t help but ask, “So your grandmother told you that the stones at Stone Man Peak were brought from Mount Tai by the Lady of Azure Clouds to suppress the fox spirits?”

Zhao Hong nodded and continued, “Grandmother also said that every thirty-three years, there’s a landslide in the Yimeng Mountains. That’s when a fox spirit breaks the seal and escapes, and at that time, ghostly soldiers gather at the landslide to capture and return the fugitive spirit.”

I frowned. “Ghostly soldiers?”

Zhao Hong nodded. “Grandmother said that when she was young, she once met some strangers stopping carts at night, claiming to be lost. But when she led them to the appointed place, they would inexplicably turn into stones or dead rats. Afterward came landslides, plagues, and the wailing of ghosts and foxes…”

Zhao Hong’s words grew increasingly vague. I couldn’t tell if he was unwilling to say more or simply didn’t know the details.

Still, I pressed on, “So you think the people who took taxis to Stone Man Peak were… ghostly soldiers hitching a ride?”

Zhao Hong nodded. I was left speechless.

At that moment, Zhao Hong grew visibly agitated. He wrapped his hands around his head and muttered, half to himself, “I actually don’t believe any of this. But these are the facts… Grandmother always said that if you encounter ghostly soldiers on the move, you must avoid them at all costs. Otherwise, strange things will happen in the area—even stones might kill.”

Just as Zhao Hong was about to explain what “strange things” meant, we suddenly heard the dog, which had been digging desperately, let out a long howl toward Zhao Hong.

Zhao Hong’s face twisted as he watched the dog’s behavior. He immediately pointed at the pit the dog had excavated. “It’s found something!”