THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The Mound of Kunlun 'is in truth the lower capital of the High God', and the god Luwu keeps it. The 'Classic of the Western Mountains' describes him with a tiger's body and nine tails, a human face and tiger's claws, charged with the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the God's own park.
Guo Pu's commentary identifies Luwu with Jianwu: the Zhuangzi, listing beings who attained the Way, says 'Jianwu attained it, and thereby dwells on the great mountain' — a fitting match for the warden of Kunlun. The 'Classic of Regions Within the Seas: West' records another guardian, the Kaiming beast, 'large as a tiger, with nine heads, every one a human face', standing on Kunlun facing east to keep its nine gates; Yuan Ke's modern critical edition treats Kaiming and Luwu as two refractions of a single guardian deity.
As gatekeeper of the celestial capital, Luwu shares the mountain with the man-eating Tulou and the lethally venomous bird Qinyuan; among them they account for most of Kunlun's forbidding aspect.
