King Ping of Chu received a princess from the state of Qin as a bride for his son, but decided to keep her for himself upon seeing her beauty.

Donggao Gong felt deep sympathy for Wu Zixu's plight and offered to help him escape across the border.

Under enormous stress, Wu Zixu's hair turned completely white and his facial features aged greatly.

The king personally led the army, along with his younger brother Fugai, Wu Zixu, as well as Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War.

Although Chu had a strong army led by Nang Wa and Shen Yinshu, it suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Boju.

After entering Ying, Wu Zixu exhumed King Ping's corpse, and gave it 300 lashes to exact vengeance.

The King gave Wu Zixu a sword and ordered him to commit suicide on the justification that his behaviour amounted to sabotage.

[7] He was also long considered the god of the tidal bore of the Qiantang River near Hangzhou[8] and continues to be worshipped, particularly by Taiwanese Taoists, as one of the five Kings of the Water Immortals.

First of all, the practice of venerating Wu Zixu as a water deity can only be traced to the time of the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD).

[14] The parallel lives of Wu Zixu and Qu Yuan have been noted, not just being cast into water, but being "Confucian martyrs",[10] both deaths being the result of acting as scrupled ministers giving his king cautionary advice.

[10] The story of Wu Zixu is prominent in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, where it is used as a foil of the author's own choice to accept castration for the sake of a greater goal instead of having chosen honorable suicide.