Recorded Across Generations.
For Those Who Come After.
One head, ten bodies. It barks like a dog as it swims, ten bodies spreading out at once in the water, all radiating from a single skull, and you cannot say whether the sight is dreadful or pitiful. It dwells in the deep water below Mount Qiaoming and rarely surfaces. Wound one of its bodies and the other nine swim on unbothered. It is a thing that cannot be pulled apart or beaten broken. In the frozen north, what kills is rarely the blow itself. It is the wound that will not close, flesh dying in the cold, festering, weeping, the hunter growing weaker by the day until he cannot go on. Eat its heart and you take that flesh for your own. Cuts and arrow-wounds scab over in moments, and the deepest gash closes faster than seems possible. The slow-rotting wound that finishes other men is, for you, a shallow mark gone by morning.
一颗头，十条身。它游动时吠叫如犬，十条身子在水中一齐舒展，自同一颗头颅辐射而出，说不出是可怖，还是可怜。 它栖于谯明之山下的深水，极少现身。伤了一条身子，另九条仍照游不误。它是一样怎么也拆不散、打不烂的东西。 北地酷寒，最叫人丧命的往往不是当场那一刀，而是那道迟迟不愈、渐渐溃烂的伤口。血肉在寒气里坏死流脓，人便一日弱过一日，终于撑不下去。 食其心者，得它那副皮肉。刀伤箭创转眼收口结痂，再深的裂伤，也愈合得叫人心惊。 旁人捱不过的那道烂伤，于你，不过是明日便平的一道浅痕。
棲 譙明之山 Mount Qiaoming
有魚焉，一首而十身，其音如吠犬，食之已癰。