Lu Ting-Pin—Daji

Lu Ting-Pin’s relationship with Daji is an approaching confrontation shaped by two opposed aims: he wants to kill the White Fox to free his daughter Xianniang, while Daji regards Lu and his sword as obstacles to her plans and says she will kill him. Their conflict is personal as well as practical, but it is also marked by dramatic asymmetry: Lu is eager to meet the White Fox without realizing he has already encountered her in disguise, and Daji assigns him responsibility for defeats in which Mulan has proved far from powerless.

The Pursuit Takes Shape

When the Jade Rabbit explains that Mulan’s sister suffers from the same poisoning and that they must reach the Queen Mother’s Garden by the new moon, Lu Ting-Pin immediately rises as if ready to set out. The Rabbit adds that the travelers must also stop at Green Island and that the White Fox is their adversary. Lu’s response makes clear that the name carries weight for him; he begins to ask whether she is still with someone, and the Rabbit confirms it. The exchange links Lu’s journey with the immediate quest to help Mulan’s sister, but also brings his own unresolved conflict into the party’s plans.

Lu then tells Mulan that he knows the White Fox only by reputation and has never met her. Mulan starts to correct him, knowing that he has already encountered the White Fox as the Hag, but stops before explaining. Lu mistakes her hesitation for something else and says that he is eager to meet the White Fox so he can kill her. The near-disclosure gives their future conflict an irony: Lu’s intended meeting is not truly a first encounter, though he does not know it. Mulan, meanwhile, has information that could connect his immediate determination to an encounter he has failed to recognize.

The Sword and the Atonement

Lu explains that his peach-wood sword is part of a punishment imposed by his Immortal comrades. They took away his fly whisk, preventing him from flying great distances, and changed his two-edged sword into one made of peach wood. The material is significant because peach wood can kill noxious beasts and demons; destroying demons is therefore not incidental to Lu’s weapon but the very work assigned to him as penance.

The task has a precise measure: Lu must destroy ten thousand demons to complete his atonement. He has already killed 9,999, leaving one final demon. When Mulan asks whether that last one is the White Fox, he confirms that she is the target he wants. His stated reason is Xianniang’s captivity: the White Fox controls his daughter, and Lu believes killing her will mean Xianniang no longer has to serve her. The quest thus binds his supernatural punishment to a family objective. The sword is both the instrument of his prescribed penance and the means by which he hopes to end his daughter’s subjection.

Mulan observes that people say no man can kill the White Fox. Lu rejects the assumption that an outcome is impossible simply because it has not happened before. His confidence is not a claim that the task will be easy; it is a refusal to treat the Fox’s reputation as proof of invulnerability. That stance sets his resolve against the legend surrounding her, while the requirement that he complete exactly one more demon’s destruction makes the confrontation the apparent culmination of his long punishment.

Daji’s Counter-Accusation

The conflict is not only Lu’s pursuit of Daji. While watching for the travelers to find what they seek, Daji says they should wait and attack if the group succeeds. She then declares that she will kill him. Xianniang is surprised by the directness of the threat: Daji has generally preferred to let someone or something else deliver a final, mortal blow rather than kill outright. Her announced intention therefore marks an escalation in how she treats Lu, not merely another indirect attempt to obstruct the party.

Daji identifies Lu as the person she blames, complaining that he and his sword are at fault and that Mulan would have been at the bottom of the sea if not for him. Her account makes Lu’s weapon a visible emblem of resistance: it is the very sword that serves his penance, and Daji treats it as a cause of her thwarted plans. But her explanation distorts the balance of agency. Xianniang recognizes that Mulan has overcome Daji’s tricks repeatedly, even though Daji continues to treat the girl as secondary and credits Lu instead. The contrast makes the conflict more than a contest between an Immortal and a demon; Daji’s fixation on Lu leaves her unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge Mulan’s independent effectiveness.

Stakes and Dramatic Irony

The aims on either side are not equivalent. Lu’s announced violence is directed toward the White Fox as a means of freeing Xianniang from her control; Daji’s threat is directed at Lu, whom she sees as an impediment. The daughter’s servitude therefore gives Lu’s pursuit a personal stake beyond the completion of his tally, while Daji’s response reveals that her attention is fixed on the person she blames for being thwarted.

Their conflict also develops through mistaken knowledge. Lu has heard of the White Fox and wants to encounter her, but does not recognize that he has already met her as the Hag. Mulan knows of that earlier encounter yet does not explain it in the moment. Later, Daji’s own misreading is different: she sees Lu as the decisive cause of the group’s success and discounts Mulan’s repeated resistance. Together, these imbalances of recognition build anticipation around a confrontation in which each side’s account of who matters is incomplete. At this point, Lu has declared his target and Daji has threatened him, but the evidence establishes their competing intentions rather than the outcome of their encounter.