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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lam and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from

Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

I'd like to return once more to the world of Chinese mythology and legend in this episode.

You might remember our previous discussion of Chiseltooth, a monstrous ogre,

ultimately slain by the mighty archer Ho Yee. Well, today we have another unnatural creature

that only Yee or another suitable hero or god was capable of slaying the nine faces of death.

It's another being detailed in the classic of mountains and seas of the Shan Ha Xing,

which you might remember us recording an episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind about.

And as Shooting Knee describes in the excellent book Chinese Myths,

the entity's name Zhu Ying, or Nine Infants, doesn't quite convey the true monstrosity of the

creature. Because this creature does present you with the heads of Nine Infants, but these heads

are attached to a monstrous green or black serpentine body. Each head inflicts one of the

nine pains, burning, corroding, freezing, drowning, blinding, poisoning, violence, destruction,

and cruelty. The Anne-Berl translation of the Shan Ha Xing translates to the monster's name as

Aid Willum. It is also known as Shen Lu. This is the name astronomers give the only known moon of

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