Which Tang legend was written to slander Ou Yangxun?

The legendary novel "Biography of the General of the White Ape in Bujiang" (1) in Tang Dynasty (hereinafter referred to as "Biography of the White Ape") has spread to this day, and has been criticized as a libel novel by mainstream public opinion in the history field. After investigation, this kind of critics decided that Biography of the White Ape was a slanderous novel, which was influenced by the "evil" theory in the catalogue of Chongwen Mu Zong in the Northern Song Dynasty. Further exploration shows that Ouyang Xiu, a great writer and historian in the Northern Song Dynasty, was the initiator of this "evil" theory. According to the existing historical data, Ou Yangxun's actions are suspected of taking advantage of private interests. Therefore, as the original basis for judging Biography of the White Ape as a libel book, its fairness and credibility are questionable at first. Secondly, as far as Biography of the White Ape itself is concerned, it also lacks the basic elements that constitute the slanderous novel. There are also some related historical materials that do not support the classification of Biography of the White Ape as a libel novel. In order to clarify this story, I would like to try to explain it as follows and discuss it with Fang Jia.

Biography of the White Ape is about "Liang Datong was not in the same place" before the Sui Dynasty. The wife of the military commander Ouyang Yi was taken away by the white ape. Later, Ouyang Yi killed the white ape and took his wife back. Her wife became pregnant in the "morning and night play" with the white ape, and later gave birth to a son. Because Ouyang Yang was the father of Ou Yangxun, a great calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty, Ou Yangxun's name was not mentioned in Biography of the White Ape, but he was described as "a good book with a long literature, which was famous for a while", that is to say, Ou Yangxun should be indisputable. Ouyang Xiu is a descendant of Ouyang family. He participated in the compilation of Chongwen Mu Zong, annotated the Biography of the White Ape, and pointed out that the Biography of the White Ape is "the evil of those who hate Ou Yangxun". Later, many scholars only mentioned that the "evil" theory in Biography of the White Ape came from Chongwen Mu Zong, but did not mention who did it. In addition, when Ouyang Xiu participated in the compilation of Chongwen Mu Zong, people with low official positions talked lightly, and it was not his turn to sign Chongwen Mu Zong, which made his works more and more blocked.

In modern times, Mr. Lu Xun clearly admitted in A Brief History of Chinese Novels that Biography of the White Ape was a defamatory pseudo-novel. The contemporary critics of Biography of the White Ape are influenced by both Ouyang Xiu's theory of "evil" and Lu Xun's theory of "slandering novels". However, compared with Lu Xun's criticism of a few words, the criticism of The Biography of the White Ape has been escalating and expanding for a long time.