Kong Ming’s Eight Maze Puzzle episode turns the victorious Lu Xun’s advance into a retreat: near Baidi, a formation of rocks generates a threatening mist and shifts in patterns that his soldiers cannot escape. Kong Ming’s father-in-law guides the trapped men to safety, but the encounter leaves Lu Xun convinced that remaining would expose his army to danger. The episode makes Kong Ming’s stone formation a posthumous instrument of defense, and sets its uncanny power against the changing military calculations of Wei and Wu.

The formation at Baidi

As Lu Xun approaches Baidi, strange apparitions alarm him. He halts his army and suspects an ambush, sending soldiers to investigate. They find no troops: only eighty or ninety piles of rocks, from which a strange mist rises. Local people explain that Kong Ming arranged the stones and that the mist has appeared ever since.

The formation becomes dangerous when a wind begins to blow. Sand and rocks batter the soldiers, and the piles shift in patterns that seem alive. Lu Xun recognizes that Kong Ming has outmaneuvered him, but recognition does not provide a way out: he is unable to retreat and fears for the safety of his men. The apparent emptiness of the site has concealed a defense that turns the landscape itself into an obstacle.

Escape and retreat

An old man appears unexpectedly and identifies himself as Kong Ming’s father-in-law. He explains that the rocks form a magical spell called the Eight Maze Puzzle. Raising his stick, he guides Lu Xun and the frightened soldiers to safety. His intervention resolves the immediate danger, but does not restore Lu Xun’s confidence in continuing the advance.

Although Lu Xun has won a military triumph, his commanders urge him onward only for him to order a retreat. He clarifies that the stones themselves are not what frightens him; he expects Cao Pi to exploit the opportunity to attack. Two days later, news arrives that hundreds of thousands of Wei troops have massed on the border. Lu Xun says he anticipated this and has already set plans in motion to stop them. The retreat therefore follows both the formation’s unsettling effect and Lu Xun’s strategic judgment about the threat from Wei.

Reputation and narrative significance

A poem attributed to Du Fu calls the Eight Maze Kong Ming’s signal achievement and depicts the stones standing by the river as a memorial to the magic that halted Wu. The poem gives the episode a second scale: the formation is not only a tactical obstacle in Lu Xun’s path but also a landmark whose reputation outlasts the immediate encounter.

The episode places Kong Ming’s influence beyond his lifetime. His arranged stones continue to shape events after he is no longer present to command an army, while Lu Xun’s retreat shows how an earlier strategist’s design can unsettle a later victor. The arrival of Wei forces then shifts attention from the apparent marvel to the next political and military danger, leaving Lu Xun’s counterplans as the forward-looking consequence of the encounter.