Data & method

Sources

Every text is public domain, taken from Wikisource. Shang–Zhou: the Annals of Yin and Annals of Zhou from the Records of the Grand Historian, the complete Investiture of the Gods (100 chapters), and the Classic of Mountains and Seas (18 books). Journey to the West: the complete novel (100 chapters). Three Kingdoms: the complete Romance of the Three Kingdoms (120 chapters) and the core biographies from the Records of the Three Kingdoms. No copyrighted modern edition was used.

Why one graph

Mythological figures do not stay in their own books. Nezha, Li Jing and Laozi live in both the Investiture of the Gods and Journey to the West, each with a separate story. Guan Yu is a general killed in the histories and a deified emperor in popular religion. Placing them on one network is what makes those migrations visible. The chapter filter narrows the view to a single era; the default shows all three.

How it was compiled

Figures and relationships were extracted chapter by chapter by a language model. Every record carries its source text and chapter; nothing enters the database without one. Names that vary across books (Jiang Ziya / Lü Shang / Taigong Wang) are merged through a hand-maintained alias table. Anyone recorded in both a history and a novel is marked dual-identity. Biographies were drafted by a model and then passed through a second, source-constrained pass that deletes any sentence not supported by the extracted material.

How figures are merged across books

Most merges have textual support: Nezha, Li Jing and Laozi are the same figures in both novels. A few follow long-standing popular tradition rather than any single text — the Investiture of the Gods' Cihang Daoren is commonly identified with Guanyin of Journey to the West. Those entries show both sets of records with their citations, so you can judge for yourself.

Scope and corrections

This is a cultural reference, not an academic database. Mythological accounts vary between recensions; this site follows the editions listed above. History and fiction are presented side by side without treating one as evidence for the other. A validation pipeline checks the data, but AI-assisted compilation can still be wrong. Corrections are welcome at [email protected]— name the figure and the page.

The graph currently covers three eras. More eras and other mythologies are planned.