混沌仙傳 Handed Down Since Primal Chaos
逐句解 Line by line
Lift it and point once, and the sun goes dim; heaven and earth, ghosts and gods, all lose their nerve.
The boast reaches its top here. 膽怯, gall gone timid, is the ordinary Chinese for losing one's nerve — the gall bladder was the seat of courage, so a frightened person is literally short of gall. Applying it to heaven, earth, ghosts and gods together is a large claim, and after eighty-eight chapters the reader is not in a position to say it is false.
Handed down by immortals from primal chaos to this very day — it was never iron of the mortal world."
The poem ends where it began, at 混沌, primal chaos, so the whole history closes a circle. And the last line answers the boys' original question exactly: they asked why this weapon behaves differently from the other two, and the reply is that it is not made of the same stuff. 凡間鐵, iron of the mortal world, is the plainest phrase in a hundred and seventy characters of verse.
The poem closes by returning to its first word, which makes the rod's whole career a loop from chaos back to chaos.
And for all its extravagance it does answer the question. Two of these weapons are objects that a strong being carries; this one is a piece of the world's first material. That is a real distinction and it took twelve couplets to make.