Deducing the Changes at Youli
Wary of Zhou’s growth, King Zhou imprisoned Ji Chang at Youli for seven years. In prison, it is said, he stacked Fuxi’s eight trigrams two by two and deduced the sixty-four hexagrams — expanding a set of divinatory symbols into a system covering the changes of all things. Fact and attribution are hard to separate, but this prototype of "the sage writing amid adversity" was placed by Sima Qian in the lineage of works born of frustration: King Wen deduced the Changes in captivity, Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals in distress.
Settling the dispute of Yu and Rui
The states of Yu and Rui had quarreled over farmland for years without resolution and agreed to ask the Earl of the West to arbitrate. Entering Zhou territory, they saw farmers yielding boundaries to one another and travelers yielding the road, and turned back in shame: "What we quarrel over is exactly what the Zhou people are ashamed of." The two states ended their dispute of their own accord. As word spread, the lords came flocking to submit — the political power to subdue others without fighting dissolved the Shang realm faster than any battle.