Cast & Chart

Guan Di lot 87 of 100

A knife behind a smile

Lowest (下下, 壬庚). Grades differ between editions, and many Taiwanese temples print none. Shown as Wikisource gives it. Wikisource prints no stem pair for this lot, so 壬庚 is from manekineko.com.tw.

陰裏詳看怪爾曹

舟中敵圖笑中刀

藩籬剖破渾無事

一種天生惜羽毛

Look carefully in the shadows at those around you.

In a boat, an enemy can hide a knife in a laugh.

Break open the fence and all is well.

One kind of person, by nature, cares for their feathers.

What this lot says

This is a lot about hidden hostility. The verse says some people smile while holding a knife and says that open talk clears the air.

The last line speaks of caring for one's feathers, which we read as guarding one's reputation. It asks for caution, not paranoia.

A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.

The story behind it

Zhuge Liang and Lu Su share a boat (武侯與子敬同舟)

According to the account on Wikisource, when Cao Cao defeated Liu Bei and moved south, Sun Quan sent Lu Su to Xiakou to learn the situation. Lu Su asked Zhuge Liang not to exaggerate Cao's numbers to Sun Quan so that they could jointly resist him.

Source: Wikisource, 關聖帝君靈籤/87, the 故事及記載 section

Where this text comes from

This verse is a traditional temple text with no known author. We read it from two named web transcriptions, Chinese Wikisource (the base text) and manekineko.com.tw. Neither is a scan of a printing, the edition behind them is mixed, and we could not establish whether the two are independent of each other.

Wikisource (關聖帝君靈籤) (the text shown above)

陰裏詳看怪爾曹 / 舟中敵圖笑中刀 / 藩籬剖破渾無事 / 一種天生惜羽毛

Retrieved 2026-11-09. Transcription licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

manekineko.com.tw (富貴轉運站)

陰裏詳看怪爾曹 / 舟中敵圖笑中刀 / 藩籬剖破渾無事 / 一種天生惜羽毛

Retrieved 2026-11-09

Where the sources differ

  • Line 2: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 國 for 圖, apparently a variant reading.
  • Line 4: a note in Wikisource's transcription gives 鳳 for 羽, apparently a variant reading.

English translation, meaning and story summaries are by Cast & Chart.