“It is too polite to say.”
A Jade immortal of The Shanhai Wilds
3 known connections · an open question
The Knowing Beast: white-bodied, horned, lion-maned, who met the Yellow Emperor on the seashore and dictated the names and weaknesses of 11,520 demons — the entire demon census, in one sitting. The chart it inspired was China's first monster manual. It knows your weakness too. It is too polite to say.
It is sitting by the seashore right now, watching the waves, while a demon lurks in the dunes behind it, unaware that it has been catalogued. The Baize is being polite about it.
One day it will meet the 11,521st demon — the one that wasn't in the census, the one nobody named — and instead of dictating its weakness, the Baize will simply nod, and let it pass. Some demons, it will have decided, are not weaknesses. They are just weather.
“It has dictated 11,520 demons' names and weaknesses without hesitation — the whole census, in one sitting. Last month a traveler asked it, politely, for one more name: the name behind the four blank tablets. The Baize went silent, which it has never done. Then it said, also politely, that some entries are not in the census. The traveler did not ask twice.”
The Baize was asked for a name, and declined to answer.
The old bestiary, personified: nine-tailed foxes, torch dragons, the faceless dancer Hundun, the rain-bringing Yinglong, the white sage-beast Baize. Every strange thing about them is in the ancient books — nothing made up.
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