Chapter 90- King Zhou Casually Kills People to Prove Daji's Words

If you love ancient warfare and you love stories about massive, massive tactical failures, well, you've definitely come to the right place. From the Fengshen Yanyi, where the biggest, shiniest celestial weapons just stop working. It's a fantastic strategic paradox, really. We're looking at the Zhu and Shang conflict at Mengjin, where Jiang Ziya's army, you know, the one backed by heaven itself, runs up against an enemy that just laughs at their best stuff. And it's not a failure of power, is it? It's a failure of strategy. How do you win a war when your divine firepower is, well, useless? We're going to look at it in three stages. First, who these enemies actually are. Right, their fundamental nature. Second, the shocking scale of the failure when all the celestial weapons are brought out. And finally, the, let's be honest, slightly grotesque folk strategy Jiang Ziya has to use to win. It's so brilliant. And the scene is set with this great contrast, this mix of the, you know, the mundane and the supernatural. Right. The Shang dynasty is falling apart, but the bureaucracy is still running. The Shang king sends this formal imperial decree to his general, Yan Hong. Who is, and this is key, secretly the white ape spirit of Mishan. And the decree is just full of praise, calling him the nation's pillar, a genius. He gets rewards. Boiled lamb, imperial wine, silk robes. All these incredibly human mortal rewards for what is essentially a raw nature spirit. It just shows how blind the Shang court was. They thought they were fighting men. They were fighting something else entirely. And as soon as Yan Hong gets these gifts, he introduces the real threat. Which brings us to our first section. Who are these guys? Okay, so these are Gao Ming and Gao Ju. They're from a place called Chessboard Mountain, and they are the peach spirit and the willow ghost. And when they meet Yan Hong, there's this instant connection. Yes. An immediate joyful recognition. The source material has this wonderful phrase for it, Yikipongzi. Which means? One breath, same branch. It's not just a military alliance. It's like a spiritual family reunion. They share the same elemental essence, a unified front of nature spirits. And their appearance is just terrifying. The text goes into a lot of detail. Oh, it's incredibly vivid. Gao Ming, the peach spirit, has a face like glue indigo with cheeks that shine like lamps. And the other one, Gao Ju. The willow ghost. He has a face like green pine, a blood basin mouth, and tusks like steel swords. He carries this huge steel axe that's described as being like a wheel. So you know immediately these are not human. They're not even your standard demon. No, they're something older. And the text gives us a huge clue about their power level by connecting them to some very ancient folklore. Oh, tell us about that. There's a specific couplet comparing them to Shantou and Yule. The old door gods, right? The ones who protect against evil spirits. Exactly. By comparing them to these ancient figures, the story is saying they have this inherent localized spiritual authority. Their job is literally to be a magical barrier to obstruct the zoo army at Mengjin. So you have these two ancient nature spirits backed by a powerful white ape. Zhengzi's response is, of course, to bring out the heavy hitters. Of course. Send in the demigods with the biggest toys. And Nez is up first. He's the wonder kind of the army. He is. And his weapons aren't just powerful, they're like pieces of cosmic force. He immediately transforms into his three heads in eight arms form. His first move. He throws the universe ring, the camcunquan. Now this isn't just some projectile. It's an artifact that embodies cosmic law. It can restrain gods. So this should be over pretty quickly. You'd think. He throws it, it hits Gauju right on the head and nothing. What do you mean nothing? Gauju doesn't scream, doesn't explode. He just scatters. He becomes a wave of golden light. The cosmic force hits him and he just converts his essence into pure energy. It's like trying to punch water. Exactly. So Nezza, not giving up, immediately uses his second weapon on Gaoming. The nine dragons divine fire cover. Which sounds incredibly destructive. It is. It unleashes nine fire dragons that completely burn him up. Nezza goes back to camp, reports two kills, victory. But. But a little while later, Gaoming and Gauju just stroll back into Yunnan Hong's camp, completely unharmed. And they're laughing. Laughing, yeah. Mocking him. They boast that Ziya only