Four giant brothers stand guard at a temple gate, and each carries a weapon that can unmake an army. The eldest, Mo-li Ch'ing, stands "twenty-four feet in height, with a beard" whose hairs are "like copper wire", and bears a magic sword, "Blue Cloud," its blade cut with four words — "Earth, Water, Fire, Wind". Brandished, "it causes a black wind, which produces tens of thousands of spears," which "pierce the bodies of men and turn them to dust." His brother Mo-li Hung opens "an umbrella," the "Umbrella of Chaos", and it "causes the heavens and earth to be covered with thick darkness"; a third strums a four-stringed guitar that sets the enemy camps alight; the fourth keeps two whips and a panther-skin bag housing a man-eating beast. Together they are the Ssu Ta Chin-kang, whom the record glosses as "the Diamond Kings of Heaven".

The single witness wired to served text here is Myths & Legends of China (published 1922), which draws the battle from the romance it names, the Fêng shên yen i, setting it during the consolidation of the Chou dynasty "in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C." The wonder of the tale is how vulnerable such weapons prove. A hidden enemy creeps through the sleeping camp after "the three magical weapons" of the Diamond Kings, and one by one the brothers are "deprived of their magical weapons". The killing stroke comes from the smallest blade of all — "a spike 7 1/2 inches long" that the record names "Heart-piercer" — which throws a "ray of light that eyes were blinded by it." Driven into the eldest's neck, it ends him: "with a deep groan the giant fell dead."

Stith Thompson (1885–1976), the American folklorist whose motif-index gives this address its number, gathers "Magic weapons" across seven traditions, but only the Chinese witness is wired to served text; the Irish, Icelandic, English, Jewish, Indian, and Hindu authorities the shelf lists wait unread. That such terrible arms are so easily stolen and turned back on their bearers may be the record's truest theme.

When a weapon can turn men to dust, why does the tale linger longest on the little spike that kills the giant who never held it?