These figures include human heroes, immortals, and various spirits (usually represented in avatar form, such as vixens and pheasants, and occasionally as inanimate objects such as a pipa).

Bewitched by his concubine Daji, who is actually a vixen spirit disguised as a beautiful woman, King Zhou of Shang oppresses his people and persecutes those who oppose him, including those who dare to speak up to him.

Ji Fa (King Wu of Zhou), assisted by his strategist Jiang Ziya, rallies an army to overthrow the tyrant and restore peace and order.

Throughout the story, battles are waged between the kingdoms of Shang and Zhou, with both sides calling upon various supernatural beings – deities, immortals, demons, spirits, and humans with magical abilities – to aid them in the war.

The heroes of Zhou and some of their fallen enemies from Shang are eventually endowed with heavenly ranking and essentially elevated as gods, hence the title of the novel.

The novel features many stories in which various supernatural beings enter the human realm and change the fates of mortals and the course of history with their magical powers.

As a result, King Zhou becomes obsessed with the spirits, who disguise themselves as beautiful women, and starts to neglect state affairs and rule with cruelty.

King Zhou places Ji Chang, the Western Duke, under house arrest in Youli (羑里) for almost seven years.

Ji Chang's eldest son Bo Yikao comes to Zhaoge (present-day Hebi, Henan) to plead with King Zhou to release his father.

The king is furious and he has Bo Yikao executed, his flesh minced and made into meat pies, and served to his father.

From the prophecy revealed by the oracle bones, Jiang Ziya predicts that King Zhou's loyal and benevolent courtier, Bi Gan, will die soon.

The "immortals" are actually Daji's fellow fox spirits in disguise, and Bi Gan, who is also present at the banquet, senses something amiss.

Bi Gan swallows the charm given by Jiang Ziya, grabs his heart, pulls it out of his body, and presents it to King Zhou.

These four individuals are Wang Mo, Yang Sen, Gao Youqian, and Li Xingba; each of them are renowned as superior men.

These four superior men would later be personally recruited by Grand Old Master Wen Zhong in an attempt to put an end to the threat of King Wu.

This is a list of the variety of projects created by Daji throughout the novel Fengshen Yanyi by Xu Zhonglin and Lu Xixing.

[5] The Wine Pool was located on the left side of the Snake Pit, while the Meat Forest was on the right, thus forming a small park before the Star-Picking Belvedere.

Once each pair is readily drunk, they would be put into the Meat Forest to enjoy an abundance of cooked duck, roasted pig, etc.

By sunset a few pairs would then be beaten to a bloody pulp and secretly fed to Daji to ease her need for human flesh.

This large tower-like structure was forty-nine feet in height (double the size of the Star-Picking Belvedere), fully equipped with columns of jade, floors of marble, roofs and ceilings of legendary jewels, and railings of great pearls and sea corals.

"[1] The book was also translated to Dutch as Feng Shen: De Verheffing tot Goden by Nio Joe Lan (Jakarta, 1940).