Su Daji

Su Daji, daughter of Su Hu, Marquis of Jizhou, was sent by decree to the palace as a consort, and her carriage stopped for the night at a post station. Night had closed in and the lamps were dim when the thousand-year nine-tailed fox spirit from the tomb of Xuanyuan came in as a cold wind, killed the true Daji, took her shape, and set out with Su Hu’s carriage as usual the next morning, with nobody the wiser.

Once in the palace her beauty and her ready understanding quickly won King Zhou’s exclusive favour, and the other consorts were left aside. Afterwards the jade pipa spirit came in as Consort Wang and the nine-headed pheasant spirit as Hu Ximei, and the three supported one another and quietly removed those who stood in their way.

Yunzhongzi, travelling to Chaoge, presented King Zhou with a pine-wood sword, meaning to press down the demonic air in the palace with its edge. Daji fell ill and would not come out, and only when the sword had been taken away and burnt did she recover; the king trusted her more than ever after that.

Daji urged the king into great works — the Deer Terrace — and to institute the roasting punishment, a greased bronze pillar hung over charcoal on which condemned palace people were made to walk until they fell into the fire, for her amusement and to frighten the officials. She also had the snake pit made, and had palace women who would not attach themselves to her thrown into it to be bitten by venomous creatures for sport. She had the court musicians compose new music and had it played day and night, and the king sank into it and cared less and less for the government.

The senior grandee Mei Bo opposed the roasting punishment and remonstrated plainly, and at Daji’s urging the king had him roasted to death in front of the court. The whole court was appalled, and after that nobody dared speak.

Queen Jiang noticed that Daji behaved strangely and remonstrated with the king repeatedly, and Daji framed her, accusing her of sending an assassin against him. The king had the queen’s eyes cut out and her hands burned, and she died in the palace; the princes Yin Jiao and Yin Hong fled after their mother’s death and were hunted afterwards.

Daji also had the pool of wine and forest of meat set up and feasted day and night, so that palace expenses rose and taxes on the people with them. On the pretext of testing whether the marrow of the old and the young truly differs, she had the shin-bones of passers-by cut open on a winter morning to look, and had pregnant women cut open to see the sex of the child for sport. Those who remonstrated were condemned one after another, and the air before the hall grew grimmer by the day.

When Huang Feihu’s wife, Lady Jia, came to the palace to offer greetings, Daji contrived to drive her up onto the Star-Plucking Tower and force her to leap to her death, and the palace was in uproar when she struck the ground. Her sister-in-law Consort Huang came to demand an answer and the king threw her from the tower with his own hands; Huang Feihu, in grief and fury, broke out of Chaoge and went over with his people to Western Qi.

Daji then pretended to a heart ailment that would not mend, said that only an exquisite heart could cure it, and pressed the king to demand his uncle Bi Gan’s. Bi Gan cut out his heart and died outside the palace gate, and Shang lost another of its supports; the court and the country were shaken.

The Zhou army raised its campaign against King Zhou and swept forward. As Chaoge fell, the three demons of the tomb of Xuanyuan fled in haste, meaning to hide their true forms and slip away; caught outside the city by the demon-binding cord Nüwa sent after them, they were taken one by one and could not get free.

Yang Jian brought the three back to the Zhou camp under guard. Jiang Shang took his seat, judged them, and ordered them executed before the whole army. The ground was set beyond the camp gate, a cold wind lifted the yellow dust, and the executioners, unable to lift their blades for Daji’s beauty, had at last to cover her face with cloth before it was done; the heads of the pheasant spirit, the jade pipa spirit and Daji were hung up together before the army.