The Investiture

W hen the fighting was finished and the Shang was ash, there was still one task left for Jiang Ziya, and it was the strangest of the whole long war. He went back up Mount Qi. He bathed, and he fasted, and he put on clean robes, and he climbed the Feng Shen Tower carrying a scroll. The scroll had come down to him from the Jade Void Palace, sent by his own master, Yuanshi Tianzun, the Primordial Lord at the head of heaven — a roll of names drawn up before the war began, the names of everyone the war would kill. He lit incense at the golden tripod, poured out wine, scattered flowers, and walked three times around the altar. Then he stood at the top of the tower, and he began to read the roll aloud, and one by one he called the fallen up out of the ground to take their posts in a heaven that had not existed until they died for it. When all was in order, Jiang Ziya bathed and changed his robes, offered incense at the golden tripod, poured wine and scattered flowers, and circled the altar three times. He had gone to the Jade Void Palace to ask of Yuanshi Tianzun the jade tally and the decree, that the loyal ministers and filial sons fallen in battle, and the immortals who had met their doom, might soon be invested with their ranks; the master granted it, and the White Crane Boy carried the tally and decree down to his residence. Now, having finished bowing to the decree, he first commanded the Clear-Fortune God Bai Jian to wait below the altar.

The words at the head of the scroll were not a victory hymn. Alas, they began — the roads of the immortal and the mortal wind apart, and no one crosses without long labor at the root of himself. By its authority the Primordial Lord charged Jiang Shang to weigh each name by the measure of its suffering in the great catastrophe and the rank it had earned, and to seat the dead, in their hundreds, as the righteous gods of heaven's eight departments. This was the reward. Not rest, not peace, not an end — for every general who had been cut down, every immortal burned out of his body, every demon dragged off the field, the recompense was a title and a desk in the administration of the sky. Three hundred and sixty-five of them, the whole roll of the war's dead, were about to become the civil service of heaven. The decree opened: "By the command of Yuanshi Tianzun, Primordial Lord of the Boundless Prime and the Undivided Origin: Alas. The roads of immortal and mortal wind apart; without deeply nurturing one's root and conduct, how can one pass through? ... I therefore charge Jiang Shang, according to the weight of each one's fate in the catastrophe and the height of his rank, to invest you as the righteous gods of the eight departments." The roll held three hundred and sixty-five posts of the righteous gods.

The first name he called was a dead man's, and that dead man would call all the rest. Bai Jian came to the foot of the altar. Jiang Ziya invested him as the Clear-Fortune Righteous God, leader of the three realms, set over all three hundred and sixty-five posts of the eight departments — and made him the usher of the roll, the one who would stand below the tower and bring each named soul forward to take its office. So the list was read by one of the dead to the rest of the dead. No living name appeared on it anywhere. Jiang Ziya first commanded the Clear-Fortune God Bai Jian to wait below the altar, and read out his decree: "I now invest you as the Clear-Fortune Righteous God, leader of the three realms and of the three hundred and sixty-five posts of the eight departments. Reverently take up your charge." Bai Jian, at the foot of the tower, would present each spirit as its name was read.

“They had hated each other to death. Now they were colleagues.”

Then the great names began, and the first of the great names had fought for the losing side. Wen Zhong — the iron marshal of the Shang, who had held a dying dynasty together with his own hands and burned for it at Juelong Ridge — was raised to one of the mightiest offices on the roll. Jiang Ziya named him the Heavenly Lord of the Universal Transformation of the Thunder-Sound, Correspondent of the Nine Heavens, and gave him command of the whole Thunder Department: twenty-four thunder-lords under him, the ones who drive the clouds and call down the rain and enforce heaven's law with lightning. The Shang's most loyal servant became one of heaven's most powerful gods. Loyalty, it turned out, paid exactly the same whether you had backed the winner or the loser. Heaven was not keeping score of that. It was keeping score of who had paid. Then Wen Zhong was invested: "I especially invest you as the Heavenly Lord of the Nine Heavens' Correspondent and Universal Transformation of the Thunder-Sound, still leading the twenty-four thunder-lords of the Thunder Department who summon the clouds, aid the rain, and guard the law." Wen Zhong (Wen Taishi), grand marshal of the Shang, had died at Juelong Ridge.

