Zixu Shangren is a fictional figure in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Wikidata describes him as a Daoist of Jinping Mountain, set in the Han dynasty. The Chinese Wikipedia article is titled Zixu Shangren and lists variants such as Zixu Shanren. Shangren is a respectful term for a religious practitioner, and the sources give no other personal name, so the title is kept as it was.[1][2]
In the novel
Chinese Wikipedia says Zixu Shangren lives on Jinping Mountain in Yi Province and can predict whether a person will live or die and be high or low. When Liu Bei attacked Yi Province, Liu Zhang's officers Liu Gui, Zhang Ren, Leng Bao and Deng Xian led 50,000 men toward Luocheng and on the way went to the mountain to ask him about the future. He wrote eight lines for Liu Gui: a dragon on the left and a phoenix on the right fly into western Sichuan; the young phoenix falls to earth and the sleeping dragon rises to heaven; one gains and one loses, as Heaven decrees; act when the moment comes and do not lose your life. These lines hint at Pang Tong's death and Zhuge Liang's pacification of Yi Province. When Liu Gui asked about his own fate, he answered that fixed destiny cannot be escaped and there was no need to ask again. The article says none of the four came to a good end. The passage is from chapter 62 of the novel.[2]
Basic facts
- Name used: Zixu Shangren, also written Zixu Shanren[1]
- Role: fictional character of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Daoist of Jinping Mountain[1]
- Setting: Han dynasty[1]
- Appears in: Romance of the Three Kingdoms