Ji Chang and Jiang Ziya

After Ji Chang left Youli and returned to Western Qi, he dreamed one night of a white-browed tiger with wings on its back, and his officer San Yisheng asked him to go and seek a worthy man on the south bank of the River Wei. Jiang Ziya was sitting at Panxi fishing with a straight hook, no bait on it and the rod three feet above the water.

Ji Chang came down from his carriage, talked with him at length, and that same day asked him into the city in his own carriage and made him chancellor of the right, calling him Taigongwang. Once in Western Qi, Jiang Ziya reorganised the muster rolls, the treasury and the defences, and persuaded Ji Chang to take Mixu first and then attack Chong Houhu.

When the Earl of the West lay dying he called his son Ji Fa to his bed, told him to serve Jiang Shang as a father, and entrusted him with the ministers of Western Qi and the unfinished eastern campaign. After Ji Chang’s death Jiang Ziya conducted his funeral and then stood again in the centre of the Western Qi army, helping the new lord Ji Fa aboard the ferry at Mengjin.