The world of The Classic of Mountains and Seas is home to countless strange and wondrous creatures, vivid footnotes to ancient mythology.
There is the nine-tailed fox, with a voice like a crying baby that can foretell good and ill fortune; the Bifang, a bird with a human face that carries fire wherever it goes, leaving blazing flames in its wake; and the Qiongqi, shaped like an ox but covered in hedgehog spines, which devours the honest and delights in sowing discord.
There is also Dijiang, with six legs and four wings, a featureless, chaotic face, and a voice like a song; Xiangliu, a human-faced serpent with nine snakes coiled around its head, whose passage turns the land to marsh; and Baize, who can speak human languages and understand the nature of all things, a symbol of good fortune and wisdom.
These creatures may be auspicious or sinister, bizarre or uncanny. They embody the awe and imagination with which the ancients regarded nature. Each holds a mysterious legend, waiting to be explored and understood.
Well written, I read it again and again