Yang Yi

Yang Yi is a senior Shu official entrusted by Kong Ming with secret instructions for the army’s retreat and the crisis expected after his death. He helps implement Kong Ming’s plan against Wei Yan, but his later resentment of Jiang Wei’s promotion ends in dismissal, internal exile, and suicide.

Role and Entrusted Instructions

As Kong Ming lay dying, he gave Yang Yi a silk bag containing secret directions. The instructions anticipated that Wei Yan would rebel after Kong Ming’s death: Yang Yi was to appear to go along with him, then open the bag at the front and identify the person who would kill him. The plan made Yang Yi a custodian of Kong Ming’s final military arrangements, not merely a recipient of a general’s last wishes.

Retreat and Conflict with Wei Yan

After Kong Ming died, Wei Yan pressed for the army to continue its campaign against Sima Yi. Fei Yi reminded him that Kong Ming’s final order was to withdraw. Yang Yi, in turn, said Kong Ming had predicted Wei Yan’s rebellion. The army moved out with Jiang Wei taking the rearguard position, while Wei Yan grew suspicious and asked Ma Dai to help him kill Yang Yi.

The confrontation followed the design Kong Ming had left behind. At the city gateway, Yang Yi opened the silk bag and rode out beside Jiang Wei to face Wei Yan and Ma Dai. He invoked Kong Ming’s prediction and challenged Wei Yan to call out three times that no one dared kill him, promising that, if he could, Yang Yi would surrender Hanzhong. Wei Yan accepted the challenge with contempt, insisting that with Kong Ming dead there was no one left for him to fear. The episode makes Yang Yi the executor of a plan whose authority rests on Kong Ming’s foresight, even as the confrontation exposes how little Wei Yan accepts that authority.

Promotion and Downfall

After the court renewed its alliance with Wu, the second ruler appointed Jiang Wei to succeed Kong Ming as prime minister and made Fei Yi head of the secretariat. Yang Yi felt passed over: he believed he deserved a higher position than Jiang Wei, whom he regarded as his junior. In his bitterness, he remarked that he might have done better to defect to Wei, where he thought he would have received proper honours.

When the second ruler heard of the remark, he dismissed Yang Yi and sent him into internal exile. Unable to bear the humiliation, Yang Yi committed suicide. His ending sharply contrasts his earlier importance as the guardian of Kong Ming’s final instructions: he could help preserve the army’s withdrawal and carry out the plan against Wei Yan, but he could not secure a place in the succession that followed Kong Ming’s death.