King Dao of Chu had just died, and his body still lay in the palace.

A band of Chu princes of the royal clan and great officers burst in carrying weapons. The man they wanted to kill was not the new king. It was the outsider from Wei whom King Dao had made his chief minister.

He did not run for the door. He ran to the king's body and threw himself down on it.

His pursuers shot at him and stabbed at him. The arrows struck Wu Qi, and they struck the body of King Dao as well.

When King Dao had been buried and the crown prince had taken the throne, the new king had the chief minister track down everyone who had shot at Wu Qi and hit the late king's body, and put them all to death. More than seventy families were wiped out over it.

This is the scene I set down at the end of the joint biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi. A man died, and the men who shot him were pursued to the end. Later readers often say he died cleverly. But as I wrote this man's life, from beginning to end, one question stayed with me: did his cleverness save him, or did it destroy him?

I. The Oath outside the East Gate

Wu Qi was a man of Wey who loved military affairs. He once studied under Master Zeng, and later took service with the ruler of Lu.

His early years I wrote through the mouth of a man of Lu. This man hated Wu Qi and spoke against him before the ruler of Lu.

He said: Wu Qi is a suspicious and cruel man. When he was young his family had a thousand pieces of gold. He went about seeking office, failed, and ran through the whole family fortune. People of his home district laughed at him, and Wu Qi killed more than thirty of those who mocked him, then left by the east gate of the Wey capital. When he parted from his mother he bit his own arm and swore: Unless I become a minister, I will never come back to Wey.

After that he served Master Zeng. Not long afterward his mother died, and Wu Qi never went home. Master Zeng despised him and broke with him.

These words came from a man who wanted him gone. I recorded them as they were, and I recorded the speaker's purpose too. The harshest things in a man's early life happen to have been told to a ruler by his enemy.

II. The Wife from Qi

Qi attacked Lu, and Lu wanted Wu Qi as its general. But Wu Qi's wife was a woman of Qi, and the people of Lu distrusted him for it.

Wanting to make his name, Wu Qi killed his wife to show that he did not side with Qi. Lu at last made him general. He led the army against Qi and routed it.

The man of Lu went on: Lu is a small state. If it gains a name for winning battles, the other lords will start scheming against it. Besides, Lu and Wey are brother states, and if you employ Wu Qi, you are casting Wey aside.

The ruler of Lu grew suspicious and dismissed Wu Qi.

Han Fei told a different story about his wife. Han Fei says Wu Qi came from the town of Zuoshi in Wey. He had his wife weave a silk band, and it came out narrower than the set width, so he told her to redo it. She agreed, but when it was finished and measured again it still did not meet the standard. Wu Qi was furious. His wife said: I set the warp threads at the start, and they cannot be changed. Wu Qi sent her away. She begged her elder brother to plead for her, and he said: Master Wu is a man of law. He means to win merit for a great state through law, so he must first apply it to his own wife and concubines. Do not hope to go back. Her younger brother stood high with the ruler of Wey and had the ruler ask on her behalf. Wu Qi would not listen. He left Wey and went to Chu.

One account says he killed his wife, the other says he sent her away. One says he left Lu for Wei, the other that he left Wey straight for Chu. Han Fei also records a third route: the Jisun clan of Lu had just murdered their ruler while Wu Qi served them, someone urged him to go, and he left Lu for Jin. Of three roads, I wrote down only one.

III. The Weeping Mother

Wu Qi heard that Marquis Wen of Wei was a worthy ruler and wanted to serve him.

The marquis asked his minister Li Ke: What sort of man is Wu Qi? Li Ke said: Wu Qi is greedy and fond of women, but in handling troops even Sima Rangju could not surpass him.

So Marquis Wen made him a general. He attacked Qin and took five cities.

As a general, Wu Qi wore the same clothes and ate the same food as the lowest of his soldiers. He slept without a mat, marched without riding a horse or a carriage, carried his own bundled rations, and shared the soldiers' hardships.

