 All of our very limited information about Deng Xi is second-hand, comprising a one-line entry in the Zuo Commentary, curt attacks on him in the Xunzi, three anecdotes in The Annals of Lü Buwei, and a few stories in texts of later  date.[8]  According to the Han History, he was the author of two scrolls (pian) of writings, neither of which survives. The Zuo Commentary (Duke Ding, Year 9), the earliest and most reliable of our sources, reports that he composed a penal code on bamboo strips, perhaps drawn up as an alternative to the official code of his home state of Zheng. By the time of the Han dynasty, however, the code had been lost. 