The Chinese Bestiary · 中国图鉴

Xiangliu 相柳

xiāng liǔ · Wade-Giles: hsiang-liu

Fierce Beast 凶兽

📜 Source Text 原文出处

海外北经 · 共工之臣相柳 · Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: North

共工之臣曰相柳氏，九首，以食于九山。相柳之所抵，厥为泽溪。禹杀相柳，其血腥，不可以树五谷种。禹厥之，三仞三沮，乃以为众帝之台。

Among the ministers of Gong Gong there was one called Xiangliu, nine-headed, who fed from nine mountains. Wherever Xiangliu thrust itself, that ground became marsh and creek. Yu killed Xiangliu, but its blood ran foul, and the five grains could not be sown where it had soaked. Yu excavated the tainted ground — three times he dug it out, three times it slumped back — and upon it he raised the Terraces of the Many Emperors.

相柳者，九首人面，蛇身而青。

As for Xiangliu: nine heads with human faces, a serpent's body, and green.

Immediately following the first passage in the same chapter — the only physical description the text gives

共工臣名曰相繇，九首蛇身，自环，食于九土。其所歍所尼，即为源泽，不辛乃苦，百兽莫能处。禹湮洪水，杀相繇，其血腥臭，不可生谷，其地多水，不可居也。

A minister of Gong Gong named Xiangyao, nine-headed upon a serpent's body, coiled in a ring upon itself, feeding from the nine lands. Wherever it spewed and wherever it settled, a poisoned fen sprang up; the water was not pungent but bitter, and no beast could dwell there. Yu dammed back the flood and killed Xiangyao, but its blood stank of carrion: no grain would grow, the ground seeped with water, and it could not be lived upon.

From the Classic of the Great Wilderness: North (大荒北经) — the parallel telling under the variant name Xiangyou (相繇)

帝尧台、帝喾台、帝丹朱台、帝舜台，各二台，台四方，在昆仑东北。

The Terrace of Yao, the Terrace of Ku, the Terrace of Danzhu, and the Terrace of Shun — each in pairs, square in form, lying northeast of Mount Kunlun.

From the Classic of Regions Within the Seas: North (海内北经) — the paired imperial altars usually identified as the Terraces of the Many Emperors

Modern location: Placed by the text north of the mythical Mount Kunlun; no secure modern location

📝 Summary

Xiangliu (相柳) is the nine-headed, human-faced serpent who served the flood god Gong Gong in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Wherever its coils touched, springs turned to poisoned bog; even slain by Yu the Great, its blood left the soil barren to grain. Yu raised the Terraces of the Many Emperors over the corpse — China's own Hydra, and one of the darkest monsters in the flood-taming saga.

🎨 Appearance

A colossal serpent whose nine necks end in nine human faces — nine heads, human-faced, snake-bodied and green (九首人面，蛇身而青). It lies coiled in a self-swallowing ring and grazes across nine mountains at once.

✨ Abilities

• Blighted wake — wherever it strikes or settles, ground collapses into marsh and poisoned springs (所抵为泽溪；其所歍所尼，即为源泽)
• Ninefold maw — nine heads feeding from nine mountains, or nine lands, at a single sitting (食于九山；食于九土)
• Blood of barrenness — its spilled blood poisons soil so the five grains will not grow, and the taint survives three excavations (三仞三沮)
• Bitter miasma — its wetlands are not pungent but bitter, unlivable even for beasts (不辛乃苦，百兽莫能处)
• Minister's mantle — a courtier of the water god Gong Gong, fighting at his side against Yu's flood works (禹湮洪水，杀相繇)

🏮 Symbolism

The desolating residue of untamed water — flood that leaves poisoned, unfarmable ground behind, so that even victory over the monster costs the land itself. Its defeat marks a transfer of cosmic authority: Gong Gong's minister falls, and Yu, the human engineer, raises a monument of sovereignty over it. Modern angles: Xiangliu is the standing Chinese answer to the Greek Hydra in games and fantasy art (though its heads never regrow), and the tragic nine-headed General Xiang Liu of the 2023 hit drama Lost You Forever (长相思) has made the name a fandom favorite across East Asia.

