He is a mongrel despised by both humans and foxes.
When Yu the Great passed by, he said, “Come with me. We’re going to control the floods.”
So he went.
Six years later, he held the Kunlun jade battle-axe in his hand and stood atop Mount Buzhou.
When a nine-headed serpent tried to devour the world’s spiritual veins, he cut off three of its heads with a single strike.
When his sworn younger brother tried to kill him and seize the throne, he tore up the imperial edict and threw it to the ground. He wanted neither a throne nor a title.
He remembered only one thing Yu the Great had said: “There is no fault in one’s birth. What matters is the heart.”
He carved those words into his heart and lived by them all his life.
Later, he traveled across the Great Wilderness with a violet-eyed girl and a spirit civet, and wrote a book.
That book was called The Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Someone asked him what he hoped to achieve.
He said, “Yu the Great taught me to control the floods. I’m recording these mountains and rivers for him, so those who come after us can remember them.”
The flame will never die, and the mountains and rivers will never grow old.
