Chapter 89- King Zhou Is Totally Submitted to Demons and Dismissed Any Lo...

Okay, let's unpack this. We are diving deep into Chapter 89 of Fengshen Yanyi, that's the Investiture of the Gods. And this is a, well, it's a really crucial pivot point in the whole epic. It really is. Because the source material we're looking at today is, it's jarring. It puts two narratives right next to each other that feel like they shouldn't even be in the same story. And that abruptness, that transition is actually the genius of it. You're seeing the Shang Dynasty collapsing on two completely distinct, but deeply interconnected fronts. Okay, so what are the two fronts? On the one hand, you've got the military reality, the political rebellion against King Zhu is suddenly devolving. It's becoming a cosmic war against these unmanageable supernatural forces. And on the other hand, you have the capital, the moral reality, you could say. Exactly. While the kingdom is falling apart out there, the king's tyranny inside the palace is escalating. It goes from just being cruel to a kind of detached scientific sadism. It's the ultimate picture of a regime just eating itself from the inside out. So let's start with the battle. We're at a place called Mengxin. Zhang Ziya and the allied regional lords, the Zuhu, are lined up against forces led by Yuan Hong. Right. And you have to remember, these regional lords, they're seasoned commanders. They understand strategy, cavalry charges, things like that. Conventional warfare. But the soldiers Yuan Hong has brought with him, well, they aren't soldiers, not really. Not in any way they'd recognize. Not at all. The battle starts and the allied army just gets steamrolled instantly. And not by skill, but by what I can only call a spiritual ambush. So who's the first to fall? Right, Marquis of Shulian. He charges in, a classic warrior move, but he comes up against Cheng Haosao. Who is secretly... A great python spirit, a Demengxian. And this python spirit, he doesn't fight with a spear or a sword. He uses pure supernatural sabotage. He unleashes this whirlwind of black fog, the text calls it Heiwu, and it's mixed with this toxic gas or Duki. Wow. Shulian just collapses. The poison hits him instantly and he's decapitated on the spot. The fight is over before it began. It's terrifying. It's like, it's an invisible force. This isn't a battle. It's a failure of reality. I mean, think about it. You've trained your whole life for swords and arrows and you're taken out by weaponized atmosphere. And the chaos just ramps up from there, right? Immediately. The Marquis of Yanzu, Peng Xushu, sees his comrade fall and rushes in to get revenge. He engages a general named Wulong. And let me guess, Wulong is also not what he seems. Not even close. Wulong fights for a moment, then retreats. And in that moment, he reveals his true form. He's a centipede spirit, a Wugong Jing. What does that even look like on a battlefield? It's described as him being cloaked in a black cloud, a heiyan, and just surging with this demonic energy, this yaoqi. That term, yaoqi, that's important, isn't it? It's the key. It's more than just magic. It's an energy that is corrosive to the human mind. It blinds you. It confuses you. It just shatters your morale. So Peng Xushu is just completely disoriented. Utterly. He's thrown by this transformation, this monster appearing before, and he's cut in half. Gone. So that's two veteran generals, two leaders of the rebellion just wiped out in minutes. By non-human opponents who break every single rule of combat. So is this a new escalation? I mean, they fought powerful enemies before, haven't they? It is absolutely an escalation. Before, even their most powerful opponents tended to use, you know, high-level magic or specific divine artifacts. Right. There were rules to it, sort of. Exactly. There was a structure. Here, these are just basic animal spirits. They've cultivated just enough power to transform and win by throwing out raw, overwhelming, demonic energy. It's primal. A sign of how low the Shang Dynasty has sunk. It shows they're now relying on the primordial chaos of the wilds, not the divine order of the heavens. So the rebels have to see this happening. They see this Yao Qi. They bring in their own heavy hitters. They do. Generals Yang Jian and Ni Zha step up. Yeah. And they recognize it immediately. They say these opponents are not decent people, and they can sense the Yao Qi. So they try to fight fire with fire, or magic with divine tech. And this is where the story gets really tense. Because we see that even the divine realm has its limits. Ni Zha goes first. Yes. Ni Zha, who is basically a child god of war. He pulls out his signature weapon, the nine-dragon divine fire cover. The