One soldier had an abscess, and Wu Qi sucked the pus out with his own mouth. When the soldier's mother heard of it, she wept aloud.

Someone asked her: Your son is only a common soldier, and the general himself sucked his abscess. Why are you crying?

The mother said: It is not like that. Years ago Lord Wu sucked his father's abscess, and in battle his father never turned on his heel, and so he died at the enemy's hands. Now Lord Wu has sucked my son's too, and I do not know where he will die. That is why I weep.

Han Fei records this as well. He says it happened when Wu Qi attacked Zhongshan for Wei, and that Wu Qi knelt down to suck the wound.

In that mother's eyes, the man who drew the poison from her son was the man who had come for his life. There is not one hard word in the story, and it is colder than everything the man of Lu said.

IV. The Carriage Pole outside the North Gate

Because Wu Qi was skilled in war, honest and fair, and could win the hearts of his men, Marquis Wen made him governor of Xihe, the land west of the Yellow River, to hold off Qin and Han.

Han Fei tells of one thing he did in Xihe, and says it was when he was governor of Xihe under Marquis Wu of Wei. Qin had a small watch post on the border, right against Wei's fields. Leaving it there hurt the farmers; raising a full army just for it was not worth it.

Wu Qi leaned a carriage pole against the wall outside the north gate and proclaimed: Whoever can move this outside the south gate will be given the best fields and the best house. No one moved it. When someone finally did, Wu Qi rewarded him just as promised.

Soon afterward he set a measure of red beans outside the east gate and proclaimed: Whoever can move these outside the west gate will be rewarded as before. This time people scrambled to move them.

Then he issued an order: Tomorrow we attack the post. Whoever is first onto it will be made a grandee of the state and given the best fields and house. People raced each other to it. In a single morning the post was taken.

In the biography of Lord Shang I wrote that Shang Yang set up a log three zhang long at the south gate of the market in the Qin capital, and when someone carried it to the north gate, he paid him in gold. Han Fei's story of Wu Qi is very like it.

After Marquis Wen died, Wu Qi served his son, Marquis Wu of Wei. The marquis sailed down the Xihe stretch of the river, and in midstream he turned to Wu Qi and said: How beautiful these mountains and rivers are, how strong a barrier. This is the treasure of Wei.

Wu Qi answered: A state's treasure lies in virtue, not in strong barriers. Long ago the Sanmiao had Lake Dongting on their left and Lake Pengli on their right, but they did not cultivate virtue and right, and Yu destroyed them. Jie of Xia lived with the Yellow River and the Ji on his left and Mount Taihua on his right, Yique to the south and Yangchang to the north, but he governed without humanity, and Tang banished him. The capital of Zhou of Yin had Mengmen on its left and the Taihang on its right, Mount Chang to the north and the great river passing to the south, but he governed without virtue, and King Wu killed him. If my lord does not cultivate virtue, everyone in this boat will become a man of an enemy state.

The marquis said: Well spoken.

The Stratagems of the Warring States records this voyage too, and says another minister named Wang Zhong (some copies read Wang Cuo) chimed in with the marquis, and Wu Qi refuted him as well. When the marquis had heard him out, he said: Only today have I heard the words of a sage. The government of Xihe is entrusted wholly to you.

V. Who Should Be Chancellor

As governor of Xihe, Wu Qi had a great name. But when Wei appointed a chancellor, it chose Tian Wen. Wu Qi was displeased and said to Tian Wen: Shall we compare our merits?

Tian Wen said: Let us.

Wu Qi asked: Commanding the three armies, making the soldiers glad to die, so that enemy states dare not scheme against us: who is better, you or I? Tian Wen said: I am not your equal.

He asked again: Ordering the hundred offices, winning the people's affection, filling the treasury: who is better, you or I? Tian Wen said: I am not your equal.

