Phantom Butterfly

Blue and pink scaled wings open like small sails, and the eye-spots on the wing surface shift with the light. The lower body becomes coiling fin-ribbons that can shatter into butterfly fragments under attack, then gather again elsewhere.

It migrates along bands of light. The eye-spots turn with each change of brightness; when struck, it breaks into falling fragments and reforms in another place.

Recorded in Lingnan Yiwu Zhi. Even now, seafarers pursue it for its “exceedingly rich flesh,” rarely stopping to decide whether it is auspicious or cursed.