King Mulu’s beasts

King Mulu’s beasts are the tigers, leopards, jackals, wolves, snakes, and scorpions said to answer the king’s command. They transform the conflict between the Man coalition and the Shu army into a contest over supernatural fear: their first appearance and attack force a retreat, but Kong Ming reverses their advantage, and their rout helps bring the campaign to its close.

The Beasts and Their Commander

King Mulu, ruler of the Bana valley, is renowned for magical powers and for commanding dangerous animals. When Meng Huo seeks aid against the Shu invasion, he sends his brother-in-law with gifts to invite Mulu into the uprising. The beasts thus enter the story not as an independent force but as the military instrument associated with Mulu’s authority and the rebels’ effort to resist Shu.

Mulu’s arrival makes that association visible. His warriors come with gongs, and their king rides a huge white elephant; alongside them are tigers, panthers, jackals, and wolves. Zhao Zilong and Wei Yan are astonished by the unfamiliar sight. The animals’ presence distinguishes this army from the forces the Shu commanders have faced before and gives the approaching battle an uncanny quality.

The Attack and Shu’s Retreat

At the front, Mulu chants and a storm rises. The beasts advance amid the weather, with snakes and scorpions joining the other animals. Unable to withstand the assault, the Shu troops retreat to the relative safety of Sanjiang. Zhao Zilong and Wei Yan apologize to Kong Ming, who tells them that he had heard of the Man magic and had come prepared.

The scene gives the beasts their greatest apparent power: their attack is bound to Mulu’s chanting and the storm, and its effect is not merely to threaten the Shu troops but to make them withdraw. Yet the episode also frames their advantage as something Kong Ming has anticipated. The retreat is a reversal within a larger contest of preparation rather than the end of the Shu campaign.

Kong Ming’s Countermeasure

Kong Ming orders twenty wagons brought forward, ten red and ten black, and begins with the red ones. Inside are large carved animal figures with steel teeth and claws. Soldiers fill them with gunpowder and roll the wagons toward the battlefront. The figures are an engineered answer to the animals Mulu commands: they imitate fierce creatures while adding a power the living beasts cannot match.

The next day, Mulu chants again and raises another storm as the animals advance. Kong Ming calmly shakes his feather fan; the storm turns back toward the Man army, and the windblown sand and stones descend on the rebels. Then the statues are brought forward and the gunpowder ignited. Their flames and noise frighten the animals, which turn back through their own ranks. The attack collapses, and the ensuing defeat kills Mulu; only a fraction of his army escapes into the valley where Meng Huo has moved his camp.

Narrative Function

The beasts’ part in the campaign depends on a sharp reversal. First, their presence, joined to Mulu’s chant and the storm, compels Shu to take refuge at Sanjiang. Then Kong Ming’s prepared devices redirect fear and disorder against the force that had inspired them. Their defeat marks the failure of Mulu’s intervention and weakens the resistance surrounding Meng Huo, although the campaign and the process of winning Meng Huo’s submission continue beyond this battle.

The episode contrasts Mulu’s command of living animals with Kong Ming’s capacity to anticipate and answer it through strategy and devices. The beasts are formidable within the encounter, but their power is not final: once Kong Ming changes the conditions of the fight, the army’s reliance on them becomes a source of panic and defeat.