He asked once more: Holding Xihe so that Qin's troops dare not face east, and Han and Zhao follow our lead: who is better, you or I? Tian Wen said: I am not your equal.

Wu Qi said: In all three you are below me, yet your rank is above mine. Why?

Tian Wen said: The ruler is young, the state is uneasy, the great officers have not yet given their loyalty, and the people do not yet trust the court. At such a time, should the government be entrusted to you, or to me?

Wu Qi was silent a long while. Then he said: To you.

Tian Wen said: That is why I stand above you.

The Annals of Lü Buwei, compiled by Lü Buwei's retainers, also has this exchange, but there the man answering Wu Qi is called Shang Wen, and the three things Wu Qi asks about are different. That book ends with a verdict: Wu Qi could see his own strengths but not his own weaknesses.

VI. Looking Back from Anmen

After Tian Wen died, Gongshu became chancellor. He had married a princess of Wei, and he wanted to be rid of Wu Qi.

Gongshu's servant offered a plan: Wu Qi is incorruptible and cares about his good name. First tell Marquis Wu that Wu Qi is a worthy man, but our state is small and borders mighty Qin, and you fear he has no mind to stay. The marquis will surely ask what to do. Then say: Try offering him a princess in marriage. If he means to stay, he will accept; if not, he will decline. Then invite Wu Qi to your house and have the princess fly into a temper and slight you in front of him. When Wu Qi sees how the princess treats her husband, he is sure to decline.

Everything went as planned. Seeing the princess scorn the chancellor of Wei, Wu Qi declined Marquis Wu's offer. From then on the marquis doubted him and no longer trusted him. Afraid of being charged with some crime, Wu Qi left Wei and went to Chu.

The Annals of Lü Buwei tells this part with another man and another picture. There, a man named Wang Cuo slandered Wu Qi before Marquis Wu, and the marquis sent for him. When Wu Qi reached Anmen, he stopped his carriage and looked back toward Xihe, and tears ran down his face.

His driver said: As I read your mind, you would throw away the whole world as lightly as a pair of sandals. Why do you weep at leaving Xihe?

Wu Qi wiped his tears and said: You do not understand. If my lord truly knew me and let me use all my ability, Qin could certainly be destroyed, and from Xihe he could become a true king. Now my lord listens to slanderers and does not know me. Xihe will not be long in falling to Qin, and from now on Wei will shrink.

That book says Wu Qi left Wei for Chu, and later all of Xihe did pass to Qin.

There is one more thing, recorded in the Stratagems of the Warring States. Later, when Gongshu Cuo was general of Wei and won a battle, the king of Wei wanted to reward him richly. Gongshu Cuo declined, saying that what kept the soldiers from breaking and drove them straight forward was the training Wu Qi had left behind, not any skill of his own. The king sought out Wu Qi's descendants and gave them two hundred thousand units of land. A later annotator of the Stratagems took this Gongshu Cuo to be the very Gongshu who had driven Wu Qi out, and asked how the same man could act so differently. In my book I wrote only "Gongshu," without a given name.

VII. Taking Back Titles after Three Generations

King Dao of Chu had long heard of Wu Qi's ability, and as soon as Wu Qi arrived, he made him chancellor of Chu.

What I wrote of his work in Chu takes only a few lines: he made the laws clear and the orders strict, cut offices that were not urgently needed, abolished the distant branches of the royal clan, and used this to support the fighting men. His aim was a strong army, and he refuted the itinerant persuaders who argued for vertical and horizontal alliances. So Chu pacified the Hundred Yue in the south, annexed Chen and Cai in the north, drove back the three Jin states, and attacked Qin in the west. The other lords all feared Chu's strength.

Han Fei records his proposals in more detail. Wu Qi told King Dao: In Chu the great ministers are too powerful and the enfeoffed lords too many. So they press on the ruler above and abuse the people below. This is the way to a poor state and a weak army. Better to let the heirs of enfeoffed lords keep their titles and stipends for three generations and then take them back; to cut the salaries of the hundred officers; to dismiss the superfluous offices; and to use the savings to support picked and trained soldiers.

