Zhyge Alu is the great culture hero of the Nuosu Book of Origins and perhaps the best-known figure of Liangshan-Yi oral tradition. His mother, Pumo Hniyyr, conceives him when three drops of blood from eagles and dragon-eagles circling overhead fall upon her as she weaves; the resulting child is so strange-natured that, refusing his mother's milk and bed, he is placed in a cave and reared by dragons, whence the dragon-element lu in his name. In the epic's central exploit he ends an early catastrophe of scorching heat by climbing a fir tree and shooting down the surplus suns and moons, leaving a single sun and a single moon to light the world. Bimo priests invoke him in exorcistic scriptures for his prodigious strength and power over ghosts, where he is often pictured alongside a dragon-like reptile, Bbahxa Ayuosse. He has become an emblem of Nuosu cultural identity, lending his name to the modern poetry of Aku Wuwu.