Wen Shen

The earliest mention of a group of pestilence gods in Chinese mythology is from the Li wei xi ming zheng 禮緯稽命證, an apocryphal Confucian commentary dating from the Han dynasty.

Over time, these spirits became conflated with the "five wet ghosts" 五濕鬼 of the Longyu hetu 龍魚河圖 and formed the basis for later groupings of pestilence gods.

The Five Commissioners, who governed Heaven's Ministry of Epidemics,[2] were Zhang Yuanbo 張元伯, Liu Yuanda 劉元達, Zhao Gongming 趙公明, Zhong Shigui 鍾仕貴, and Shi Wenye 史文業.

[1] In traditional Chinese folk beliefs, Wen Shen was believed to release plagues and pestilence upon the world in punishment for the misdeeds of humanity and prayers or offerings were necessary to placate them.

[3][2] An alternative to offerings was to use a model boat to symbolically carry the pestilence away; this was a tradition of the Wen Shen cult in Taiwan.