Purify Stones Patch Sky

According to myths, once upon a time, there was no sky; no land; no mountains, hills, lakes, or rivers; no flowers, grasses, trees or woods; no flying beasts nor walking animals; and, obviously, no humankind.  The millions of living creatures came only after axeman axed open the sky and land.  In an undocumented year, a piece of the West sky suddenly fell which created a hole and caused the water from the sky river to flow down to the human world in a wail and drowned countless humans, working animals and pets; the overflow of sky river immediately flooded the world below the sky.

At that time, there was a girl named Neuwa who resided in a cave on the cliff of a mountain that was unreachable by any sky water.  She saw first-hand the misfortune afflicted upon hundreds of names, felt empathetic towards their troubles and vowed to patch up the sky.  She left her residential cave at the cliff, climbed countless mountainous hills, glided across many great rivers, went everywhere to search and beg for a way to patch the sky; however, her efforts were fruitless.

She was extremely tired so she sat down to take a break and drifted off to sleep; a whimsical dream was made, a god in the dream told her that the top of Brocode Hill is filled completely by a pile of precious five colour stones; these stones can be purified by a massive fire and, after purification, can be used to patch the sky.

After Neuwa woke up, she immediately started sprinting to Brocode Hill.  Brocode Hill was tall, straight and steep; it had countless lions, tigers and other mean vile beasts; an average person cannot ascend the Hill.  Nonetheless, the heart of her thought had only one desire which was to quickly find the precious stone capable of patching the sky thus ending the disaster for hundreds of names below as early as possible; the fact that the road ahead was uneven and unsafe did not matter at all; she traveled day and night, and arrived at the bottom of Brocode Hill.  She lifted her head and took a glance; sharp thorns were everywhere, clutters of rocks resembled dog's teeth*, not only was there no way up, the hilltop has reached an unreachable height. Despite of this, she was not scared of dangerous obstacles, so she jostled through the sharp thorns and climbed over the clutters of rocks; her hands and legs were marked by a series of wounds, her face was also scarred; unable to tell day from night, she continued to ascend. When she became too weary from fatigue caused by the climb, a tiger emerged from one of the thickets of thorn bushes, bared its fang and slashed its claws** at her.  Neuwa was going to dodge but the tiger was one step faster, its claw got a hold of her and it opened its colossal mouth to bite her head off. She calmly said, "Tiger, don't you be primally hasty, my head is yours to eat but you have to wait until I get to the hilltop, find the precious stones and patch the hole up the sky above; you can come eat me then, is that ok?"

Tiger seemed to understand human and let her go.  Neuwa returned to her ascend; the hill got steeper, the mist grew thicker and she became too weary to move.  She fell, she crashed, she crawled, she tumbled but she continued marching on.  Suddenly, a gust of wild wind blew by, a male lion with golden mane jumped out from the forest, it got a firm hold of Neuwa's hair with a single bite.  Tiger came rushing from behind and roared at the lion, "The girl is my captive, says she need to patch the sky before I eat her, how dare you tried to steal and eat before me!"

Lion listened, set Neuwa down and began to fight with Tiger.  In the end, lion lost and was chased away by Tiger. However, Tiger was scared that Neuwa may be captured by lion again so it followed Neuwa until the hilltop.

Neuwa finally found the precious five colour stones on the hilltop.  She picked up a lot, piled the lot at the top of the hill, started a roaring fire to purify the pile for nine nine eight ten one days***, the purified pile became melted liquid, possibly lava and probably lava-like****.  Seeing the refined liquid, Neuwa was extremely delighted, and continuously and continually used her pair of hands to lift up the liquid and patch the sky until not a single drop of water fell from the hole up the sky did she relaxed and took a breath.  At this time, above the land hundreds of names saw the water from the sky river was no longer leaking below, they all reorganized their homes and resumed their happy and lively days.