The Annals of Lü Buwei adds another item. Wu Qi told the king of Chu: What Chu has in excess is land; what it lacks is people. Now my lord uses what is lacking to add to what is in excess, and I cannot go on this way. So he ordered the nobles to move out and fill the broad, empty lands, and the nobles all found it bitter.

Later, Cai Ze of Qin listed Wu Qi's achievements before the Marquis of Ying: he made laws for King Dao, lowered the power of the great ministers, dismissed the incapable, abolished the useless, cut offices not urgently needed, shut off private petitions, unified the customs of Chu, banned the drifting idle, and promoted men of farming and war.

By the time Liu Xiang compiled the Garden of Persuasions, the story had gained a man of Chu named Qu Yijiu. When Wu Qi had become chief minister and, touring the counties, came to Xi, he went to see him and said he meant to even out the ranks and stipends of Chu, take from those who had too much to make up for those who had too little, and train the army to contend with the world when the time came. Qu Yijiu said: I have heard that those who governed well in the past did not change old ways or alter the norms. Weapons are instruments of ill omen, and contention goes against virtue. You used Lu's troops against Qi, when you should not have succeeded, and succeeded; you used Wei's troops against Qin, when you should not have succeeded, and succeeded. Only one who harms others brings disaster. Our ruler has gone against the way of Heaven again and again and still has met no disaster. Perhaps it has been waiting for you.

Everyone who tells of Wu Qi in Chu tells of the same thing: what he touched was the nobles' titles and stipends.

VIII. The King's Body

Han Fei says King Dao died a year after putting these laws into effect.

What I wrote is this: the royal kin of Chu all wanted to harm Wu Qi. As soon as King Dao died, princes of the royal clan and great officers rose up and attacked him. Wu Qi ran to the king's body and lay down on it, and his attackers shot and stabbed him, hitting King Dao as well. When the new king came to the throne, he had everyone who had shot at Wu Qi and hit the king's body put to death, and more than seventy families were wiped out.

The Annals of Lü Buwei tells this scene more like a piece of tactics than I did. King Dao died, the nobles all came, the body lay in the hall, and together they shot at Wu Qi. Wu Qi shouted: I will show you how I use troops. He pulled the arrows out of his body and ran, threw himself on the king's corpse, drove the arrows into it, and cried out: The ministers have rebelled against the king! With that he died. The book goes on: under the law of Chu, anyone who laid a weapon on the king's body was heavily punished, together with three generations of kin. So it praises Wu Qi's quick wits.

In my book, the arrows hit the king's body because his pursuers shot them; in that book, Wu Qi pulled them from his own flesh and planted them in the body. One is a flight to the last place left; the other is a last stratagem before death. I cannot prove either.

Han Fei gives it a single line: Wu Qi was dismembered in Chu. Cai Ze says too that when his work was done he was dismembered in the end. They say nothing of the king's body, and nothing of arrows.

IX. Lord Yangcheng's Mohists

In this upheaval another group of people died. They did not shoot at Wu Qi, and Wu Qi did not shoot them.

The Annals of Lü Buwei says that Meng Sheng, leader of the Mohists, was a friend of Lord Yangcheng of Chu. Lord Yangcheng had him guard his fief, split a jade semicircle to serve as a tally, and agreed with him: obey only when the tally matches.

After King Dao died, the ministers attacked Wu Qi at the place of mourning, and Lord Yangcheng was among them. Chu charged him with a crime. Lord Yangcheng fled, and Chu took back his fief.

Meng Sheng said: I accepted another man's domain, and we had a tally between us. Now I see no tally, and my strength cannot stop them. I cannot fail to die.