Jiu Long Shen Hu Zha. And this thing is supposed to be the ultimate weapon. It is. It's designed to trap and then completely incinerate any opponent with nine literal fire dragons. It's supposed to be unstoppable. So it should have just turned Wu Long, the centipede spirit, into a pile of ash. It should have. But the spirit, Wu Long, seems to understand, I don't know, dimensional travel better than the weapon understands trapping. What do you mean? The text is very specific. The cover comes down. But Wu Long instantly transforms into a streak of green light. A King Guang. And just zips away. He's gone before the fire dragons can even activate. So Ni Zha is just left there holding an empty trap. An empty smoking trap. And what this tells you, the listener, is that these demonic forces aren't just strong. They're slippery. They can bypass the very physics of the weapons designed to stop them. And this failure happens again, right? Almost immediately. Instantly. They turn to the snake spirit, Chan Hao. Yang Zhan, who is known for his incredible accuracy, fires a golden pellet from his slingshot. It misses. It misses. So Ni Zha tries again with the divine fire cover. Same result. Chan Hao just vanishes in a streak of red light this time. And it's not just them. Another general, Yang Ren, tries to attack the main commander, Yuan Hong. Right, with his five fire fans. And all he gets is the horse. He burns the horse. Yuan Hong himself was already gone. It's this repeated frustrating failure. And what's so important to understand is that it's not a sign that the rebel generals are weak. No, it's a sign that the enemy has changed. They're fighting a disease, not an army. You can't hit something that's fundamentally disordered and formless. And it isn't just the rebels who notice this shift. No, and this is such a telling moment. We get a glimpse of the human generals who are still loyal to King Zhou, men like Lu Renji. And they see this sudden flood of monsters, these yaoni, onto their own side. And they know what it means. I know exactly what it means. They quote a classical proverb. What's the proverb? A nation about to rise will have auspicious signs. A nation about to fall will have calamities and monsters. Wow. So even the king's own men see the writing on the wall. Yes, this is the pivot point. It connects the chaos on the battlefield directly to the moral state of the palace. Even those fighting for the Shang dynasty know that its survival now depends on forces that represent cosmic rot. So if the cosmos itself is signaling the dynasty's collapse, we have to go see what the moral center of that dynasty, King Zhou, is up to. Exactly. While his kingdom is relying on shape-shifting pythons to win battles, what is the king doing? And the scene just cuts. Immediately. We're in the capital, Ch'e. Specifically, we're in the Lutai, this massive, opulent pleasure palace that King Zhou built for himself. And he's getting a report. He is. An official named Fei Lian comes and confirms the victories. He tells the king that Yuan Hong killed both Yao Shuyang and Ping Zhou. And the king's reaction is? He's ecstatic. Just beside himself with joy. He's completely detached from the reality of how they won. He doesn't care about toxic fumes or light-speed escapes. He just sees it as a conventional victory. A huge one. He thinks it has broken the enemy's spirit. And he rewards Yuan Hong lavishly gold, pearls, fine silk, even paper money. He is literally celebrating the decay. And of course, Daji is there. Of course. He's surrounded by the true source of his moral corruption. Daji and the other two fox spirits, Hu Zimei and Wang Grun. And she just heaps praise on him. She validates his delusion completely. Which, naturally, leads to a massive celebratory drink. The text sets the scene very carefully here. It's midwinter, Zhongdong. And a heavy snow starts to fall. It's described as creating this beautiful, still silver-clad world. So King Zhou is feeling successful. He's in his pleasure palace, surrounded by beauty. And he orders the curtains rolled up so he can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle of the snow. It's this moment of almost perverse beauty and peace, right in the heart of the rot. And Daji seizes this moment. She uses it to reinforce her influence over him. She actually sings a custom song for him. A queer? What's the song about? It's beautiful, really. It describes the intense cold of the snow, but it ends by prophesying that the skies will clear and the warm sun will return. It was a metaphor. A brilliant one. It's pure propaganda, but it's woven into high art. She's telling him, yes, the kingdom is in a harsh winter, the rebellion, the chaos. But you, my king, you are the sun. You will