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During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Fu Jian, the king of Former Qin, intended to conquer the Eastern Jin. Xie An, the chancellor of Eastern Jin, appointed Xie Shi as the grand commander and dispatched troops along three routes to counter-attack the Qin army.
Fu Jian ascended the city of Shouchun, and upon seeing the orderly formation of the Jin army, he felt a sense of apprehension. The Jin forces then employed a tactic to encircle and attack Fu Jian's Qin army, resulting in a decisive defeat for Qin.
During their panicked retreat, the fleeing Qin soldiers mistook the shadows of the grass and trees on Ba Gong Mountain for pursuing enemy troops, demonstrating their extreme fear and paranoia.

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Open the tool →八公草木 (bā gōng cǎo mù) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to be extremely nervous and fearful, imagining enemies in every bush and tree; to be in a state of extreme paranoia or panic”.
八公草木 is pronounced bā gōng cǎo mù in Mandarin Chinese.
Literally, 八公草木 means “Ba Gong mountain's grass and trees”. It is used to mean “to be extremely nervous and fearful, imagining enemies in every bush and tree; to be in a state of extreme paranoia or panic”.
八公草木 comes from a classical Chinese story dating back to ancient China. The full story is on this page.
将八公山的草木视为敌人。形容心情极为紧张和恐惧