Gonggong Breaks the Mountain and Nüwa Mends the Sky

Gonggong and Zhuanxu contended for the throne, and the two hosts fought long without a decision, so that the smell of water and the noise of weapons hung over the central lands all year. Beaten again and again, Gonggong withdrew in fury below Mount Buzhou.

He looked up at the great pillar that held the sky and struck it with his forehead. The root of the mountain broke with a roar, the rock of its summit fell into the clouds, and a long tear opened in the vault of heaven.

With the pillar broken, the sky tilted towards the northwest, and the sun, moon and stars have run on that western slant ever since; the earth sank towards the southeast, and the rivers all changed course and ran east.

Rain and fire poured together out of the tear. The forests burned away and the plains were swallowed by flood, while beasts and birds of prey came out in the confusion and preyed on the homeless people.

People left the settlements the water had taken and climbed to the cliffs. Fire still leaked down through the rent above, and the flood ran along the newly opened trenches of the earth, carrying away houses, fields and roads together.

Nüwa walked every quarter of the country gathering stones of five colours — blue, yellow, red, white and black — brought them to the edge of a great marsh, built a furnace, and burned them day and night without letting the fire go out.

The molten stone became five-coloured light, and she ladled it up and poured it into the tear in the vault, and the gap closed inch by inch until the rain and the fire came to an end.

The sky mended, she cut the four feet from a giant sea-turtle and set them at the four quarters of the earth in place of the broken pillar, and killed the black dragon that was troubling Jizhou, stopping the flooding there.

She then gathered reeds and burned them to ash, and heaped the ash at the mouths of the flood, and the water at last drew back. From then on the human world slowly recovered; but heaven and earth kept the shape of a high northwest and a low southeast, and the rivers have run east ever since.