His disciple Xu Ruo urged him: If dying helps Lord Yangcheng, then die. If it does not, and it ends the Mohists forever, then you must not.

Meng Sheng said: Not so. To Lord Yangcheng I was a teacher, or else a friend; a friend, or else a minister. If I do not die, then from now on anyone looking for a strict teacher, a worthy friend or a good minister will never look among the Mohists. My death is how the Mohist duty is carried out and our work continued. I will hand the leadership to Tian Xiangzi of Song.

Xu Ruo said: If that is what you say, Master, let me die first to clear the way. And he died before Meng Sheng.

When Meng Sheng died, one hundred and eighty disciples died with him.

This is one more account to be settled after Wu Qi's death, beyond the seventy families. What Wu Qi meant to take back were the titles of enfeoffed lords like Lord Yangcheng. The lord himself fled; those who died guarding his land were people who appear nowhere in the records of the reforms.

X. After King Dao

In the Hereditary House of Chu, what I wrote of King Dao fills only a few lines: in his second year the three Jin states attacked and turned back at Chengqiu; in the fourth year Chu attacked Zhou; in the ninth it attacked Han and took Fushu; in the eleventh the three Jin attacked Chu and defeated it at Daliang and Yuguan, and Chu bought peace from Qin with rich gifts; in the twenty-first year King Dao died, and his son King Su took the throne.

In those lines Wu Qi's name does not appear. As for Chu swallowing Chen and Cai in the north, in the Hereditary House I placed that before King Dao: Chen was destroyed under King Hui, and Cai in King Hui's forty-second year. The biography's line "annexed Chen and Cai in the north," set beside the Hereditary House, does not fit.

The twenty-first year of King Dao, by the usual conversion, is 381 BCE.

In King Su's tenth year Wei took Luyang from Chu. Han Fei drew a conclusion: Chu did not use Wu Qi and fell into weakness and disorder; Qin carried out Lord Shang's laws and grew rich and strong. Both men were right, yet Wu Qi was dismembered and Lord Shang torn apart by chariots. Why? Because the great ministers suffered under the laws and the common people hated being governed.

When Han Fei wrote this, he seems to have been speaking for himself. His book also records an exchange: Tangxi Gong told him, You say Wu Qi was dismembered and Lord Shang torn apart because they did not meet the right age and the right ruler, yet such luck cannot be counted on. Why leave the road that keeps you whole and take the dangerous one? Han Fei answered that he could not bear to turn to greed and baseness just to escape disaster.

XI. What He Said and What He Did

At the end of this biography I wrote a few words: when people talk of war, they all speak of Sunzi's thirteen chapters and Wu Qi's art of war. These books are everywhere, so I do not discuss them; I write only what these men actually did.

The saying goes: those who can do it cannot always say it, and those who can say it cannot always do it. Wu Qi told Marquis Wu that strong terrain was worth less than virtue, yet in Chu he lost his life through harshness and want of kindness. How sad.

In the boat on the river at Xihe, he told the marquis that everyone aboard might become an enemy. In Chu, the whole court of royal kin became his enemies.

Later, in the Han book catalogue, Ban Gu listed a Wu Qi in forty-eight chapters.

Epilogue

I often think of that body lying in the hall.

Wu Qi left many times in his life: out the east gate of Wey, dismissed from Lu, looking back at Xihe from Anmen. The last time, he had nowhere left to go, and could only run to the side of a dead king.

The living King Dao gave him power; the dead King Dao became his last shield. More than seventy families were destroyed for it. That account was written in the new king's order, and it was also written in Wu Qi's last run.