inevitably return and bring stability back. It's genius in a terrifying way. It soothes all his paranoia. It validates his belief that his tyranny isn't tyranny at all. It's just a difficult but necessary phase. She is rewarding him for his cruelty and celebrating their shared decadence. But the celebration is about to take a very, very dark turn. A deeply disturbing turn. King Zhu, still up high in his tower, turns his gaze from the big panoramic view of the snow to a small detail down by the west gate. Here's where it gets really interesting and profoundly dark. He and Daji are watching commoners crossing a small stream. It's being fed by the snowmelt and, ironically, by the water from the excavation for the very tower they're sitting in. And these people have to cross it barefoot in the freezing water. Yes. And he notices two men specifically. First, an old man who crosses very quickly. He doesn't seem to feel the cold at all. And then? Then a much younger man crosses. But he's slow. He's clearly showing fear and pain. What the text calls jiu lang sing hon wan. The youth is struggling more than the senior citizen. And for King Zhu, this just doesn't compute. It completely bewilders him. It's a reversal of what he thinks is natural. Why would a young man who should be full of life and vitality be more afraid of the cold than an old man? He wants an explanation. Now. And Daji, of course, has one already. Always. And she provides this incredibly specific, almost pseudo-scientific theory. It's based on traditional ideas about vitality or jing zu. She claims it's all about bone marrow. Precisely. She argues that a person's resistance to cold is directly tied to how dense and full their bone marrow is. How does she explain the difference between the two men? She says the old man must have been conceived when his parents' vitality was at its absolute peak. So he developed dense, full bone marrow sui man. And that gives him this innate resistance to cold. OK. But the young man, she theorizes, was probably conceived when his parents' vitality was weaker or declining. And this resulted in shallow, deficient marrow sui, making him vulnerable to the cold, no matter how young he is. That is an astonishingly detailed explanation to just come up with on the spot. And it's perfect for jing zu. It gives him a neat, logical reason for the anomaly he's observed. But what's really chilling is his reaction. He doesn't believe her at first. No. His first response is to call her words deceiving. He can't quite believe this strange, biological theory. But because he's an absolute tyrant with zero moral compass. He doesn't just argue with her or dismiss it. He decides he needs to verify it. He's hard scientific proof for what is really just a fleeting curiosity. This is it. This is the mark of true tyranny. Sacrificing human beings to solve a little intellectual puzzle. He orders his officers to go down there and arrest both men. Two innocent people plucked from their lives for nothing. And then comes the order. The gruesome, cold-blooded command. He tells his staff to chop open the shins, the jing gu of the two men with an axe. Right there, just to look inside? Right there, to check the state of their bone marrow. Now you're. Think about the horror of that. They aren't killed for a crime or for treason. They are killed to be exhibits in the king's twisted scientific inquiry. And the tech says they do it. They do it immediately. They brutally hack open the legs of both men. The staff then drags out the marrow for the king to examine. And it confirms everything Daji said. The old man's marrow was full. The young man's was shallow. The experiment was a success. The theory was proven. And the cost was just. Two human lives. The bodies are just dragged away like refuse. The complete and total disregard for their lives. Reducing them to just raw data to please the king. This is why this scene is so powerful. It confirms the moral rot that the battlefield generals were sensing. The chapter actually laments with a poem that explicitly criticizes both the monarch and the slanderous woman for this act of cruelty. It's so clear. In this dynasty, verifying a fox spirit's theory is worth more than a human life. We saw divine fire fail against the demons on the outside. King Zhu is already, I mean, he's completely lost to depravity. His whole world revolves around his concubine, Daji. He even calls her a shenren, right? A divine person. Exactly. He's totally enthralled by her perceived supernatural power. And you have to remember, this is coming right after that just horrifying incident. The duan jing yan. The breaking of the shins. Yeah, where they were literally breaking people's legs to see who could withstand the cold better. It was a