The War of Dao and Demon

The dragon, phoenix and qilin clans had killed one another for so long that the killing-force gathered on their battlefields never dispersed, and drifted west with the wind towards Mount Sumeru. Luohou, who had lived hidden in that mountain for years, saw it coming and drew it in day and night, refining it into the foundation of his own Dao.

With that force gathered, Luohou set out a great formation with Mount Sumeru as its root, hanging the swords Zhuxian, Luxian, Xianxian and Juexian at its four gates, and covered the country with a formation chart that quietly locked the earth-veins of the west so that no outsider could see into it.

Hongjun noticed the black vapour of the west rising straight into the sky and never thinning, and set out west to look into it. Coming below Mount Sumeru he saw the killing-force coiling about its summit and the four sword-gates showing faintly in the mist.

Hongjun invited Yinyang, Qiankun and Yangmei to enter the formation with him, and the four took one gate each and pressed inward against the sword-qi. Within there was neither sun nor moon, only four streams of sword-light showing and fading in the black fog, and the rocks along the way split at a touch and blew away as fragments.

The sword-force at the two gates Yinyang and Qiankun held was the fiercest, and the two fell one after another inside the formation. Hongjun and Yangmei still pressed towards its heart, the rock breaking layer by layer beneath their feet and the killing-force thickening about them.

The four gates were broken one after another, and the swords Zhuxian, Luxian, Xianxian and Juexian were lifted down from their lintels one by one. The formation chart hanging over the summit of Mount Sumeru, no longer weighted by the four swords, came loose and fell into the mist, and the great formation collapsed.

With all four gates broken, Luohou drew on the deep numinous veins of the west. The country cracked and shook again and again, half of Mount Sumeru fell in with the noise of it, and the dust hid half the sky.

Amid the collapse Luohou left his oath: that thereafter, wherever a cultivator moved with greed, hatred or delusion, the demonic calamity would rise from it. With that his form passed into the black vapour, and the fires below Mount Sumeru died down by degrees, leaving only scorched earth and broken walls.

Hongjun took up the swords and left the west, and afterwards opened his seat at Zixiao Palace, and gave the four Zhuxian swords and the formation chart to Tongtian. When the Investiture war came, Tongtian hung the four swords on four gates again.