relies on his disciples, and that no heaven penetrating means can stop them because of their subtle skills. Their ability to transform their essence makes the most powerful weapons totally useless. Because the weapons are designed to destroy form, but these spirits don't really have a fixed form to destroy. Precisely. And that's when the panic must have set in. The next day, Ziya sends out the whole army and it just becomes a checklist of failures. Yang Ren tries the five fire fan. And Gaoming turns into a black light and just zips away. Li Jing, Nezza's father, uses his golden pagoda on Gauju. Which is supposed to trap anything, right? But Gauju just vanishes. Instantly. They can't be held, they can't be burned, and they can't be crushed. And it's the same with the big boss, Yuan Hong. Yep. He fights Ziya, and Wei Hu steps in with the demon-slaying pestle, the Jiangmakdo. And the source says this thing is like Mount Sumeru. The world mountain. An object of basically infinite weight. You can't get much heavier than that. But as Wei Hu brings it down, Yuan Hong just transforms into white light, and he's gone. So what happens to his horse? The horse and the saddle, the physical things, are pulverized into mud. The mortal objects are destroyed, but the spirit, the essence, is completely untouched. The ultimate dodge. The other spirits do the same thing, right? They escape as black and green ki. The whole arsenal is useless. And that's when Yang Jin, who is always the most perceptive one, reports back to Ziya. He says it flat out. Our treasures are useless. They just dissipate into light and ki. That's the turning point. Realization. You can't fight fire with fire here. You have to fight fire with something else entirely. The countermeasure. Fighting spirits with folklore. He has to stop thinking like a celestial general and start thinking like a village shaman. He does. He realizes the old weapons failed because they were clean. They were pure celestial energy. What he needs now is the opposite. He needs things that are spiritually impure. Things that counteract yao ki, or fei energy. So he designs this huge eight trigrams array. A big perimeter, yes. But the real magic is in the ingredients. The components he uses. The instructions are super specific, aren't they? Incredibly. He has his top generals man the four cardinal directions. But they're not holding divine weapons. They're driving peach stakes into the ground. Tao zhuang. Peach wood. That's classic folk magic for warding off spirits. For millennia. It represents life, spring, and then he has them smear the stakes with dog blood. Qing zui. Which is seen as spiritually filthy, right? It damages spirit forms. Exactly. These are not the sophisticated tools of the gods. This is backyard, village-level protection magic being deployed in a celestial war. So he sets the boundary. Then what? Yang Jian is ordered to use the five thunder law to energize the stakes once the spirits are inside the array. It creates this kind of spiritual shock fence. But that's not the final piece, is it? There's one more thing. The most important part. Yeah. And the most, uh, visceral. It's a simple bottle held by a wei hu. And the text does not hold back on what's inside. No, it doesn't. The bottle is filled with a very specific mix. Black chicken blood, black dog blood, and women's urine and feces. Okay, wait. Let's unpack that. Why that? Why does this filthy turbid matter work when a cosmic ring that can restrain gods fails? Because it targets their one great strength, which is also their weakness. Their defense is transforming back into pure, subtle essence. Into kai. Right. Into light or energy. Celestial fire tries to purify that energy, but you can't really purify pure energy. It doesn't work. But this mixture, this is deliberate spiritual contamination. It's designed to suppress their yao qi when they try to transform. So when the spirit tries to turn into light to escape, this stuff just sticks to them like spiritual mud. That's the perfect way to put it. It's spiritual mud. It grounds them. It drags their pure essence down into the base, impure material world and holds them there. It completely neutralizes their ability to escape. It's an incredible reversal. The purity of the gods fails, but the crudeness of the most basic human elements wins. And the most telling detail, the part that proves why this works, is the spirit's own arrogance. Ah, yes. They overhear the whole plan. The whole thing. They have these heaven-penetrating abilities, so they listen in as Xia lays out the entire repulsive scheme. The steaks, the black