Yu the Great married Nüjiao of the Tushan clan but passed his own home three times during thirteen years of flood labor without entering, leaving her to raise their son Qi of Xia alone — the boy who would become the first hereditary king.
After Gun was executed at Feather Mountain for failing to tame the Great Flood, his corpse refused to decay for three years until it was cut open and Yu the Great burst forth, inheriting his father's unfinished mission to master the waters.
Yinglong, the winged dragon who had fought for Huangdi at Zhuolu, aided Yu the Great in his flood labors, dragging his tail across the earth to carve channels that guided the waters to the sea.
Yu the Great slew Xiangliu, the nine-headed serpent minister of Gonggong, whose vomit fouled rivers and whose blood poisoned the earth so thoroughly that Yu the Great had to heap soil three times to make the land habitable again.
Emperor Shun appointed Yu the Great to succeed his father Gun in taming the Great Flood, and when Yu the Great triumphed where Gun had failed, Shun abdicated the throne to him — the last act of virtuous succession before hereditary kingship began.
He Bo, the god of the Yellow River, presented Yu the Great with the Hetu, a divine chart of the waterways that guided his labors in channeling the Great Flood to the sea.
Yu the Great wielded the Ruyi Jingu Bang as a divine measuring rod to sound the depths of rivers and seas while taming the great flood, then left it in the Eastern Sea where it became the stabilizing pillar of the ocean floor.
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