Shen Gongbao

Shen Gongbao was a disciple of the Jade Void Palace on Mount Kunlun and Jiang Ziya’s junior fellow disciple. Consumed by jealousy over Jiang Ziya’s appointment to oversee the Investiture of the Gods register, he betrayed his master’s sect. With his famed phrase—'Daoist friend, please stay a moment!'—and his silver-tongued ability to twist truth and falsehood, he traversed the Three Sacred Mountains and Five Great Peaks, inciting disciples of the Jie Sect and numerous reclusive immortals to descend from their mountains and oppose the Western Zhou forces at Xiqi. He thus became one of the chief catalysts of the Investiture of the Gods cataclysm. Though repeatedly defeated by Jiang Ziya in magical duels, he persisted stubbornly—even once boasting of his severed head’s ability to fly through the air, only to be outwitted and ensnared. Upon the conclusion of the Investiture, he was enfeoffed as General Fen Shui, entrusted with dominion over the East Sea. In folk tradition, Shen Gongbao epitomises the reckless wielder of slanderous speech and defiant rebellion against cosmic order; his ‘tongue of division’ endures as an eternal cautionary archetype.