dog blood, the women's waste. They know every detail. And what do they do? They laugh. They just laugh it off. They dismiss it as empty effort. So the conflict kicks off when Xia challenges the enemy camp and out come these two generals, Gao Ming and Gao Ju. And immediately, right away, they prove they know way too much. They don't just fight. They mock him with this unnerving specificity. They call him a mere commoner, a bifu. And they openly accuse him of relying on left path magic. You know, the kind of sketchy techniques for small-time ghosts. And that's the real tell, isn't it? The key piece of intel. They list off exactly what he uses. The black dog blood, the chicken blood, the talismans, the peach steaks. They basically say to him, we're not ghosts or demonic spirits, so why are you wasting your time with what is pretty much spiritual pest control? That level of awareness means they didn't just see his formation, they knew the intent behind it. Totally. So Xia and his generals, they try to engage. But Xia feigns a retreat right into his prepared trap. This complex formation using the eight trigrams and nine palaces. And Gao Ming and Gao Ju, they're so confident, they just charge right in. The trap springs. Thunder, talismans, Wei Hu deploys his bottle of filth, all the standard stuff. And nothing happens. They don't get trapped. Yeah. They don't even get singed. They just vanish instantly in a streak of blue light. And this is the moment Xia goes from frustrated to furious. It's the only logical military conclusion. Has to be. If you rule out the supernatural, it has to be perfect human espionage. But this is where Yang Jin steps in with a completely different diagnosis. Right. He argues the two are not right people, that they're radiating this intense demonic energy. He says he has to find their genjiao, their true root, their source. And then when they ask him where he's going, he gives that amazing cryptic line. The secret must not be revealed or success cannot be achieved. And he's just gone. What's so fascinating there is that clash of perspectives. You have Xia, the military genius, looking for a human threat. And then Yang Jian, the esoteric master, who immediately sees it for what it is, the supernatural logistics problem. OK, so let's unpack that investigation. Yang Jian leaves, uses his earth tunneling magic to get to Yuquan Mountain to see his master. And this is where the whole puzzle gets unlocked. This meeting is the critical pivot. His master confirms it. Gao Ming and Gao Ju are, in fact, powerful demons. The Peach Essence and the Willow Ghost, Tao Jing and Lu Gi. From Qipan Mountain. From Qipan Mountain. And here's the first big reveal about their power. Their physical root systems span 30 Li. That's about 10 miles. Wow. 10 miles of roots. That's an incredible physical anchor. It is. It explains their raw power and maybe why they could just dissolve out of Xia's traps. But like you said, it still doesn't explain the perfect intel. No. How do they know about the black dog blood? This is the real insight. The master reveals their intelligence isn't coming from them. It's not their own power. It's external. Borrowed. Borrowed from what? From two mud statues in the nearby Xuan Yuan Temple. Wait, wait. So the demons are just the muscle, but a couple of mud statues are the spy network? Precisely. The statues are the spirit servants. Thousand Mile Eye and Wind Following Ear. Think of them like supernatural surveillance drones. And Gao Ming and Gao Ju had somehow tapped into their senses. But there's a key limitation the master points out. Their range is only a thousand Li. Xia's camp was just inside that perimeter. So they had complete real-time tactical awareness. That just raises such a huge point. If Yang Jian hadn't figured this out. Xia would still be fighting the visible enemy. He would never have known the real target was a remote temple full of mud sculptures. A comms link. Exactly. The problem wasn't magic versus magic. It was fighting a magically enhanced communication network. So the master outlines the plan. A definitive, three-part strategy. One. Send men to Qipan Mountain. Dig up and burn the roots. Two. Smash the mud bodies in the temple to cut off their spiritual energy. And three. Deploy a heavy, constant mist to shroud the camp. Complete the physical concealment. This just shifts the entire battle from offense to, well, counterintelligence, infrastructure destruction. It's a perfect way to put it. So Yang Jian returns. And he's still maintaining absolute radio silence. He trusts no one. Not even Xia with the full