Beyond the North Sea, amid the great wilderness, between the rivers, stood Mount Fuyu.
The mountain was hazy, its indistinct contours seemingly shrouded in a veil of gauze.
Amid drifting clouds and mist, it seemed now near, now far, hovering just beyond reach.
A clear spring flowed down the mountain. Anyone tracing it to its source would find the stream growing ever narrower, its channel resembling a little drainage ditch dug beside an irrigation canal.
Yet that ditch-like trickle began boiling at that moment, surging ever more violently until it resembled a towering flood.
Heaven and earth both heard the waters' awe and submission.
Wu Xian stared wide-eyed at the valiant-looking man lying on the ground before him. "He's alive?"
Wu Ji shook their head. "I don't think so. He's not breathing yet."
Wu Pan said, "He shouldn't look like this if he's alive. He ought to grow a tiger's head."
Wu Peng disagreed. "No, it has to be a rabbit's head, with two buckteeth."
Wu Gu said, "The head doesn't change. It's the body. Yayu grew an ox's body and started eating people."
Wu Xiang said, "You're bringing up Yayu again?"
Wu Lü retorted, "So what if we are? As if you weren't involved."
Wu Luo said, "It's all the fault of you six. If you hadn't saved Yayu, we wouldn't be unable to leave Spirit Mountain."
Wu Xie sighed. "Forget it. What's done is done. We were simply plotted against."
In ancient times, Fierce Beasts ran rampant, and spirit monsters and demon spirits ruled the earth.
The earliest ancestors lived in ignorance, pleading to heaven amid floods, struggling to survive amid mountain fires, leaving corpses strewn for ten thousand miles amid plagues, and bleeding rivers beneath the claws and fangs of Fierce Beasts.
In those days, shamans emerged