In the Water Margin
Li Kui ranks twenty-second among the 108 heroes under the star Tiansha (天杀星), the Killing Star of Heaven. He comes from Yishui County in Yizhou, a hulking, dark-skinned man who fights with a pair of broad axes and acts long before he thinks. When readers first meet him he is a jail warden in Jiangzhou under Dai Zong, gambling away his pay and starting fights.
Everything changes when he meets Song Jiang, who is serving his exile in Jiangzhou. Song Jiang treats him generously and never looks down on his rough manners, and Li Kui answers with a loyalty that does not waver for the rest of the novel. When Song Jiang is condemned to death, Li Kui is among those who storm the execution ground, and he follows the rescued party to Liangshan Marsh. His nickname, Black Whirlwind, describes exactly how he fights.
Key episodes
- The fight on the river. Li Kui grabs fish from the boats on the Xunyang River and clashes with Zhang Shun, who fares badly on land. Zhang Shun then lures him into a boat, tips it over and dunks him until he is half drowned. The two later become firm friends.
- The execution ground at Jiangzhou. Stripped bare, Li Kui leaps down from a teahouse roof with his axes and cuts a bloody path through the soldiers.
- The tigers of Yiling. Li Kui goes home to carry his mother to Liangshan. On the way he exposes Li Gui, a robber using his name, but while he fetches water for her on the mountain, his mother is killed by tigers. In his grief he slays four of them.
- Cutting down the banner. Believing a false report that Song Jiang has abducted a farmer's daughter, he hacks down the banner reading "Carry Out Justice on Heaven's Behalf" and threatens his own leader, then carries thorns on his back to beg forgiveness when the truth comes out.
