Is “He ate a cake made from the flesh of Bo Yikao” true?
novel invention
The Records of the Grand Historian, 'Hereditary Houses of Guan and Cai', only records that Bo Yikao died early without descendants. The plot where Bo Yikao is chopped into meat paste and made into a cake for King Wen to eat comes from Song and Yuan storytelling and the Investiture of the Gods.
King Wen of Zhou
In official histories, he is the virtuous leader of the western诸侯 at the end of the Shang dynasty, while in novels he is endowed with the ability to devise brilliant plans and predict the course of fate.