Execution of Yu Ji and Death of Sun Ce

The episode linking the execution of Yu Ji to the death of Sun Ce turns a ruler’s dismissal of spiritual authority into a crisis that ends in his own death and a transfer of power. After Sun Ce orders the Daoist healer beheaded despite a public display of rainmaking, Yu Ji’s apparent return unsettles him; as the encounters continue, Sun Ce recognizes that he is dying, names his brother Sun Quan as heir, and dies at twenty-six. The personal catastrophe thus becomes a political transition: Sun Quan inherits the seal of office and receives guidance for governing from Sun Ce’s mother and advisers.

The Rainmaking Test

During a feast, Sun Ce learns that guests and attendants are leaving to honor Yu Ji, a Daoist monk famed as an immortal and healer. He has Yu Ji brought before him, and, though his courtiers and mother plead for the priest’s safety, Sun Ce keeps him imprisoned while deciding what to do. One suggestion offers a test rather than an immediate sentence: since the people are suffering a drought, Yu Ji can be asked to summon rain.

Brought from prison the next day, Yu Ji mounts an altar and says that by noon he will bring three feet of rain for the people. He also says he believes his time is up. Sun Ce orders that Yu Ji be burned if the prediction fails. Just before noon, as the pyre is lit, rain begins; it becomes so heavy that the water reaches the promised depth, and Yu Ji calls for it to stop. The trial is therefore a public success, witnessed by people who kneel in awe. Sun Ce nevertheless dismisses it as chance and orders Yu Ji beheaded, then leaves his body in the marketplace as a warning.

Yu Ji’s Apparitions

By morning the body has disappeared. Sun Ce is preparing to punish the guards when he sees Yu Ji walking before the main hall. He collapses and is taken to bed. His mother urges him to repent, calling the killing a grave crime, and eventually persuades him to visit a local temple. Sun Ce burns incense but refuses to pray. Yu Ji appears in the incense smoke, and then again at the temple gate. Sun Ce throws his sword at the apparition; it strikes and kills the soldier who had beheaded Yu Ji.

The spirit appears again beside the temple, and Sun Ce orders the building burned. Even amid the flames, Yu Ji is seen sitting there. These repeated appearances leave Sun Ce frightened and haggard. When his mother remarks on his condition, he looks in a mirror and sees Yu Ji’s face reflected instead of his own. He cries out, collapses, and his old wounds reopen. The episode presents the apparitions not as a single isolated fright but as an escalating sequence: each effort to deny or destroy Yu Ji’s presence is followed by its return, while the physical wounds that had seemed to be healing become fatal again.

Sun Ce’s Final Decisions

Sun Ce now accepts that he is dying. He summons his adviser Zhang Zhao and his younger brother, Sun Quan, and hands the seal of office to Sun Quan as his heir. He entrusts internal affairs to his mother and brother, directing them to consult Zhang Zhao, and assigns external affairs to Zhou Yu, who is not present when these instructions are given. Having settled the succession and identified advisers for the two spheres of government, Sun Ce dies at twenty-six.

The transfer is significant beyond its place in the episode’s immediate action. Sun Ce’s death does not leave the family’s authority without an appointed successor: the seal passes directly to Sun Quan, while Zhang Zhao and Zhou Yu are identified as resources for domestic and external decisions. The crisis closes with a death, but also with an orderly handover of responsibility.

Political and Supernatural Significance

The account places Sun Ce’s refusal to accept Yu Ji’s rainmaking alongside the increasingly forceful signs that follow the execution. The rain first makes Yu Ji’s power visible to the public; Sun Ce’s insistence that it was only luck cannot undo the spectacle, and the later appearances connect his defiance with a personal reckoning. His mother’s repeated pleas provide a human counterpoint to his refusal: she asks him to repent and, later, persuades him to visit the temple, but neither intervention prevents his decline.

The episode also gives Sun Ce’s death a dynastic consequence. Sun Ce had helped establish the power that becomes the Wu kingdom, one of the three political centers to emerge as the Han empire fragments. His final act is therefore both familial and governmental: he places the seal in Sun Quan’s hands and specifies who should be consulted. The supernatural sequence ends not only with Sun Ce’s death but with the continuation of his family’s rule under a chosen successor.