Yuè Léifā 樂雷發 (lifedates uncertain, active c. 1240–1260), zì Shēngyuǎn 聲遠, sobriquet Xuějī xiānshēng 雪磯先生 (“Master of the Snow-Skerry”), was a native of Níngyuǎn 寧遠 in southern Húnán — about as remote a literary outpost as the late southern Sòng possessed. He failed the regular jìnshì examination repeatedly. In Bǎoyòu 1 (1253) his disciple Yáo Miǎn 姚勉 took the jìnshì zhuàngyuán (first place in the regular examination) but voluntarily memorialized requesting that the laureate’s seat be ceded to his teacher; the emperor Lǐzōng was moved by the gesture and decreed a special imperial examination of eight pre-set questions on statecraft, conferring on Yuè the tèkē dìyī rén 特科第一人 (first place in the special examination of 1253). Yuè, however, declined to take up office and returned to his Snow-Skerry retreat in Níngyuǎn, where he ended his days as a recluse.
His poetic style — though historically classed with the Jiānghúpài 江湖派 through inclusion in Chén Qǐ 陳起’s Jiānghú xiǎojí 江湖小集 anthology — is distinguished from that movement by its moral seriousness and fēnggǔ 風骨 vigor; the Sìkù editors compare him to Dù Mù 杜牧 and Xǔ Hún 許渾. His surviving collected works are the Xuějī cónggǎo 雪磯叢稿 in five juàn (KR4d0356), printed by his friends Lǐ Yì 李抑, Zhū Sìxián 朱嗣賢, and Hé Yáoqīng 何堯卿 with his reluctant authorial preface dated Bǎoyòu dīngsì (1257). The collection survives as a separately edited biéjí in the Sìkù.