Mulan—Daji

Mulan’s conflict with Daji is a contest between recognition and deception: Mulan first detects Daji beneath the appearance of an old hag, then resists her scheme to remove her through a staged marriage, and ultimately kills her after she appears as the White Fox. Their encounters move from a public struggle over Mulan’s fate to a direct confrontation in the Queen Mother’s garden, where Mulan acts to protect Lu Ting-Pin and the Jade Rabbit.

Recognition and the River King’s Bride

At the City of Rushing Water, the Magistrate presents Mulan as the River King’s destined bride. His explanation rests on a supposed omen: the bride would arrive on a black horse, and Mulan has ridden into the city on one. The account makes her arrival appear to confirm the Hag’s claim, even though Mulan recognizes the situation as a trap. She protests that the woman is after her and is trying to persuade the crowd to get rid of her. The confrontation therefore begins not as an open fight but as a dispute over who will be believed and what Mulan’s presence means.

Mulan’s suspicion has a specific basis. When the Magistrate calls the Hag an honored elder, Mulan looks at her and recognizes the smile as one she has seen before, on a face once beautiful as a fairy’s. The old woman’s appearance has changed, but the familiar smile connects her to Daji. That recognition lets Mulan see through the disguise while the crowd and the Magistrate accept the Hag’s account. Daji’s power in this encounter depends on making a fabricated explanation appear publicly authoritative; Mulan’s ability to identify her does not, by itself, persuade the people around them.

The proposed marriage raises the stakes of Mulan’s effort to be heard. The Hag tells her that she will become a queen, while Mulan warns the crowd that throwing her into the river would kill her. The contrast is stark: Daji frames the scheme as an honor, but Mulan understands it as a way to dispose of her. Their conflict is already personal, yet it is carried out through other people, with the Magistrate delivering the claim and the gathered crowd forming the immediate audience. Mulan’s resistance exposes the danger behind the ceremony without changing the crowd’s role in the trap.

Pursuit and the White Fox

Later, aboard a boat with Lu Ting-Pin and the Jade Rabbit, Mulan hears the Jade Rabbit warn that the White Fox remains a threat. Lu Ting-Pin dismisses the concern, saying that he and the Jade Rabbit together are as powerful as a full-strength Immortal. The warning, and Lu’s confidence in response, place Daji’s pursuit within a larger journey: the companions are trying to continue, but the White Fox may still obstruct them. This exchange also shows that Mulan’s conflict with Daji is not confined to the city or settled by her earlier recognition of the Hag.

The danger becomes immediate in the Queen Mother’s garden. As Mulan and Lu Ting-Pin are among the bees, the insects transform into the Red and White Foxes, who attack. Lu moves between Mulan and the White Fox, while using his gourd to pin the Red Fox. The companions’ earlier warning thus meets an ambush: Daji’s threat is no longer hidden behind the public story of a destined bride. The disguise has shifted from the Hag’s human appearance to the White Fox’s form, but the attack makes the continuing conflict unmistakable.

Mulan’s Intervention and Daji’s End

When Daji prepares to attack the slumped Lu Ting-Pin, Mulan takes the peach-wood sword from the ground and raises it against the White Fox. Her intervention is a decisive change in the relationship. At the river, she tried to prevent Daji from controlling her through a false account and a crowd’s judgment; in the garden, she directly places herself between Daji and her companion. The immediate cause is Lu’s peril, and Mulan’s action also puts the Jade Rabbit, whom she is trying to protect as she falls, within the same scene of danger.

The attack ends with the White Fox gone and the sword lying in a fox-shaped pool of black liquid. Mulan recognizes the sickly-sweet smell as Daji’s poisonous honey and understands the transformation as the White Fox’s death. The pool then releases swarms of poisonous creatures, which scatter through the garden and later blight one of the Queen Mother’s prized azaleas. Daji’s end therefore resolves the pursuit but leaves a material consequence in the place where the confrontation occurs. Mulan’s victory is not merely a successful defense of her companions: it is the moment when she defeats the adversary who had earlier tried to make her disappearance look like a ritual honor.

The Shape of Their Conflict

Across these episodes, Daji’s methods repeatedly turn appearance into a means of control. The Hag’s disguise conceals her identity, while the false bride story gives her scheme the appearance of accepted custom. The later transformation into the White Fox makes the danger visible, but it also continues the pattern of shifting forms that first allowed Mulan to recognize Daji only through her smile. Mulan’s responses develop accordingly: she identifies the hidden adversary, openly challenges the story being told about her, and finally acts against Daji when the threat becomes immediate.

The relationship is defined by pursuit and resistance rather than reconciliation. Mulan’s recognition does not end Daji’s efforts, and the warning about the White Fox shows that the danger persists beyond the city. Their final encounter resolves the conflict through Mulan’s use of Lu Ting-Pin’s sword, not through persuasion or the crowd’s intervention. Daji’s defeat also reverses the earlier power dynamic: the woman who tried to determine Mulan’s fate through a public deception is ultimately stopped by Mulan’s own decisive action.