Lü Yue

Lü Yue was a Daoist cultivator residing on Shengming Mountain on Jiulong Island, masterful in the esoteric arts of pestilence and epidemics. His visage was indigo-hued, his forehead bore a third eye, and his fangs jutted fiercely from his mouth. Answering the summons of Shen Gongbao, he aided the Shang dynasty by scattering plague pills over the Zhou encampment, infecting nearly the entire populace and military garrison of Xiqi—bringing them to the brink of annihilation. He then erected the Pestilential Miasma Formation to trap his enemies, only to be slain when Yang Ren shattered the formation and incinerated him with the Five-Fire Seven-Feather Fan. During the Investiture of the Gods, Jiang Ziya enfeoffed him as Chief Deity of the Pestilence Department, placing him at the head of a retinue of plague deities—including Zhou Xin, Li Qi, and others. While popular folk belief venerates the Five Pestilence Messengers as a collective embodiment of epidemic forces, Lü Yue occupies the supreme position within the Investiture of the Gods cosmology as head of the formal Pestilence Department—a distinct theological framework. Common people worship him not to invite disease, but rather to supplicate that he restrain his powers, ensuring plagues remain distant and benign.