test of their marrow. And the king was cheering her on. So that was about validating Daji's cruelty. But now she makes a claim that takes it all a step further. Okay, so what's the new claim? Because the detail here is what I find so chilling. She tells the king that she can look at any pregnant woman and know, just by sight, the gender of the fetus, how many months along she is, and even the precise direction it's facing in the womb. The direction? Yes. That is such a bizarrely specific thing to claim. Why that? It feels almost like a clinical trial. I think that's the point. The king isn't running a kingdom anymore. He's obsessed with validating the demonic supernatural world that Daji represents. He needs to know that his ally has powers beyond human understanding. And he doesn't see a warning sign, he sees an opportunity. Immediately. He issues a decree. And that decree just sets the whole capital zoge on edge. What happens next? The officials, you know, they do their job. They go out and seize three pregnant women. But the narrative, it shifts right away from the king's curiosity to the real human cost. The text describes this heartbreaking scene. The families are screaming in the streets, King Dehutin tearing at the ground, crying out to heaven. They have no idea what's happening. Right. They're shouting that they haven't committed a crime. They've paid their taxes. It's just, it's the sound of a society realizing the rules no longer apply to them. It's pure chaos. Yeah. And that sound, that agony, it reaches the ears of the last few loyal ministers near the Nine Dragon Bridge, which brings Jizi into the picture. Okay, so Jizi steps in. But given what happened to his uncle, Begon. Whose heart was cut out. Exactly. Why does Jizi even bother confronting the king? He knows the risk. Why not just run? Because he represents that older institutional loyalty. Not to the king necessarily, but to the Shang lineage itself. Fling is admitting it's over, and he's not there yet. He has to try one last time. So he confronts the official leading the women away. He does. And he learns the horrific plan. The king is going to conduct a Puhiyantai to dissect their abdomens to verify the fetuses. And the justification is? To understand the principles of yin and yang. He's dressing up pure evil as a philosophical inquiry. Precisely. And Jizi just explodes. He calls Zhou Ashunjin, a muddle-headed ruler, for listening to this Youfu, this demon woman. And he points out the most obvious thing. That the enemy is at the gates. The enemy is at the gates. Binglin Chengxia, the Zhou armies are right there. So he abandons all caution and rushes straight to Lutai, the king's pleasure palace, to try and stop this. This whole confrontation at Lutai is just, it's so dramatic. Jizi throws himself on the ground, weeping, saying, the 600-year-old Sheng dynasty is going to be lost today because of this one act. And his argument is brilliant. It's not just begging for mercy. It's a full-on lecture about what it means to be a king. What are the main points he makes? Okay, so first, he hits him with the core of their political philosophy. The ruler is the parent of the people. They're born from the world's spirit. And the king's job is to nurture them, not torture them. He says, Ren Spuneng Fuxing. The dead cannot be brought back. It's this simple, undeniable truth. You are squandering lives that can never be replaced. But then he gets very practical, very political. Yes. He shifts to the mandate of heaven. He tells the king straight up, heaven is angry, and the people are resentful. They hate you. He warns him that the people are so fed up, they'll actually welcome the enemy. He uses that incredible phrase, Danxi Hujiang Yingzi. They will welcome the Zhou forces with food and drink. They're actively waiting to be liberated from you. That's devastating to be told your own people are praying for your enemy to arrive. And the final blow is the appeal to the ancestors. He tells you that the spirits of all 28 generations of Shang kings will be destroyed by this. You're not just ruining the present, you're erasing the entire past. So you have this moral, political, and ancestral argument all rolled into one. It's a perfect case. And King Zhou's reaction? Complete dismissal. Just utter defiance. He says General Yuan Hong has the war under control, so that's not a problem. And the dissection. He calls it a minor act of curiosity. Just something to, you know, resolve a little doubt Daji brought up. He can't tell the difference between solving a riddle and mass murder. Not at all. And that's when he completely loses it. He twists Jizhi's loyalty into a crime. He accuses him of insulting the sovereign Huizhen. And orders him to be killed. On the