Hou Jing, a man from Shuofang, initially joined the warlord Erzhu Rong in 528 AD after Erzhu Rong killed Empress Hu of Northern Wei. Hou Jing captured the rebel general Ge Rong and was promoted to Dingzhou governor and Grand Marshal. When Prime Minister Gao Huan killed Erzhu Rong, Hou Jing switched sides and was appointed Minister of Personnel.
One day, Hou Jing demanded 30,000 troops from Gao Huan, boasting he could cross the Yangtze River and capture Emperor Xiao Yan of Liang alive. Gao Huan granted him 100,000 soldiers instead. Hou Jing was ruthless and strict in military discipline, but after every victory, he distributed all plundered spoils among his men. His troops, both fearing his severity and coveting his rewards, fought desperately, ensuring his constant success on the battlefield.
As Gao Huan lay gravely ill, he warned his son Gao Cheng, "Hou Jing is full of tricks and harbors sinister intentions—you must be wary of him." Gao Cheng then wrote to Hou Jing in his father's name, hoping to summon him back. But Hou Jing, fearing Gao Cheng would eliminate him after Gao Huan's death, sent a messenger to Xiao Yan, requesting to surrender. Xiao Yan accepted Hou Jing's submission and appointed him Prince of Henan, Grand General, and Grand Chief of the Imperial Secretariat.
After Gao Cheng inherited his father's position, he sent General Murong Shaozong to attack Hou Jing. Hou Jing then sought aid from Western Wei and Liang, forcing the Northern Wei forces to retreat. Later that year, Murong Shaozong pursued Hou Jing again. At Woyang, Hou Jing's army was utterly routed, with only about 800 men escaping across the Huai River. After Hou Jing used a ruse to seize Shouchun in Liang territory, Emperor Xiao Yan not only refrained from demoting him but instead appointed him as Governor of Yuzhou.
Hou Jing, emboldened by his gains, began plotting rebellion against the Liang Dynasty. He conscripted all the city's residents into his army, distributed local women among his officers and soldiers, demanded ten thousand bolts of blue cloth from the imperial court for military uniforms, and started manufacturing weapons on his own. Xiao Fan, the Prince of Poyang stationed in Hefei, and Yang Yaren, the governor of Sizhou, repeatedly sent secret reports warning that Hou Jing was showing signs of rebellion, but Emperor Xiao Yan remained oblivious to the threat.
In the eighth month of the second year of the Taiqing era (548 AD), with the inside help of Xiao Yan's nephew, Xiao Zhengde, the rebel Hou Jing launched his revolt. By September, he had crossed the Yangtze River. Although his rebel force numbered only a thousand men, they advanced swiftly, soon reaching the walls of Jiankang. In November, Hou Jing installed Xiao Zhengde as emperor, appointing himself Chancellor and General of the Heavenly Pillar. After breaching the East Mansion, Hou Jing's men stripped and slaughtered two to three thousand civil and military officials on both sides of the city gates.
Meanwhile, as reinforcements for the Liang court continued to arrive, the rebel general Hou Jing openly allowed his soldiers to loot and massacre, piling up corpses that blocked the roads. The common people were forced to build fortifications; those who moved slowly were beaten, and the frail were buried alive in the earth, their wailing shaking heaven and earth. In the twelfth month, after failing to breach the city walls, Hou Jing ordered the Xuanwu Lake dam breached to flood the Taicheng palace, turning the area into a vast ocean and burning all buildings on the southern shore to the ground.
After several battles between the Liang army and the rebel forces, the rebels nearly ran out of food, so Hou Jing sent a messenger to the city wall to submit a false surrender, buying time with a delaying tactic. Emperor Wu of Liang, Xiao Yan, persuaded by his son Xiao Gang, reluctantly agreed to peace talks. Once the truce was struck, the Liang relief forces withdrew, and the rebels' grain supplies arrived. Hou Jing immediately broke the pact, attacking the city day and night without rest until Taicheng finally fell. Hou Jing seized all the women and treasures from the palace, appointing himself Grand Commander and Grand Chancellor. He piled up the still-breathing survivors inside the city and burned them, the stench spreading for miles. Seeing the city breached, Xiao Yan sighed deeply, saying, "I won it myself, and I lost it myself—what is there to regret?" Hou Jing intensified his mistreatment of Xiao Yan, ultimately driving him to die of grief and illness.
In 550 CE, during the reign of Emperor Jianwen of the Liang Dynasty, the warlord Hou Jing appointed himself Prime Minister and was enfeoffed as the Prince of Han. By October of that year, he had declared himself "Grand General of the Universe." He commanded his officers that whenever they captured a city, they must slaughter every inhabitant to establish his so-called "reputation for terror." The following year, Hou Jing proclaimed himself emperor, changing the era name to Taishi.
In the third month of the following year, Hou Jing's army was defeated by Xiao Yi's forces. Hou Jing packed his two sons in leather bags, hung them from his saddle, and fled east with over a hundred men. The Liang army pursued relentlessly, intercepting him at Songjiang. After drowning his two sons, Hou Jing took a few dozen trusted followers by boat from Hudu into the sea, but at Hudou Island he was killed by Yang Kun, a former imperial attendant. After his death, Hou Jing's body was dismembered; his belly was stuffed with five pecks of salt and sent to Jiankang City for public display. The common people, upon learning this, fought to eat his flesh. His bones were burned to ashes, and some even mixed those ashes into their wine and drank them—an act known as "burning the bones and scattering the ashes."
Later, the idiom "burning bones and scattering ashes" came to describe extreme hatred toward the deceased.
Source: *Book of Liang*, Chapter "Biographies 3: Hou Jing"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "焚骨扬灰" came to describe extreme hatred toward the deceased.