Wen Yang

Eighteen years old, tall and strong, in full armour with a spear and a steel whip at his waist. He proposes the two-pronged night attack himself and takes half the five thousand round by the north. Bursts into Sima Shi's camp in the third watch 'slashing and thrusting right and left, and everyone gave way before him', is driven back from the main tent by arrows and crossbow bolts, and at daylight — his father never having arrived and his own troops broken — fights Deng Ai himself for 'half a hundred bouts without either gaining the advantage'. Then rides south with more than a hundred Wei generals on his heels, and near the Lojia Bridge turns into them with the whip — 'wherever it struck there lay warriors and horses in confused heaps' — and does it again when they re-form ('You fools? Have you then no regard for your lives?'), and again after that. The poem sets him beside Zhao Zilong at Long Slope.

Comes back to Shouchun with his father and his brother: 'Zhuge Dan in Shouchun led out his bold and strong soldiers to join forces with Wen Qin and his two sons, Wen Yang and Wen Hu.'

His father's murder turns him into the instrument of the city's fall. He and Wen Hu 'ran amok with rage. Armed with short swords, they attacked all they met and slew many scores in their desperate anger', then dropped down the wall into the Wei camp. Sima Zhao, remembering the night ride at Lojia, means to kill him, and only Zhong Hui's argument saves him. Given gifts, a lordship and a generalship, he rides round the walls shouting that Sima Zhao has pardoned and rewarded the man who once defied his whole army - which is what makes the rest of the garrison want to surrender.