The story of Qiangliang

Qiangliang was engendered by Pangu’s blood and woke in Pangu Hall alongside the other Ancestral Witches. Honghuang novels usually describe him with a tiger’s head on a human body, a long snake in his mouth and two more in his hands, with the force of thunder carried in his blood from birth.

Qiangliang never knotted a primordial spirit as the adepts of the Mystic Gate did. He tempered his body day after day instead, calling on thunder directly through his Ancestral Witch blood. Leaving Pangu Hall, he went to Thunder Marsh and the valleys of the northeast and gathered the Wu hosts there.

After Dijun and Donghuang Taiyi raised the Yao Heavenly Court above, Qiangliang swore the oath with the other Ancestral Witches before Pangu Hall. The Wu clan held the land of Honghuang in divided watch, while the Yao clan came down from the heavens to contest its mountains, rivers and peoples.

In the first Wu–Yao war Qiangliang held one quarter with his brothers and sisters and poured the force of his blood into the Twelve Capital Gods and Demons Formation. Twelve streams of divine malice gathered inside it into Pangu’s true body, which struck the Yao clan’s Zhou-Heaven Star Formation high in the air.

Qiangliang showed the Wu hosts his true Ancestral Witch body, with a tiger’s head on a human body, a long snake in his mouth and two more in his hands. The figure and the name are largely drawn from the old myth-geographies such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas; ranking him among the Twelve Ancestral Witches was the work of later Honghuang novels.

In the later stories Qiangliang’s people live in Thunder Marsh and the valleys of the northeast. They raise no temples and refine neither primordial spirits nor treasures; they temper sinew and bone through their Ancestral Witch blood alone, and guard their settlements with the force of thunder.

When the Wu and the Yao clans fought, Qiangliang took the field with the Twelve Ancestral Witches. Each people bound its banners, its warriors and the earth-veins it held into one, and then sent twelve streams of blood-force into the Twelve Capital Gods and Demons Formation.

After Houtu passed into the six paths of rebirth, a seat stood empty in Pangu Hall. When Qiangliang worked the formation with the other Ancestral Witches again, the twelve streams could no longer be complete as they once were — yet the Wu clan still chose battle when the Yao clan moved the stars.

In the last decisive Wu–Yao battle Qiangliang led his people up from the earth against the Yao Heavenly Court. Starlight came down like rain; Ancestral Witch bodies, demon banners and star formations struck one another again and again, and the field ran from the foot of Mount Buzhou all the way to the gates of heaven.

The surviving ancient myths record nothing of Qiangliang fighting the Wu–Yao war as an “Ancestral Witch”. Later Honghuang novels usually have him die in that last battle, but they agree on neither the opponent, the ground, nor the manner of it.

Qiangliang entered neither the Mystic Gate nor the Investiture List of the Heavenly Court. When the fighting quieted his people either followed a surviving great witch away or scattered into the human tribes, and in Pangu Hall his seat was never filled again.