🎬 Cultural References

A Minister of the Flood God

Xiangliu’s only recorded rank is a bureaucratic one: it is “a minister of Gong Gong” (共工之臣). Gong Gong — the water god who, in the Huainanzi (c. 139 BCE), fought Zhuanxu for the throne of Heaven and in defeat butted Mount Buzhou until the pillar of the sky snapped — fields in this creature something worse than a predator: a courtier of catastrophe. The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas gives it nine heads that “feed from nine mountains,” and the parallel passage of the Great Wilderness adds that those nine heads sit on a single serpent body “coiled in a ring upon itself,” grazing the nine lands. One terse line of the original is the only portrait we get: nine heads with human faces, a snake’s body, and green (九首人面，蛇身而青).

The Blood That Ruined the Land

Yu the Great killed Xiangliu while taming the floods — and that is where the story starts, not ends. The blood of the slain monster was itself the final weapon: where it soaked the soil, the five grains would not grow; the Great Wilderness version says the stench was such that “no grain would grow, the ground seeped with water, and it could not be lived upon.” Yu excavated the poisoned ground — “three times dug, three times slumped back” (三仞三沮); commentators still argue whether 仞 means to dig or to bank up, but either way the earth would not stay healed. His solution was monumental rather than agricultural: he raised the Terraces of the Many Emperors (众帝之台) over the corpse. A separate chapter of the classic lists square paired altars of Yao, of Ku, of Danzhu, and of Shun northeast of Kunlun — the standard identification for Yu’s memorial. The neighboring passage adds a detail that still startles: archers dare not aim north, for fear of Gong Gong’s terrace, and a tiger-striped snake crouches at each of its corners, head turned south.

Two Tellings, One Monster

Honesty matters here: the classic preserves two versions, and they do not match perfectly. The northern-seas chapter calls the creature Xiangliu (相柳) and says it “fed from nine mountains”; the Great Wilderness chapter calls it Xiangyou (相繇), describes it coiled in a ring, makes its wetlands “not pungent but bitter,” and ends with Yu digging a pool and the “many lords” raising terraces from it. The fourth-century annotator Guo Pu already pointed readers of the second passage back to the first, and the modern standard commentary of Yuan Ke treats them as one figure — a view most scholars share. The Great Wilderness chapters are generally dated later, so the Xiangyou telling is best read as an expanded retelling of the older Xiangliu passage. What neither version says is equally worth noting: no regrowing heads, no fiery breath. The nine-headed serpent is native to China.

China’s Answer to the Hydra

Western readers will reach for the comparison, and it is a fair one — nine heads, a serpent’s body, a hero’s blade. But the morals diverge. The Lernaean Hydra is killed by strategy: cauterize the necks or the heads multiply. Xiangliu is killed outright, and the danger it poses outlives its own death, seeping up through the soil; where Hercules wins a trophy, Yu wins a construction problem — drained marshes, collapsed excavations, and finally a platform of sovereignty raised over poisoned ground. In Chinese flood mythology the enemy is the ruined land itself, and the weapon is engineering. The comparison now runs in both directions: the nine-headed xionghui of the Chu Ci’s “Heavenly Questions” shows the type circulating by the Warring States period, and in contemporary culture Xiangliu has become the default “Chinese Hydra” — a tragic, beloved nine-headed general in Tong Hua’s novel and the 2023 drama Lost You Forever (长相思), a Shanhaijing-themed skin line for Sima Yi in Honor of Kings (2025), and a fixture of online “Hydra vs. Xiangliu” myth debates.

🎲 D&D 5E: See the full stat block in the lore box below. CR 16 fierce beast, chaotic evil.

🎲 D&D 5E Stat Block

AC 18 (natural), HP 285 (22d12+156), Speed 40 ft., swim 80 ft. STR 24, DEX 14, CON 24, INT 13, WIS 17, CHA 18. Legendary Resistance (3/Day), Magic Resistance, Amphibious. Multiattack: 4 bites +13 (2d10+7 plus DC 20 Con or 22 (4d10) poison). Blighted Wake: ground within 10 ft. becomes poisoned marsh (difficult terrain, DC 20 Con or 11 (2d10) poison per turn). Blood of Barrenness: on death its blood floods a 30-ft. radius (DC 20 Con or 27 (5d10) poison, soil barren for a year). Nine-Headed Miasma (Recharge 5-6): 60-ft. cone, DC 20 Con or 54 (12d8) poison and poisoned 1 minute (save ends).