Sea-Settling Iron

Chain of Yu

Divine iron that chained the water fiend Wuzhiqi, prototype of the later stabilizer of the sea.

Legend says that while taming the floods Yu the Great captured the water fiend Wuzhiqi at Tongbai Mountain, chained his neck with divine iron and sealed him beneath Tortoise Mountain. The sea-settling iron pillar of Journey to the West continues this old myth of water control: the divine metal that stills the flood becomes, in time, the weapon of a hero.