The twilight of the Shang Dynasty was not marked by a gradual fading, but by a descent into a nightmare of opulence and cruelty, orchestrated by the beautiful yet malevolent Daji. According to the ancient chronicles found within the Investiture of the Gods, the downfall began when King Zhou of Shang, a man of immense strength but hubristic character, visited the temple of the goddess Nüwa. Smitten by the goddess's statue, he wrote a poem that was deemed blasphemous, suggesting he wished the goddess could serve him in his palace. Insulted by this mortal’s arrogance, Nüwa decreed the end of the Shang line. She summoned three spirits—a nine-tailed fox, a nine-headed pheasant, and a jade lute—to infiltrate the palace and hasten the King’s ruin. The fox spirit found the daughter of Su Hu, a noble named Daji, as she was being escorted to the capital of Zhaoge. Under the cover of night, the spirit devoured Daji’s soul and inhabited her body, assuming a beauty so radiant it could stop a man’s heart.
Upon her arrival in Zhaoge, the fox-spirit Daji immediately captivated King Zhou. The King, once an able ruler, became a puppet to her whims. To please her, he commissioned the construction of the Deer Terrace, a magnificent and wasteful structure that took seven years to complete and drained the imperial treasury. The terrace was filled with treasures and served as a site for endless debauchery. Daji’s influence grew darker as she invented horrific methods of torture to eliminate those who opposed her or simply for her own amusement. The most infamous was the 'Pao-lao,' a hollow bronze pillar filled with burning charcoal. Officials who dared to protest the King’s neglect of the state were forced to walk across the red-hot metal until they fell to their deaths. She also oversaw the creation of the Wine Pool and the Forest of Meat, where the King and his court engaged in gluttonous excess while the common people starved.
As the corruption deepened, the Heavens signaled their displeasure through omens, and the Mandate of Heaven began to shift toward the House of Zhou. King Wu of Zhou, guided by the wise strategist and mystic Jiang Ziya, gathered a coalition of feudal lords to overthrow the tyrant. Jiang Ziya, also known as Taigong Wang, possessed profound knowledge of the supernatural and recognized that the woman beside the King was no mere mortal but a demonic fox spirit. The war was long and bloody, involving not just mortal soldiers but immortals, deities, and demons who took sides in the cosmic struggle. Finally, at the Battle of Muye, the Shang forces were defeated. King Zhou, realizing his end had come, retreated to his Deer Terrace, donned his most expensive jewels, and set the structure on fire, perishing in the flames. Daji, however, attempted to flee with her sister spirits, hoping to return to Nüwa and claim credit for their success in destroying the dynasty.
However, Nüwa was displeased with the excessive cruelty Daji had displayed, noting that her instructions were to ruin the dynasty, not to take joy in the torture of the innocent. The spirits were captured by the advancing Zhou forces. Daji was brought before King Wu and Jiang Ziya for execution. This moment became one of the most famous scenes in Chinese mythology. Despite her bound hands and her status as a captured traitor, Daji’s supernatural charm remained undiminished. When the executioners were ordered to strike her, she looked upon them with eyes so sorrowful and enchanting that the men’s hands began to tremble. Her fox-spirit glamour cast a spell over the soldiers; they saw not a criminal, but a fragile, divine beauty who looked like a weeping goddess. One by one, the executioners dropped their swords, unable to bring themselves to harm such a peerless creature. They were so bewitched that some even wept, begging for her life to be spared.