The story of The Three Clans and the Contest of Dao and Demon

The common Honghuang account divides the early peoples into three great clans: the Ancestral Dragon leading the scaled and armoured water creatures, the Primal Phoenix the birds, and the First Qilin the beasts.

The three spread outward along the rivers and seas, the sky and the plains. Their soldiers met first where water and land border each other, and later crossed those borders and carried the war across the world.

The dragons came out of the water onto land, the phoenixes brought down fire-feathers from the heights, and the qilin peoples met them among the hills and rivers. The war lasted a long time, and the blood and resentment of the fallen sank into the earth.

The same account has Luohou use the war of the three clans to gather killing-force in the west. He made Mount Sumeru his seat and hung the four swords Zhuxian, Luxian, Xianxian and Juexian above the four gates of his formation.

The malice of the west rose beyond the sky, and Hongjun came to Mount Sumeru with Yangmei, Yinyang, Qiankun and others. They entered the four gates separately, sword-light cut back and forth inside, and the mountain walls and halls came down in the fighting.

Yinyang and Qiankun died in the formation one after another in this account, and Hongjun and Yangmei pressed further in. The four sword-gates were broken in turn, and the four Zhuxian swords and the formation chart passed out of Luohou’s hands.

Luohou fell within Mount Sumeru. Some Honghuang continuations have him burst his demon body at the last, others have him swear the oath of the demonic path with his death; and the war on Mount Sumeru ended there.

By then the strength of the three clans had been spent in years of war. The peoples led by the Ancestral Dragon, the Primal Phoenix and the First Qilin withdrew one after another from the struggle over the central lands, and the survivors fell back to the seas, the volcanoes and the forests.

Hongjun took up the four Zhuxian swords and the formation chart and left the ruined west. Later Zixiao Palace opened beyond the heavens, and the cultivators who had risen after the three clans left the stage began to travel there to hear him.