Wu Strategist
Lu Xun, the Scholar General
陸遜183 to 2455 star
In short
Lu Xun (183 to 245) was a general and later chancellor of Wu. In 219, unknown and underestimated, he wrote flattering letters to Guan Yu while Lu Meng prepared the attack that took Jing Province. In 222 he faced Liu Bei's invasion at Yiling, refused battle for half a year, and then burned forty of his camps in one attack. He beat Wei at Shiting in 228, and guarded the upper Yangtze for twenty years.
| Lived | 183 to 245 |
|---|---|
| Name in Chinese | 陸遜 |
| Courtesy name | Boyan |
| Served | Sun Quan |
The history
Lu Xun came from the Lu clan of Wu commandery, one of the great families of the southeast. Sun Ce’s siege of Lujiang in the 190s had killed many of his relatives. He entered Sun Quan’s service at twenty all the same, and Sun Quan later married him to Sun Ce’s daughter.
He spent his first years as a local official, putting down bandits and recruiting hill people into the army. In 219 Lu Meng, who commanded on the Jing frontier, pretended to be ill and asked for Lu Xun as his replacement, because no one had heard of him. Lu Xun wrote to Guan Yu as an admiring junior. Guan Yu moved his reserves north to the siege of Fancheng. Lu Meng’s fleet came up the river disguised as merchants, and Jing Province fell.
In 221 Liu Bei came east with the army of Shu. Sun Quan gave Lu Xun the command over generals who had served since Sun Ce’s day. He gave up hundreds of li of mountain country and stood at Yiling. When they demanded to fight he put his hand on his sword and said he had the ruler’s order. After more than half a year Liu Bei’s men were tired and strung out in camps through the forest. Lu Xun tried one camp, learned what he needed, and ordered every man to carry a bundle of thatch. Forty camps burned.
He would not chase Liu Bei into Shu, guessing rightly that Wei would strike at his back. In 228 he destroyed Cao Xiu’s army at Shiting. He became chancellor in 244 and died the following year.
The novel
Romance of the Three Kingdoms keeps the fire at Yiling and then sends him into Zhuge Liang’s Stone Sentinel Maze, a field of rocks that nearly swallows his army. The maze is invention. The victory was his.
Lu Xun in the game
In Warlords of the Three Kingdoms Lu Xun is the Scholar General: a 5 star strategistof Wu. The game's line for him: “Dismissed by the veterans as a bookish youth, he burned Liu Bei's forty camps at Yiling in a single night.”
| Kingdom | Wu |
|---|---|
| Role | Strategist |
| Rarity | 5 star |
| Base attack and defense | 43 and 57 |
| Where from | Summoned at the Imperial Summon, for Jade. The odds are shown before every summon. |
A warlord sworn to Wu fields him 10% stronger, as every General of their own Kingdom. Wei, Shu or Wu has what the choice changes.
Five star is where he starts. Duplicates become shards, shards add stars, and each star adds a tenth to both numbers.
Questions
What happened at the Battle of Yiling?
Liu Bei invaded Wu in 221 to avenge Guan Yu and recover Jing Province. Lu Xun fell back, held for months while his own generals complained, and in the summer of 222 set fire to Liu Bei's line of camps. Liu Bei escaped to Baidicheng and died there the next year.
How did Lu Xun die?
In 245, of grief and anger. He had written again and again to Sun Quan about the quarrel over the succession, and Sun Quan sent envoys to rebuke him until he died.
Is Lu Xun the same as the writer Lu Xun?
No. The writer Lu Xun, the pen name of Zhou Shuren, lived from 1881 to 1936 and writes his name with different characters. The general is 陸遜.
How do you get Lu Xun in Warlords of the Three Kingdoms?
Summoned at the Imperial Summon, for Jade. The odds are shown before every summon.
Sources
The history follows Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms, written in the third century, with Pei Songzhi's annotations of the fifth, and Fan Ye's Book of the Later Han for the years before the Han court fell apart. What the page calls the novel is Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, of the fourteenth century. Where the two disagree, the page says which is speaking. For more on him, see Lu Xun on Wikipedia.
Written by Gitkonek Studio, .
Keep reading
- Sun Ce, the Little ConquerorHe crossed the Yangtze with a few thousand men, took Jiangdong in five years, and died at twenty-five.
- Zhou Yu, the Handsome CommanderHe was thirty-three when he burned Cao Cao's fleet at Red Cliffs, and could hear a wrong note across a banquet hall.
- Gan Ning, the Belled RaiderA river pirate whose men wore bells, he raided Cao Cao's camp at Ruxu with a hundred riders and lost none.
- Sun Quan, the Green-Eyed LordHe inherited Jiangdong at eighteen and held it for fifty-two years against every rival who tried.
- Sun Shangxiang, the Lady of the BowSun Quan's sister, whose hundred armed maids made her husband Liu Bei nervous in his own chambers.