Xue Xu 薛珝

Xue Xu appears briefly at the end of the biography of his father Xue Zong in the Biographies of Zhang, Yan, Cheng, Kan and Xue (Records of Wu 8), and his name is also seen in the Biographies of the Three Successor Rulers (Records of Wu 3) and the Biographies of the Five Sons of the Lord of Wu (Records of Wu 14). His father Xue Zong, courtesy name Jingwen, was a man of Zhuyi County in Pei Commandery; when Shi Xie submitted to Sun Quan, Xue Zong became Gentleman of the Five Offices and was appointed Administrator of Hepu and Jiaozhi. Later, after serving as Supervisor of the Imperial Secretariat, he was transferred to Master of Writing for Selection in the 3rd year of Chiwu (240), became Junior Tutor to the Crown Prince in the 5th year (242), and died in the spring of the 6th year (243). Records, Wu 8 §30 · 42 · 48

In the year he took the throne, Sun Hao posthumously honored his father Sun He as Emperor Wen and reburied him at the Ming Mausoleum, and the officials in charge memorialized that a temple should be built in the capital. In the 7th month of the 2nd year of Baoding (267), Sun Hao had Xue Xu, Acting Court Architect, build a sleeping hall, which was named the Pure Temple. In the 12th month of that year he sent the Acting Chancellor Meng Ren, the Minister of Ceremonies Yao Xin and others with the spirit carriage and the imperial equipage to the Ming Mausoleum to welcome the spirit. Records, Wu 14 §32–33

In the 3rd year of Baoding (268), Wu sent Liu Jun (劉俊), Inspector of Jiao Province, Xiu Ze, Commander of the Vanguard, and others to invade Jiaozhi, but they were defeated by the Jin general Mao Jiong and others and all died, and their soldiers scattered and returned to Hepu. In the 1st year of Jianheng (269), Wu sent the Army Supervisor Yu Si, Xue Xu, General Who Overawes the South, and Tao Huang, Administrator of Cangwu, by the Jing Province route, and the Army Supervisor Li Xu and the Army Inspector Xu Cun by the sea route from Jian'an, all to advance to Hepu and attack Jiaozhi. Records, Wu 3 §60–61

The next year Li Xu, saying that the Jian'an route was impassable, killed his guide general Feng Fei and led his army back; when He Ding memorialized that Li Xu had wrongfully killed Feng Fei and withdrawn the army on his own authority, Li Xu and Xu Cun were executed together with their families. In the 3rd year of Jianheng (271), Yu Si and Tao Huang defeated Jiaozhi and captured and killed the garrison commanders installed by Jin, and Jiuzhen and Rinan both came back under Wu. The Biographies of the Three Successor Rulers do not name Xue Xu at this point. Records, Wu 3 §62–63

In the same 3rd year of Jianheng, when Sun Hao, recalling with admiration the writings left by Xue Zong, ordered Xue Xu's younger brother Xue Ying to continue them, Xue Ying presented a poem. The poem contains the lines: 'Xu unworthily holds a charge of a thousand li; receiving the command, he campaigns in the south, his banners and insignia complete, the sound of gongs and armor resounding.' Records, Wu 8 §51 · 54

At the end of Xue Zong's biography, Chen Shou wrote that his son Xue Xu rose to the rank of General Who Overawes the South and died of illness on the road back from the campaign against Jiaozhi. Chen Shou's main text does not record his courtesy name, his age or the year of his death. The assessment at the end of Records of Wu 8 calls Xue Zong a good minister of Wu for his learning and remonstrance and discusses Xue Ying, but does not discuss Xue Xu separately. Records, Wu 8 §49 · 63