Luohou

By this common telling, a great many followers of the demonic path gathered under Luohou, each holding some remote corner of the world. They lay low by day and moved by night, harvesting the resentment left by slaughter to swell their strength, and in time the west became the ground of the demonic path.

The dragon, phoenix and qilin clans had each kept to their own place. Luohou spread rumours in secret, set the three suspecting one another, and quietly helped one of them strike at another’s weak point, until the rifts between them widened into open war.

When the war of the three clans first broke out Luohou stayed hidden behind it and watched the disorder. Only when all three had wounded each other badly and spent their strength did he appear, meaning to take the Dao of the world while it lay open.

Luohou set out the Zhuxian Sword Formation in the west, hanging the four blades — Zhuxian, Luxian, Xianxian and Juexian — at its four gates. Demonic vapour filled it like ink-black cloud, blotting out the sky, and for a hundred li around every plant withered.

On the day it was finished the sky over the west changed colour. Wind drove the sand, stones flew like rain, and whoever came near felt his spirit waver and his footing turn unsteady, so that nobody would approach.

Hongjun led the other great powers against the formation, four of them holding one gate each and pressing the attack with everything they had, while Luohou inside moved the demonic vapour to hold them off. The two sides fought for a long while, and the gates were broken and closed again and again.

In the melee sword-light and demonic vapour struck against one another until heaven and earth shook, distant mountains split, rivers ran backwards, and for a time the sky darkened until day could not be told from night.

The four swords were taken one by one and the formation’s force fell away. Luohou saw that the day was lost and still fought on, refusing to give an inch.

The force of the earth-veins turned back on him. Luohou’s vitality was broken and his frame wasted, and at last, in the decisive battle of Dao against demon, his strength gave out; his soul scattered over the western desert.

Luohou was dead, but the demon clans that survived him did not disperse. They gathered in the wilderness and swore to heaven that they would return one day to answer the defeat.

The four Zhuxian swords and the formation chart passed out of Luohou’s hands and, after several turns, came to Tongtian Jiaozhu of the Jie Sect — the seed of the Investiture calamity to come.

In the common expansions, Luohou made Mount Sumeru the base of his western holdings, raising demon halls across the mountain and gathering his followers there, so that the mountain commanded the whole western desert.

Luohou kept a demon-refining ground on Mount Sumeru where his followers cultivated and drew in vapour. Black mist hung over the mountain all year, and ordinary cultivators would not go near it.

In laying his plans against the three clans, Luohou did more than sow suspicion: he sent his followers quietly into the key places of each clan and waited. Wherever a clan fell into internal quarrel or left a position thinly held, they fanned the fire and deepened the losses.

In the decisive fighting Luohou held both Mount Sumeru and the Zhuxian Sword Formation. He sent his demon hosts to hold the mountain gate to the death while he sat in the formation himself and worked the four swords, fighting on two lines and trying to drag matters out until the west should turn in his favour.

The mountain gate was broken at last and more than half the demon host was killed. The remainder fell back into the formation to join Luohou; Mount Sumeru was left in ruins, its old demon halls fallen, its black mist thinning away.