Lu River

The Lu River is the setting for the final passage of Kong Ming’s southern campaign: after the Shu army has subdued the Man tribes and Kong Ming has entrusted their lands to Meng Huo, the river becomes an obstacle associated with the dead of the campaign. Kong Ming’s response rejects further killing in the name of appeasing spirits. Instead, he conducts a ceremony with forty-nine symbolic heads, acknowledges the deaths caused by the war, and leads his troubled army across the river safely toward Chengdu.

Setting and place in the campaign

The river appears as Kong Ming and his army are returning from the southern lands. Although the campaign’s military and political settlement has been reached, the journey is not yet complete. Storms arise when the army has only just reached the Lu River, throwing dust and stones and preventing it from proceeding. The halt turns the route home into a new problem, one that Meng Huo interprets through local beliefs about malicious spirits.

The river’s position in the narrative connects two kinds of aftermath. On one side lies the campaign’s conclusion: Meng Huo has submitted, and Kong Ming has settled rulership of the conquered territory on him despite objections from some officials. On the other lies the loss incurred in securing that outcome. The army cannot simply leave the southern theater behind; before it can continue, Kong Ming must address the distress associated with those who died there.

The spirits and the proposed sacrifice

When Kong Ming asks Meng Huo what is behind the storms, Meng Huo identifies them as the work of malicious spirits. He says that the customary remedy is an offering of forty-nine human heads, together with a black ox and a white goat. The number is explained as seven times seven. The proposal makes the crisis a test of how the expedition will treat the dead—and whether overcoming a dangerous passage requires yet more human loss.

Local people reinforce the supernatural explanation. They believe the disturbance comes from the ghosts of Shu and Man soldiers who died in the river. They report having heard cries and seen ghostly shapes and mists since the battle, and likewise maintain that only human sacrifice can resolve the trouble. Kong Ming listens to this account but refuses its prescribed solution. His objection is ethical as well as practical: if the spirits are those of people who have already died, he reasons, causing more deaths cannot be the answer.

Kong Ming’s ceremony

Rather than supply actual victims, Kong Ming has forty-nine imitation heads made from dough stuffed with meat. At midnight he performs the offering in Daoist robes, and a formal proclamation is read to appease the souls of the dead. The ceremony preserves the number and ritual form that Meng Huo has described while substituting symbolic offerings for human lives.

Kong Ming’s proclamation includes an unreserved apology for the deaths he has caused. At the ceremony’s climax, he cries out in anguish; the army is moved to tears. The account links that collective response to the dispersal of the ghostly shapes. The following day the army crosses the river safely. The passage therefore concludes not with another act of force but with a ritual that acknowledges responsibility and grief while refusing to perpetuate the killing.

Aftermath and narrative significance

Once across, the army continues its long journey and at last reaches Chengdu. The return completes the southern expedition’s arc: its conquered lands have been placed under Meng Huo’s rule, and the Shu forces can now come home. The Lu River episode gives that political settlement a human and moral counterpart. Submission and territorial control do not erase the dead; the narrative makes their memory part of the homeward route.

The river also marks a contrast in the campaign’s methods and outcomes. The military struggle has involved repeated confrontations with the Man forces, but at the crossing Kong Ming declines the demand for another human sacrifice and instead stages an act of acknowledgment. The safe passage follows the ceremony, while the army’s tears register the cost that a victory alone could not settle. In this way, the Lu River becomes the campaign’s final threshold: crossing it depends not on defeating another opponent, but on confronting the consequences of the expedition before returning to the capital.