The Flood Tragedy That Closes the Book
The received text of the Classic ends with a tragedy five sentences long. The flood swelled up to heaven. Gun stole the god's xirang — the swelling earth — to dam the waters, without waiting for the god's command. The god ordered Zhurong to kill Gun in the outskirts of Yushan, Feather Mountain. From Gun's body Yu was born. The god then charged Yu to spread the soil and at last settle the Nine Provinces. Guo Pu's commentary explains the stolen treasure: xirang is earth that grows of itself without end, and so could fill a flood.
The details lie scattered in other books. The Heavenly Questions presses on the injustice: why was Gun pent up at Yushan three years without decaying? How did Yu issue from his father's belly? Guo Pu, quoting the Guizang, supplies the scene: after three years unrotted, Gun's belly was opened with a Wu blade, and a yellow dragon — Yu — emerged. The Zuo Commentary preserves another ending, in which Gun's spirit became a yellow bear and plunged into the Yu abyss.
A theft of divine substance to save humankind, execution by the god, the work completed by a successor: the skeleton is often read alongside Prometheus and the theft of fire. Within China's own flood lore, Gun's damming against Yu's channeling became the paired metaphor of hydraulics and statecraft for two thousand years. And by closing with this story — flood subdued, provinces founded — the Classic of Mountains and Seas finishes building its world in its very last line.
