"The Fox Isn't in the Oldest Sources"

Daji is remembered as a nine-tailed fox spirit who destroyed the Shang dynasty, but the fox is missing from the oldest sources about her. This episode opens a case file: what oracle bones, a war speech, a Han-era historian and a Ming-dynasty novel each say about her, when they were written, and what each author needed the story to do. Along the way, it looks at the "last ruler" template in Chinese history and the tomb of Fu Hao, a Shang woman who commanded armies. Episode 9 of an animated series exploring the darkest myths of East Asian history.