plan. He just insists that Xia follow his lead. And he immediately implements the most brilliant part of this whole thing. The tactical misdirection. The part that jams the signal before they destroy the source. Yes. And this is the genius of it. Because he uses pure physical chaos to defeat supernatural surveillance. It's like trying to defeat a spy satellite by just, I don't know, setting up a bunch of smoke machines and mirrors on the ground. It feels so low-tech. It's the perfect analogy. He orders 2,000 large red flags to be constantly waved. This massive visual noise is meant to dazzle Thousand Mile Eye. And for the ears? He orders 1,000 troops to constantly beat gongs and drums like Gu Mingluo. Just an incessant deafening clamor to deafen wind-following ear. So you're not just disrupting the signal. You're overloading the sensor itself. What's the immediate effect on the enemy? Total immediate frustration. We see Gao Ming complaining that the red flags are literally dazzling his eyes. Gao Ju says the gongs have deafened him and he can't hear a thing. They go from perfect intel to zero visibility and zero acoustic data. Instantly. They're strategically paralyzed by noise and color. And this buys the Allied forces the time they need to launch the real assault. The two-pronged attack on their power sources. Exactly. Xia sends Li Jing with 3,000 men to Qipan Mountain to dig up and cut off the roots and burn them. That's the attack on their biological life force. And at the same time, Li Zhenzhi is sent to the temple. To smash the mud statues. The attack on the communications system. And he comes back. Mission successful. Statue smashed. Temple burned. He even makes that sort of funny comment like, don't worry, we can rebuild the temple after the war. Right. The immediate threat is neutralized. And now, with the power source severed and the distractions still going, Xia sets the final physical trap. A new altar. Based on the five elements. Guarded by suppression talismans. The camp is now not just defended, it's sanctified. And this brings us to the final act. Okay, so while Xia has been busy destroying their entire spiritual infrastructure, the enemy commander Yuan Hong is completely oblivious. He's still working off that old intel, assuming they have a perfect bead on Xia's camp. He plans an immediate night raid, a quick surgical strike. And of course, he picks Gao Ming and Gao Zhu to lead the vanguard. He thinks he's sending in his ghost team against a blind opponent. But even inside his own camp, there's some dissent. A couple of his generals, Lu Renji and Yin Chengxu, they're skeptical. Right. They know that Xia is a master of strategy and knows esoteric changes. They basically predict failure and wisely decide to hang back. But the attack goes forward. And Xia, he's the consummate strategist. He doesn't need a statue for his intel. A strange wind, a demonic sign blows into his tent. And he calculates its meaning and is delighted. He knows. He knows they're walking right into his kill zone. Just as predicted. So he prepares the final defense. The peach stakes and talismans are nailed down. He deploys an earth net and a heaven net, a physical and spiritual barrier. And crucially, that final piece of advice from the master is implemented. A heavy, black fog blankets the central camp. Total concealment. And the defensive assignments are so precise, they correspond to that five elements altar. Li Jing in the east, Yang Ren in the west, Ni Zha in the south, Li Zhenzi in the north. A deployment designed to neutralize demonic power based on its directional origin. Absolutely. Yang Jian and Wei Hu guard Xia's platform. And the climax arrives. Gao Ming and Gao Ju, they start the raid. But they're already blind and deaf from the flags and drums. They enter the camp thinking they have the advantage. Only to find themselves completely lost in this thick, black fog. And Xia, on his platform, begins to use the Kunlun technique. This is the definitive final move. This is the big one. He's not relying on dog blood anymore. He's using this high-level technique specifically to summon and capture the spirits Shentu and Yule. Wait, okay, who are Shentu and Yule? Why are they the key to this final capture? So Shentu and Yule are some of the oldest known door guardians. Or you could call them spirit jailers in Chinese mythology. They go way back. Spirit jailers. I like that. Their fundamental job is to capture and control evil spirits. So by using the Kunlun technique to summon them, Xia is essentially mobilizing divine law enforcement to arrest the Peach and Willow demons.