Neuwa knew her task was complete; having fulfilled her wish, in keeping with her promise, she joyfully said to Tiger, "You may eat me now!".

After saying that, she elongated her neck, waited to be eaten by Tiger.  Oddly enough, Tiger did not eat instead said in a friendly manner, "How can I eat someone who makes blessings and sacrifices herself for others? On top of that, you patched the sky so well, the sight of it makes me happy.  You still have some melted liquid left, wouldn't it be safer to patch some more?"

Neuwa heard and thought Tiger was right, so she picked up all of the remaining melted liquid and raised both hands in preparation to patch the sky some more.  She saw she was almost at the top of the sky when a gust of wild wind came from the South ocean which tore trees down, shook mountains and blew the melted liquid away from Neuwa's hands.

Neuwa scrambled and, unexpectedly, began crying.  Tiger saw her like this and said to her, "Lady, first stop crying, get on my back quickly, we will chase the liquid back."

Neuwa stopped crying, immediately climbed onto Tiger's back.  Tiger jumped off the cliff, stepped on some not so ordinary colourful clouds and ran towards the melted liquid emitting a mesmerizing glow of lights.

Tiger piggybacking Neuwa flew over three hills and five hells, flew across yellow rivers as well as long rivers*****, because the wind was too fast Tiger could not catch up.    Eventually, the wind  settled, Tiger sped up, but that mesmerizing colourful melting liquid was already slowly falling down towards the vast great land below, all Tiger could do was chase downwards with all its might.  They pursued all the way to the aerial area above Cave Patio Lake*****. Tiger seeing the pursuit was coming to an end, let out a few celebratory roars and slowed down. At this lightning-fast instantaneous moment, Neuwa failed to catch the melted liquid in time and watched it fall straight into Cave Patio Lake.  As soon as the melted liquid fell into the lake, everything instantly turned colourful, a ray of rainbow illuminated the clear and radiant lake; shortly after, the melted liquid emerged out from the lake as seventy-two hill tips, each in a different shape, half floating and half sinking into the lake.  This landscape was a welcomed change of scenery to Cave Patio Lake which was once white as jade.

Although Neuwa was feeling unfortunate; however, she also felt the falling of the melted liquid into the human world was a good thing.  She got down and stood at a tip of a hill that has not been fully formed yet; her feets stepped on liquid melted from green precious stones and left her footprints behind.  She continued for a few more steps.  Turns out, a soft hill tip finished forming and became a small island.

An unknown period of time has passed, a queen****** came searching for her husband on this hill, learned that her king has passed away and cried herself to death on this hill; the people that came after named this mountain "Hubby Mountain".

***

*dog's teeth is a literal translation; if the original text was written in mythical language tiger's teeth may have been used in place of dog's teeth; dog's teeth, if not translated in a literal way, could have been translated as canines or canine teeth.
**bare its fang and slashed its claws, if translated in a literal way would be bare teeth dance claw.  It is a four character term used to describe someone or something as intimidating and/or terrifying.
***nine nine eight ten one days is a literal translation.  The original text could mean eighty-one days because nine times nine is eighty-one.   In other words, each roaring fire started by Neuwa boiled the precious stones for nine days and the purification was not complete until she boiled the stones with the same magnitude of heat nine times.  As such, the purification lasted eighty-one days.
****translator's note: the original text did not use the word lava but it could very well be lava.  We will never know.  This is an ancient myth.
*****yellow river long river is a literal translation.  There are two terms for River in Chinese.  The first river term is just river, the other river term is for big rivers only.  In other words, Tiger flew across some of the biggest rivers, which may also be known today as the Yellow River and Yangtze River.
*****Cave Patio Lake is a literal translation.  According to the translator's elders, the Lake set out in the original text is still in existence today.  See Places page for its name written in traditional Chinese characters.
******The Queen could have been Neuwa or another lady.

Edit One: January 15, 2018. Minor grammar changes and major sentence change in the paragraph preceding the final paragraph.