Higher even than the thunder-throne, near the very pole of heaven, went a young man who had never lifted a weapon in the war. Bo Yikao was King Wen's eldest son, and years before, in the Shang capital, King Zhou had put him to death, ground his body into meat, cooked it into cakes, and fed it to his own father to test whether the sage could tell what he was eating. That son — murdered as a cruelty and a joke — Jiang Ziya now seated as the Great Emperor of Purple Tenuity at the North Pole of Central Heaven, one of the loftiest stations in the sky, the still point the other stars turn around. The prince King Zhou had reduced to a dish became the emperor-star of the northern heaven. The novel does not call this justice. It reads out the two facts and lets them sit next to each other. Bo Yikao was invested as the Great Emperor of Purple Tenuity of the North Pole of Central Heaven (中天北極紫微大帝).

After that the roll went on for a long time, and this retelling cannot follow all of it — three hundred and sixty-five posts, department after department, is a great deal of heaven to staff. But some of the names a reader will know. Huang Feihu, the Shang general who had defected to Zhou when his king murdered his family, was made Grand Emperor of Mount Tai, Equal-to-Heaven, first of the Five Sacred Peaks — set over the fortunes and calamities of every soul on earth, given in death the mountain his whole life had circled. His son Huang Tianhua, killed young in the war, took the Three Mountains as the Radiant-Spirit Duke. Yin Jiao, the prince ground between the two armies, was seated as the Tai Sui, the God of the Year, who keeps the reckoning of each turning year. And on, and on: gods of plague and gods of fire, the peaks and the waters and the wandering stars, each vacancy in heaven's government filled by a name that had bled to earn it. Huang Feihu was invested as first of the Five Sacred Peaks, the Grand Emperor of Mount Tai of the Eastern Peak, Equal-to-Heaven and Benevolent Sage (東岳泰山天齊仁聖大帝), with charge over the fortunes and calamities of heaven, earth, and humankind. Huang Tianhua was invested as the Radiant-Spirit Duke, Righteous God of the Three Mountains (三山正神炳靈公). Yin Jiao was invested as the God of the Year, the Tai Sui (執年歲君太歲之神), sitting watch over the year and governing its fortunes. The roll continued through the departments — thunder, plague, fire, and the rest — to its full three hundred and sixty-five posts.

And then there was Shen Gongbao. He had been Jiang Ziya's own schoolmate under the same master, and he had spent the entire war at one labor: riding the length of the world to talk immortal after immortal into coming down and dying against Zhou. Every formation that had to be broken, every adept burned out of his body — a great many of the war's dead were dead because Shen Gongbao had gone and fetched them. Captured at last, he had sworn an oath: if ever again he turned his gifts to evil, let his body be used to stop up the eye of the sea. Jiang Ziya held him to it. He read the decree — you belonged to the orthodox school and turned to help the rebels against the right; your body may plug the northern sea, but your heart cannot let go of its old guilt — and, allowing him one small honor for the years of hard cultivation, sealed him into the water. Shen Gongbao was made the Water-Dividing General: to watch the sunrise at dawn and turn the Heavenly River at dusk, to melt in summer and freeze in winter, round and round without end. The man who had spent the whole war moving other people to their deaths was fixed in one place forever, plugging a hole in the sea with his own body. It is the cruelest posting on the roll, and the fairest. Then came Shen Gongbao. The decree read: "You, Shen Gongbao, belonged to the Chan school, yet turned to aid the rebels and oppose the upright; having been captured, you swore an oath to make good your fault. Though your body plugs the North Sea, your feeling cannot release its old guilt. In consideration of the bitterness of your pure cultivation, a small honor of one post is added. I especially invest you to command the East Sea — at dawn to watch the sun rise, at dusk to turn the Heavenly River, dispersing in summer and freezing in winter, round and round without end — as the Water-Dividing General."

When the last name had been read and the last soul had bowed and gone to its station, the war was truly over — not because the fighting had stopped, which it had, but because the accounts had been closed. Both armies stood in heaven now, the Shang dead and the Zhou dead, the loyal and the treacherous, the immortals of the orthodox school and the immortals they had killed, filed into the same civil service under the same three hundred and sixty-five titles. They had hated each other to death. Now they were colleagues. Jiang Ziya rolled up the scroll and came down off the tower, and heaven had its new government, staffed to the last post with the people the war had killed — and that, a full roster, a working administration, every desk filled, was what all the dying had been for. When the investiture of the three hundred and sixty-five righteous gods was complete, each spirit took up the post assigned to it, and the roll of the Feng Shen Bang was fulfilled.