Recorded Across Generations.
For Those Who Come After.
A human face on a jackal's body, bird-winged, moving as a snake moves. Where it appears, the town floods. It does not pray for water or wait for rain. It shouts, and the water answers. Rivers swell where its voice reaches, dikes give way where its voice reaches; the water obeys it the way a servant obeys a master. It is the inverse of Ming She: one boils the world's water away with a chime, the other summons it with a shout. It is this beast that hunts the white deer. It raises the deluge and drives Fuzhu across the hills, and where the water arrives, people take the deer for the bringer of ruin, never asking what came chasing behind it. Eat its heart and you take that power. You can call water, raise it, drive it into a wall, part it into a road, send a flood and tell it where to go. The water bends to your authority, not out of loyalty, and the moment that authority wavers, it seizes whatever lives closest. And what lives closest is always you.
人面豺身，鸟翼而蛇行。 它现身之处，其邑必逢大水。它不祈水，也不等雨。它张口一喝，水便来。江河闻声而涨，堤坝闻声而溃，水听命于它，如仆从听命于主。这是鸣蛇的反面：一者以磬鸣煮尽天下之水，一者以叱喝唤尽天下之水。 正是它，一路追猎着那头白鹿。它唤起滔天之水，驱着夫诸横越山野；水到之处，人只当是白鹿引来了灾，从没想过，是什么在水后追它。 食其心者，得那副号令江河之口。你能唤水，能升水，能驱水成墙，能分水为道，能引一场大水，并教它往何处去。水慑于你的威势，而非忠于你。你的威势一松，它便扑向最近的活物。 它先扑向的，永远是你。
棲 陽水 The Yang River
有蛇焉，名曰化蛇，其狀如人面而豺身，鳥翼而蛇行，其音如叱呼，見則其邑大水。