spot. Nakadi sees him and beat him to death. Just an unbelievable, though predictable, response. But Jizhi isn't completely alone here. This is where we get the three sages at the end. That's right. Just as the guards grab him, Wei Si and his two brothers rush in and physically stop the execution. They appeal to the king's last shred of humanity. Family ties. And they remind him of the worst thing he's already done. They do. They say, you already committed the sin of Kriubinggan's Zijin. You cut out your uncle Binggan's heart. Don't destroy another loyal voice. And for a moment, it works. The king relents. He does. He spares Jizhi's life, but demotes him to a commoner. Fei Wei Shumin. But of course, Daji gets the last word. She's not just evil, she's politically smart. Very. She points out that a free Jizhi, even as a commoner, will hold a grudge. He'll conspire with the enemy. He's a liability. So what's her suggestion? I'm guessing it's not a clean death. Oh no. It's much more humiliating. She suggests they shave his head and imprison him as a palace slave. Tifa Kijin. Wei Nu Gunjin. So they keep him alive as a warning. Exactly. A living symbol in the palace of what happens when you speak out. It's a move designed to psychologically crush all dissent. To be kept alive only to represent the price of loyalty. That's, that's maybe worse than dying. And for Huizi and the others, that is the absolute final straw. This act proves to them that the old rules are gone. The system is broken. So they conclude the dynasty is finished. They say, tin huang kreng shang ye. Heaven is destroying our Shang. And they decide to flee. But they do one last thing. They preserve the lineage. Right. They take the ancestral tablets of the 28 Shang kings with them. Their goal is in Kunshan Dianxi to preserve the sacrifices. To keep the spirit of the dynasty alive, even if the state itself is doomed. And that's why they're so famous. The text even quotes Confucius here, summarizing the fates of the three sages. Huizi fled. Jizhi was enslaved. And Begon died. And those three options, they represent the only moral choices left when you're facing that kind of absolute tyranny. You can die for the truth. You can be a captive witness to it. Or you can escape to preserve the future. But you can't keep serving. You can't. It's impossible. So with all the moral voices gone, King Zhu is finally free to conduct his experiment. We shift back to Lutai and the dissections begin. Daji makes her predictions with this, this cold clinical authority. Woman one, a boy facing left. Woman two, a boy facing right. Woman three, a girl facing her back. And the text says after they are cut open, the results are halibu xing. Knot off by hair's breadth, perfect accuracy. Which for King Zhu is the ultimate validation. He is ecstatic. He says her skill is better than any divination. Sugrishi Modi. And this success just makes him completely reckless. Tsubuji Dan. He's proven his supernatural ally is real. And at the same moment, he learns his human allies have abandoned him. When he's told that White Sea and his brothers have fled, he just shrugs. He just shrugs them off. Calls them useless old men. He has fully and consciously traded human wisdom for demonic power. And his complacency is just absolute now. Totally. Which sets up this final dark irony of the chapter. He's lost his wise counselors, but he's about to get some new recruits. The scene shifts to the army recruitment area. And two, well, two figures arise. And their descriptions are meant to tell you everything you need to know. These are the brothers, Gao Ming and Gao Zhu. And the descriptions are, uh, unsettling. To put it mildly, these are not men. They are monsters summoned by the king's own wickedness. Let's go through it. Gao Ming has a face like blue indigo, eyes like golden lanterns, a huge mouth, fangs. A classic demon. And his brother Gao Zhu is even worse. A face like melon skin, mouth like a pool of blood, teeth like swords, and twin horns. He has horns. They're openly, obviously monstrous. And the king has just enslaved the wisest man in his court. How does he treat these two? With the highest possible honor. Instantly. He names them Shun Seri, Shengjianzhong Divine Martial Grain Generals. And sends them straight to the front lines. So the message couldn't be clearer. The Shang dynasty has traded wisdom for monsters. Human loyalty for demonic force. It's a final transaction. If you look at the whole chapter, King Zhu systematically gets rid of every source of moral authority. Bi Gan is dead. Ji Zi is a slave. Wei Zi is gone. And who does he replace them with? With Daji's magic and these horned generals. Exactly. He seeks affirmation from evil. And he seeks strength from the monsters.