He was a scholar and official, reaching the rank of district magistrate in Xiao Huang 小黃 (near modern Kaifeng 开封, Henan).
I am inclined to agree with those who attribute the book to Cui Zhuan (崔篆), a scholar and official who was active in the time of the Wang Mang interregnum (9 - 23 CE).
The verse uses an image from Chinese mythology in which Yu is supposed to have carved out a mountain as part of his herculean labors changing the flood pattern of China.
The Song dynasty Yi Jing scholar Shao Yong is said to have used the Forest of Changes as part of his system of Plum Blossom Numerology.
Dating the Text The following items lend credence to at least portions of the text being written later than the lifetime of Jiao Yan Shou (1st century BCE), the purported author: The Red Lord, mentioned in 28 - 34, is a mythological figure that became popular in the waning days of the Western Han, and is to be found in the so-called Han Apocrypha literature.
References to the Queen Mother of the West as a goddess to whom prayers for rescue are directed place the book at or near the end of the Western Han since an attitude toward her as a saving figure was not observed until that time (See Loewe, 1979).