As for whether those arrows were shot into the body by others or planted there by his own hand, I wrote down what I had heard, and the retainers of Lü wrote down what they had heard. I leave both accounts here side by side.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Core source: Shiji chapter 65, the joint biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, the Wu Qi section (from "Wu Qi was a man of Wey" to "more than seventy families were exterminated for shooting Wu Qi") and the Grand Historian's closing comment, Wording was read on 2 November 2026 in the Kanripo text of the Shiji, KR2a0001 (tls edition); printed editions were not checked, no modern translation was copied, and no page numbers are given. The Kanripo tls text carries no commentaries, so the three points drawn from the Three Commentaries (the Suoyin citing Wang Shao on Wu Qi's honesty, the Suoyin on Shang Wen, and the gloss on Gongshu as "of the ducal clan of Han") must be checked against the Zhonghua Shuju punctuated edition (1959 or 2013 revision), which was not available here; all three are still to be checked.

2. Cross-checks: Shiji chapter 40, Hereditary House of Chu (Kings Hui, Jian, Sheng, Dao and Su; the Three Commentaries still to be checked); chapter 44, Hereditary House of Wei (Marquises Wen and Wu); chapter 68, biography of Lord Shang (the moved log); chapter 79, Cai Ze's speech to the Marquis of Ying. Han Feizi: "He shi," "Nei chushuo shang," "Wai chushuo zuo shang," "Wai chushuo you shang," "Shuolin shang," "Wen Tian." Lüshi chunqiu: "Chang jian" (11), "Zhi yi" (17), "Shang de" and "Yong min" (19), "Guan biao" (20), "Gui zu" (21). Zhanguo ce (Sibu congkan edition, with its notes): "Wei ce" 1, the chapters on the voyage on the river at Xihe and on Gongshu Cuo; "Qin ce" 3, Cai Ze and the Marquis of Ying. Liu Xiang, Shuoyuan chapter 15, "Zhi wu." Hanshu chapter 30, the bibliographic treatise, military strategists. All were read on 2 November 2026 in Kanripo texts: Shiji KR2a0001 (tls edition); Han Feizi KR3c0005 (Wenyuan Pavilion Siku quanshu edition); Lüshi chunqiu KR3j0009, Zhanguo ce KR2e0003 and Shuoyuan KR3a0007 (all Sibu congkan edition); Hanshu KR2a0007 (Wenyuan Pavilion Siku quanshu edition). Printed editions were not checked, and no page numbers are given.

