Kuafu Chases the Sun and Hou Yi Shoots the Suns Down

Ten golden crows roosted in the Fusang tree in the Valley of Hot Water. Ordinarily they took the sky by turns, one each day, their light and heat following one another. One day all ten left the Fusang together, and ten burning suns hung in the sky at once.

With ten suns above, the rivers, lakes and marshes dried away day by day, fields and woods withered in the heat, the ground cracked like a net, birds and beasts had nowhere to hide, and the tribes of every quarter began to run out of food and water.

Kuafu came out from the Wu tribes with a wooden staff and chased the shadow of the sun across range after range. When thirst overcame him he bent and drank the Yellow River dry, then the River Wei, and still could not quench it, and turned north towards the great marsh to drink that as well.

Before he reached the edge of the marsh, Kuafu’s strength gave out under the burning sun and he fell. The staff in his hand dropped and sank into the earth, and afterwards a grove of peach trees grew there, thick with branches and heavy with fruit.

Hou Yi heard what had happened to Kuafu and came to the place where he had fallen. Seeing the ground split across and men and animals scorched alike, he climbed a high mountain, took his bow in hand, and looked up at the ten suns.

Hou Yi drew and loosed, and the first arrow passed through the burning light; a golden crow fell from the sky at the sound of the string, and as it struck the ground its golden feathers scattered through the valleys. Nine suns still hung above.

Hou Yi drew nine times more, and nine golden crows came down one after another, until one alone was left at the centre of the sky. The human world cannot be without a sun, and the last arrow was never loosed, so that one sun remained.

The heat drew back by degrees, water ran again in the long-dry riverbeds, the plants put out new shoots, and the tribes of every quarter had room to breathe.

In the Honghuang web-fiction synthesis, the ten golden crows are the sons of Dijun and Xihe, and Kuafu and Hou Yi are written as great witches of the Wu clan. When word of the nine dead sons reached the Yao Heavenly Court, Dijun and Donghuang Taiyi called the demon hosts together to demand an accounting, and the Wu clan gathered its armies before Pangu Hall; from there the two clans moved by degrees towards their last great battle.