Sima Hui 司馬徽

In Chapter 35 of the Romance, Liu Bei, after leaping his horse across the stream and heading toward Nanzhang, meets a herd boy riding an ox. The boy tells him that his master's compound surname is Sima, his given name Hui and his courtesy name Decao, that he is a man of Yingchuan, and that his Daoist name is Master Water Mirror. His master is a friend of Pang Degong and Pang Tong of Xiangyang; once, while picking mulberry leaves up in a tree, he seated the visiting Pang Tong under the tree and discussed matters with him all day, and he is so fond of Pang Tong that he calls him his younger brother. As Liu Bei enters the manor, Sima Hui comes out laughing, saying that a high, impassioned strain suddenly arose in the music of his zither, so some hero must be listening in secret. Romance, Ch. 35 §5–9

Water Mirror sees from Liu Bei's looks that he has come fleeing danger, and says that he has failed to achieve his ambitions because he has no one worth using at his side. Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun are all generals who can match ten thousand men, but there is no one who knows how to use them well, and men such as Sun Qian and Mi Zhu are merely pale-faced scholars. Interpreting a ditty sung by the children of Jing and Xiang, he says that the Mandate of Heaven will come to Liu Bei, and says that 'if you obtain even one of the two, the Sleeping Dragon and the Young Phoenix, you can bring peace to the realm', but when asked who they are, he only claps his hands and says, 'Good! Good!' Romance, Ch. 35 §10–14 · 17

That night, to Yuanzhi (Xu Shu), who comes to visit, Water Mirror says that he carries the talent to assist a king, so why did he cheapen himself by going to see Liu Jingsheng (Liu Biao), and that the hero is right before his eyes. The next day, when Liu Bei bows and asks him to come out of the mountains and help uphold the house of Han, he declines, saying that he is an idle man of the hills and fields unfit for worldly service, and that someone ten times better than himself will come to help. In Chapter 36 Xu Shu reveals that he came to Liu Bei because Water Mirror rebuked him for failing to recognize a true lord and told him to serve Liu of Yu Province. Romance, Ch. 35 §15–18Romance, Ch. 36 §23

In Chapter 37, after Xu Shu has left, Sima Hui comes to visit Liu Bei. He says that since Xu Shu's mother is a woman of virtue she would never have sent a letter summoning her son, so the letter must be forged, and that now that Yuanzhi has gone, his mother will surely die. He says that Kongming (Zhuge Liang) is a close friend of Cui Zhouping of Boling, Shi Guangyuan of Yingchuan, Meng Gongwei (Meng Jian) of Runan and Xu Yuanzhi, but that he alone grasps the broad outlines, and when Guan Yu says that comparing himself with Guan Zhong and Yue Yi is going too far, he replies that Kongming can be compared with Jiang Ziya of Zhou's eight hundred years and Zhang Zifang of Han's four hundred years. Going out the gate, he laughs loudly, 'The Sleeping Dragon has found his lord but not his time—what a pity!', and departs. Romance, Ch. 37 §7–12

After that Sima Hui does not appear in person. In Chapter 38 Liu Bei, on the strength of what Sima Decao and Xu Yuanzhi told him, asks Zhuge Liang for his teaching, and in Chapter 57, when he has also obtained Pang Tong, he rejoices that he has now obtained both the Sleeping Dragon and the Young Phoenix of whom Sima Decao spoke. Romance, Ch. 38 §10Romance, Ch. 57 §36