3. Key passages retold in modern prose in the story (original wording, as read in the Kanripo editions listed above; printed editions still to be checked): (1) 及悼王死，宗室大臣作亂而攻吳起，吳起走之王尸而伏之。擊起之徒因射刺吳起，并中悼王。……坐射起而夷宗死者七十餘家。(Shiji 65) (2) 起之為人，猜忍人也。……吳起殺其謗己者三十餘人，而東出衞郭門。與其母訣，齧臂而盟曰：「起不為卿相，不復入衞。」(Shiji 65, words of a man of Lu) (3) 吳起於是欲就名，遂殺其妻，以明不與齊也。(Shiji 65) (4) 吳起，衞左氏中人也。使其妻織組而幅狹於度。……遂去衞而入荆也。(Han Feizi, "Wai chushuo you shang") (5) 魯季孫新弑其君，吳起仕焉。……吳起因去之晉。(Han Feizi, "Shuolin shang") (6) 起貪而好色，然用兵司馬穰苴不能過也。(Shiji 65, Li Ke) (7) 往年吳公吮其父，其父戰不旋踵，遂死於敵。吳公今又吮其子，妾不知其死所矣。(Shiji 65) / 吳起為魏將而攻中山。……吳起跪而自吮其膿。(Han Feizi, "Wai chushuo zuo shang") (8) 乃倚一車轅於北門之外而令之曰：「有能徙此南門之外者，賜之上田、上宅。」……於是攻亭，一朝而拔之。(Han Feizi, "Nei chushuo shang") (9) 立三丈之木於國都市南門，募民有能徙置北門者予十金。(Shiji 68) (10) 在德不在險。……若君不修德，舟中之人盡為敵國也。(Shiji 65) / 吾乃今日聞聖人之言也！西河之政，專委之子矣。(Zhanguo ce, "Wei ce" 1; Sibu congkan edition; its supplementary note cites the Yao edition: 王鍾 "one copy reads 錯") (11) 主少國疑，大臣未附，百姓不信，方是之時，屬之於子乎？屬之於我乎？(Shiji 65) / 起見其所以長，而不見其所以短。(Lüshi chunqiu, "Zhi yi," where the interlocutor is 商文) (12) 吳起為人節廉而自喜名也。……試延以公主……以此卜之。(Shiji 65) (13) 吳起至於岸門，止車而望西河，泣數行而下。……西河之為秦取不久矣，魏從此削矣。(Lüshi chunqiu, "Chang jian"; "Guan biao" has nearly the same text) (14) 此吳起餘教也，臣不能為也。……於是索吳起之後，賜之田二十萬。(Zhanguo ce, "Wei ce" 1) (15) 明法審令，捐不急之官，廢公族疏遠者，以撫養戰鬬之士。……北并陳蔡，卻三晉；西伐秦。(Shiji 65) (16) 不如使封君之子孫三世而收爵禄，絶滅百吏之禄秩，損不急之枝官，以奉選練之士。悼王行之期年而薨矣，吴起枝解於楚。……大臣苦法而細民惡治也。(Han Feizi, "He shi"; Siku edition reads 絶滅) (17) 荊所有餘者地也，所不足者民也。……吳起號呼曰：「吾示子吾用兵也。」拔矢而走，伏尸插矢而疾言曰：「群臣亂王。」吳起死矣。且荊國之法，麗兵於王尸者，盡加重罪，逮三族。(Lüshi chunqiu, "Gui zu") (18) 吳起為楚悼王立法，卑減大臣之威重……功已成矣，而卒枝解。(Shiji 79, Cai Ze; Zhanguo ce, "Qin ce" 3 reads 卒支解) (19) 將均楚國之爵而平其祿，損其有餘而繼其不足……非禍人不能成禍。(Shuoyuan, "Zhi wu," Qu Yijiu) (20) 荊王薨，群臣攻吳起，兵於喪所，陽城君與焉，荊罪之。陽城君走，荊收其國。……孟勝死，弟子死之者百八十。(Lüshi chunqiu, "Shang de") (21) 二十一年，悼王卒，子肅王臧立。……十年，魏取我魯陽。(Shiji 40) (22) 不逢世遇主之患也。……臣不忍嚮貪鄙之為。(Han Feizi, "Wen Tian") (23) 吳起說武侯以形勢不如德，然行之於楚，以刻暴少恩亡其軀。悲夫！(Shiji 65, the Grand Historian's comment) (24) 吳起四十八篇。(Hanshu 30)

