Chapter 16 Chapter Six: The Romance of the Gods

Xu Zhonglin, a man of the Ming Dynasty, wrote an influential novel about gods and demons.The whole book is based on the historical stories and legends of King Wu's defeat of Zhou Dynasty.Praise the benevolent and loving King Wu, and punish the licentious and tyrannical King Zhou.The author breaks through the shackles of the concept of the monarch and his subjects, and affirms the just war with the right to defeat the injustice, showing a progressive ideological tendency.The novel’s revealing descriptions of King Zhou (drinking and lusting, self-willedness, lack of compassion for his subjects, favoring small groups of people, indiscriminate rewards and killings) reflect the author’s denial of the tyrant.

The whole book is full of mythology, showing bold and rich imagination.As soon as Nezha was born, he jumped out of the meat ball, "glowed all over his body, and his face was like powder", with a "Qian Kun circle" on his right glove, and a piece of "huntian silk" around his belly.Nezha put the Huntian Ling in the water, dipped it in the water to take a bath, "turned the water red, shake it, the river shakes; shake it, the universe shakes", and the Crystal Palace "shakes loudly".He steps on the hot wheel and wields a golden gun in his hand, which is really majestic.Later, father and son turned against each other, and Nezha returned his father's bones and his mother's flesh, and his soul went to the Nezha Temple built by his mother in Cuiping Mountain to receive incense from the world.The temple was soon destroyed by his father Li Jing.The real Taiyi used lotus leaves and stems to reshape Nezha's body. After Nezha was reborn, he looked for Li Jing and wanted to avenge the destruction of the temple.Another example is the grandson of the earth, who can escape from the earth and walk underground.Another example is Gao Ming, "eyes can see thousands of miles", Gao Jue, "ears can hear thousands of miles in detail".Hmph two generals, one hum, one ha, two puffs of white gas can kill a person.

The whole book is full of fatalism, and the exaggerated descriptions of sects of gods and demons and sectarian disputes dilute the ideological and social significance of the work.