Recorded Across Generations.
For Those Who Come After.
A rabbit's body, a bird's beak, a serpent's tail. Wherever it goes, a cloud of locusts follows, blotting out the sky, stripping the fields bare in moments. Men see the swarm before they ever see the beast; where the locusts fall, they know it is close. It is born frail, with no claw or fang. Faced with anything stronger, it shuts its eyes and drops flat, feigning death, and it is then that the swarm obeys it. Its life and the locust-cloud are bound as one: only when it dies do the locusts die with it. Eat its heart and the swarm answers to you. A field it crosses is emptied, a granary stripped bare, an army in full formation stripped to bare bones. But that command holds only while you lie flat, playing dead. Move, and the locusts no longer heed you. You hold an army that can swallow the world, and you can wield it only while lying helpless in the dirt.
兔身，鸟喙，蛇尾。它走到哪里，蝗虫便跟到哪里，遮天蔽日，转眼就把庄稼吃个精光。人还没看见它，先看见了蝗；蝗一来，就知道它近了。 它天生孱弱，没有爪牙。一遇强敌，便闭眼伏地，装死不动，蝗群就在这时听它调遣。它与那片蝗云同命：唯有它死，蝗才随之而灭。 食其心者，蝗群便听你号令。过田，田空；过仓，仓尽；千军列阵，转眼只剩枯骨。可这号令，只在你伏地不动、装死一般时才有。你一动，蝗群便不再听你的了。 你手握吞天之众，却只能在伏地装死、任人宰割时驱使它。
棲 餘峨之山 Mount Yu'e
有獸焉，其狀如菟而鳥喙，鴟目蛇尾，見人則眠，名曰犰狳，其鳴自訆，見則螽蝗為敗。