Jiang Ziya's master is Yuanshi Tianzun in the Investiture of the Gods legend

In the mythological novel Investiture of the Gods and in folk legend, Jiang Ziya's master is Yuanshi Tianzun. According to the novel, Jiang Ziya went up Mount Kunlun at the age of thirty-two and cultivated at Yuxu Palace for forty years, spending his days carrying water, watering pines, tending the fire and sweeping the floor, and what he learned was mostly basic Daoist practice. This master-disciple relationship comes from literature and Daoist legend, not from official historical records.

Yuanshi Tianzun holds an extremely high position in the Daoist pantheon, and together with Lingbao Tianzun and Daode Tianzun is known as one of the Three Pure Ones, generally regarded as the foremost of the Three Pure Ones. In the setting of Investiture of the Gods, he is the leader of the Chan teaching, with well-known disciples such as the Old Man of the South Pole and the Twelve Golden Immortals, and although Jiang Ziya's cultivation was limited, he still counted as one of the members of Yuxu Palace.

In the novel, Yuanshi Tianzun saw that Jiang Ziya could hardly achieve the immortal way and was suited only to enjoy worldly wealth and honor, so at the age of seventy-two he sent him down the mountain, ordering him to assist a wise ruler and preside over the great affair of investiture, and also gave him the Investiture List and the God-Beating Whip. After descending the mountain, Jiang Ziya helped Zhou overthrow King Zhou, and in the end completed the investiture, which is why various legends about Jiang Taigong have been passed down among the people.

What needs to be distinguished is that the historical Jiang Ziya really existed, namely Jiang Shang, a famous minister of the early Zhou, who helped the Zhou house destroy Shang and was enfeoffed in Qi, and was a real statesman and military strategist. The claim that his master was Yuanshi Tianzun, however, belongs to the embellishment of later novels and folk belief, and when consulting related material, one may as well view legend and historical fact separately.