Zhong Kui's record was first seen in Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan Bu Bi Tan in the Song Dynasty. It is said that Wu Daozi painted a portrait of Zhong Kui and wrote an inscription on the origin of Zhong Kui beside the portrait: During the Kaiyuan period of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty returned to the harem after inspecting the army in Lishan, and inexplicably contracted an epidemic. One night, Tang dreamed of two ghosts, one big and one small. The boy was dressed in red, with a big bamboo paper fan on his back, one foot on calf nose shoes and one barefoot. He was running around the temple with the sachets of the Jade Emperor and Yang Guifei in his hand. GREAT GHOST, dressed in blue, wearing a hat, revealing one arm and wearing a pair of official boots, is chasing the little devil. After catching the child, GREAT GHOST gouged out the child's eyes, and then split the child and ate it. Don Huang Ming was dumbfounded, so he asked, "Who are you?" GREAT GHOST replied: "I, Zhong Kui's family, even a person with low martial arts, vowed to eliminate the evil in the world for your majesty." When Don woke up, he recovered from his illness. Tang Huangming asked Wu Daozi to draw a portrait of Zhong Kui. From then on, Zhong Kui suddenly became popular among the people. Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty named Zhong Kui as a "blessed saint in the town house" and told the world that he hung clocks and statues all the year round to ward off evil spirits and keep peace.
After that, Zhong Kui's life was gradually enriched by later generations. In folk stories, he was from Zhong Nanshan in Tang Dynasty, with leopard head, leopard eyes and a full face of beard. Zhong Kui is ugly, but he is learned and upright. Born in poverty, he went to Beijing to take the exam with the support of his fellow villagers. Although he was approved by the examiner, he was not admitted because of his ugly appearance and was killed in the imperial palace. Because of his integrity, he became the ghost king of the underworld after his death, in charge of those kids who ran out of the underworld to make trouble. But this statement is probably only attached by later generations, and many people have put forward different views. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen thought that Zhong Kui was a conical fungus, because the cone was also called Zhong Kui by the people, and because conical objects often hit ghosts in ancient paintings, the ghost catcher was called Zhong Kui. Gu, a beginner in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, thought that the big stick in the hands of the wizard of the ancient Nuo dance ceremony was called Zhong Kui, also called vertebra, which may be the source of Zhong Kui. In a word, most scholars tend to think that Zhong Kui's prototype is an object, not a person.