4. Record and later memory (factual boundaries): (1) Three accounts of Wu Qi's death are set side by side without a verdict: the Shiji has him flee to the king's body and lie on it, his attackers hitting the body too; the Lüshi chunqiu has him pull out the arrows and plant them in the body, using the Chu law against laying weapons on a king's corpse; Han Feizi and Cai Ze say only that he was dismembered. (2) The killing of thirty-odd mockers, the bitten-arm oath, his not returning when his mother died, Master Zeng breaking with him, and the political argument against him are given in the Shiji as the words of a man of Lu who hated him; the wife-killing is also told in the narrative itself. Han Feizi has him send his wife away and go from Wey to Chu, and elsewhere has him leave Lu for Jin. (3) Li Ke's "greedy" contradicts the later "honest and fair" and "incorruptible"; the Suoyin commentary, citing Wang Shao, already noted this, according to the commonly transmitted Three Commentaries text (still to be checked against the Zhonghua edition). (4) The Shiji does not say which campaign the abscess story belongs to; Han Feizi places it in the attack on Zhongshan. (5) The carriage-pole and red-bean orders appear only in Han Feizi; their likeness to the moved log in Shiji 68 is noted without any claim about borrowing. (6) The Zhanguo ce's Wang Zhong (the Yao edition, cited in a note: Wang Cuo) may or may not be the Wang Cuo who slanders Wu Qi in the Lüshi chunqiu. (7) The chancellor is Tian Wen in the Shiji and Shang Wen in the Lüshi chunqiu (noted in the Suoyin; still to be checked against the Zhonghua edition), with different questions. This Tian Wen is not the later Lord Mengchang of Qi. (8) Wu Qi's departure from Wei: the princess test in the Shiji, Wang Cuo's slander in the Lüshi chunqiu. The Shiji sanjia zhu gloss Gongshu as "of the ducal clan of Han" (still to be checked against the Zhonghua edition). The Zhanguo ce annotator identified Gongshu Cuo with the Gongshu of the Shiji and noted the contradiction; the story does not decide whether they are one man. (9) The Chu reforms are described differently in each source; "taking back titles after three generations" is only in Han Feizi. The Shuoyuan story of Qu Yijiu, compiled by Liu Xiang in the late Western Han, is treated as later memory. (10) By the Hereditary House of Chu, Chen and Cai had both been destroyed under King Hui, before King Dao, which does not fit the biography's "annexed Chen and Cai"; the story notes the mismatch without explaining it. King Dao's annals in the Hereditary House do not name Wu Qi. (11) Han Feizi says King Dao died a year after the laws took effect; the Shiji gives no length for Wu Qi's ministry, and the story gives none. (12) King Dao's twenty-first year is conventionally 381 BCE; Wu Qi's birth year is unknown. (13) Lord Yangcheng's story follows the Lüshi chunqiu "Shang de"; the figure of 180 is reported as given and could not be checked elsewhere. (14) The Hanshu lists "Wu Qi, 48 chapters," which differs from the received Wuzi; the authenticity of the received text is not discussed. (15) The line in Han Feizi "Wen Tian" about unlucky times is spoken by Tangxi Gong, quoting Han Fei, and is treated as such.

5. Fact and creative boundaries: all dialogue and speeches come from the sources listed above; the modern-language retelling is contemporary editorial paraphrase. No weather, facial expressions, inner thoughts or invented dialogue have been added. Linking comments and judgments (for example, on the enemy who told of his early years, the "three roads," the mother's weeping being colder than any slander, "what he touched was the nobles' titles," "a flight versus a last stratagem," the Mohists as another account to be settled, Han Fei "speaking for himself," the boat and the court, the end of the opening scene and the whole epilogue) are contemporary editorial framing, not claims of the sources. The first-person Sima Qian voice ("I wrote his early years through the mouth of a man of Lu," "in the Hereditary House of Chu, what I wrote") describes the arrangement of the Shiji from a historian's point of view. Sima Qian could have read Han Feizi and the Lüshi chunqiu, but not Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan, Ban Gu's Hanshu or later annotators of the Zhanguo ce; where these appear, the narrator steps outside his own time and is not quoting Sima Qian.

6. Map: (1) Xihe (present-day Hancheng area, Shaanxi), where Wu Qi was governor and sailed with Marquis Wu; Wei's Xihe lands lay roughly along the west bank of the Yellow River in eastern Shaanxi. The coordinate is an OpenStreetMap reference point for Hancheng and stands only for the area; no date is attached because the Shiji gives none. (2) The place of King Dao's death and Wu Qi's killing is not given in the Shiji, and the Chu capital of the time is disputed, so it is left unplaced. The east gate of Wey, Lu, Zhongshan, Anmen, Chengqiu, Daliang, Yuguan, Luyang and Yangcheng are also left unplaced. 381 BCE (death of King Dao and of Wu Qi) has a date but no mappable place.

7. Rights and adaptation: the ancient sources are in the public domain. The Chinese and English texts are original contemporary narratives. This is an unpublished draft; no actual publication time is pre-filled.