Heyu
Mythological Narrative
Yan Mountain, in the fourth eastern guideway, is rich in gold and jade. Its beast is the heyu: the body of a pig under a human face, yellow-bodied with a scarlet tail, its voice the crying of an infant. The text is unusually specific about its diet: 'it eats men, and also eats insects and snakes' — human flesh sharing the menu with vermin, nothing refused. And its appearance announces catastrophe at the largest scale the book uses: 'when it is seen, there are great floods under heaven.'
Human-faced beasts form a lineage of their own in the classic, and an infant's cry is the man-eater's favourite lure: the paoxiao of the northern guideways and the longzhi of the eastern second guideway both mask their appetites with a baby's wail. The heyu is the family's eastern representative. Note the magnitude of its omen — the zhuru's panic touches only 'its state', but the heyu's flood covers 'all under heaven'. A strange pig on one mountain, and the whole world's rivers rise: no eastern portent carries a heavier charge.
Its neighbours in the same guideway complete the set: the fei of Tai Mountain brings universal pestilence, the bo fish of Nüzheng Mountain universal drought. Flood, plague, and drought stand on adjacent summits — the fourth eastern guideway reads like a catalogue of early warnings, with the heyu holding the seat for water.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Heyu.
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Longzhi
A man-eater of Fuli Mountain: a fox in outline, but with nine heads, nine tails, and tiger's claws, crying like an infant. The name is also written Longzhi with a different second graph.
Paoxiao
A man-eater of Gouwu Mountain: goat's body, human face, eyes set in its armpits, tiger's teeth and human hands, crying like an infant. Guo Pu's commentary identifies it as the taotie.
Fei
A one-eyed horror of Tai Mountain: an ox's body with a white head and a snake's tail. Water dries where it wades, grass dies where it treads, and its appearance brings pestilence across the world.
Changyou
A beast of Mount Changyou shaped like a macaque but with four ears, its voice like a human groan; whichever district it appears in will suffer great floods.