...and I've thought of a perfect idea for Madness Day next year. In fact, it's the first good idea I've ever thought of. The code will be tough, though.

Meanwhile, here's a list of the allusions and references in The Lake.
1) Fight between Liu and Zhao - allusion to the struggles between eunuchs and the Empress Dowager's relatives during the Han Dynasty.
2) Liu himself is a reference to Liu Jin.
3) Cheng Zili - Li Zicheng, Ming rebel
4) Prince of Qin is a title often given to princes other than the Heir Apparent in ancient China
5) Asparagus - a reference to chicken ribs. In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao chose the codeword 'chicken ribs'. Yang Xiu took it to mean that they'd retreat because chicken ribs were tasteless but it would be a shame to throw them away. The closest I could think of was asparagus.
6) I made up the amplification spell, but that was partly inspired by the phrase 'walls have ears', which is also a common phrase in Chinese.
7) Divine Travelling - a reference to Dai Zong in Water Margin. The destructive spells are partly inspired by Gongsun Sheng's.
8) Bai Yiju is a reference to Bai Juyi, who wrote a famous poem about grass.
9) There were actually weather dragons in late Chinese mythology. The dragons refusing to rain is a reference to a similar situation in The Journey to the West.
10) General Wu is a reference to Wu Sangui, who opened Shanhai Pass (one of the passes in the Great Wall) to let the Manchus in.
11) The snipe and clam metaphor is commonly used in Chinese.
12) Qu Yuan drowned himself in a river when Qin Shi Huang was about to conquer his home country Chu.

All in all, I was going to blend both Chinese and Western elements inside, but at the end, the Chines elements turned out to be much heavier. (By the way, while there's no the Grim Reaper in Chinese mythology, there were 'soul reapers' who reaped the souls of the dead to take them to the underworld.)