The Final Wu–Yao Battle

After the ten suns rose together, Kuafu died on the road chasing them and Hou Yi shot nine golden crows down. When word reached the Heavenly Court, Dijun and Donghuang Taiyi called up the demon hosts; on the earth the Ancestral Witches gathered their peoples before Pangu Hall.

Star banner after star banner was brought from the treasury of the Heavenly Court into its station, three hundred and sixty-five demon gods each holding a chief banner and thousands of demon soldiers ranged through the heavens. Dijun spread the Hetu and Luoshu to hold the centre, and Taiyi stood before the array with the Chaos Bell.

The Wu peoples gathered below Mount Buzhou from the rivers, the volcanoes, the snowfields and the forests, the great witches walking before them with stone axes, long spears and great bows. Houtu had already become the six paths, and the remaining Ancestral Witches still joined the array with their own blood, raising above the earth a vast figure of Pangu that was not yet whole.

The Zhou-Heaven Star Formation opened first in the heights, the stars showing by daylight and a thousand million rays of starlight pressing down onto the mountains and rivers. The vast figure of Pangu swung its arms from the earth and scattered the falling star-river, and the Wu armies charged towards the Heavenly Court over the broken mountain roads.

Starlight struck the ground and the peaks broke one after another, rivers dammed by falling rock. The Ancestral Witches drove into the demon array, tore down star banners and brought their holders and the gates down together; the departments of the Heavenly Court turned the array again and again so that starlight fell like rain after the great Witch bodies.

Dijun left the centre and entered the fighting himself, closing with the Ancestral Witches among the broken heavenly palaces. Demon gods and great witches fell from the heights one after another, and the Demon Emperor and several Ancestral Witches died in the confusion, while the Hetu and Luoshu slipped out of the scattering light of the array.

Donghuang Taiyi carried the Chaos Bell on into the Wu ranks, and each time it rang the star banners, palace walls and mountains near him broke together. The remaining Ancestral Witches met him at the heart of the array, and a last burst of fire swallowed the Chaos Bell and the figures around it.

The starlight above went out by degrees, and the vast figure of Pangu scattered in the wind. Most of the halls of the Heavenly Court had fallen, and broken banners and weapons lay everywhere about Mount Buzhou; the surviving Yao peoples withdrew to the northern sea, the deep mountains and the stars, and what was left of the Wu carried their wounded away from their old settlements.

There was never again a Heavenly Court of ten thousand demons under Dijun and Taiyi, and twelve Ancestral Witches were never again gathered before Pangu Hall. Humankind came out of the valleys once the two clans had withdrawn; and only later, when Haotian was ordered into the heavens, was a Heavenly Court raised again upon those old halls.