108 Heroes

The motif of pairings between 36 and 72 stars, possibly inspired from Dipper, were common among Chinese mythologies and folk tales, including Water Margin, which represented by the number of its protagonists.^[1] The religious theme of these 108 demons that incarnated into the 108 Liangshan bandits apparently drew inspiration from the 36 heavenly spirits and 72 earth fiends that also appeared in a later Chinese vernacular novel titled Fengshen Yanyi. In that novel, the 108 demons were gathered by Jiang Taigong to fight against King Zhou of Shang.^[2] Liu Ts'un-yan added that the motif of 108 stars (36 spirits and 72 fiends representatives) constellation which appeared in both works were influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.^[3]

One Heavenly Spirit, Lu Zhishen, is represented in a folktale as a sworn brother of Zhou Tong.^[4]

According to The Oral Traditions of Yangzhou Storytelling, several popular folktales about Wu Song, a Heavenly Spirit, from the "Wang School" of Yangzhou storytelling, state that he killed the tiger "in the middle of the tenth month" of the "Xuanhe year [1119]" (the emphasis belongs to the original author).^[5]

In Iron Arm, Golden Sabre, Sun Li, an Earthly Fiend, is portrayed as a fellow student of Zhou Tong and Luan Tingyu.^[6]

In Louis Cha's wuxia novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes, Guo Sheng, an Earthly Fiend, is said to be the ancestor of the protagonist, Guo Jing.^[7]