In the ancient days when the world was young and the boundaries between the heavens and the earth were thin, there lived a time of great sorrow and blistering heat. The Jade Emperor, ruler of the celestial realms, had ten sons who were the embodiments of the sun. In the beginning, they obeyed the cosmic order, rising one by one to cross the sky, providing the world with warmth and light in a gentle, predictable cycle. However, the sun-sons grew weary of their singular duties. In a fit of youthful rebellion and a desire for chaos, they decided to rise together, all ten of them appearing in the firmament simultaneously. The result was a catastrophe that nearly brought an end to all life on Earth. The forests turned to tinder and erupted in flames; the great rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River, began to boil and vanish into steam; the crops in the fields withered into black husks, and the people cried out in an agony that reached the very ears of the gods. It was during this age of fire that the hero Hou Yi emerged, a mortal of extraordinary strength and a master of the bow.
Hou Yi was a man of noble spirit and unmatched skill. Seeing the suffering of the people, he took up his legendary Vermillion Bow, a weapon crafted from the bones of tigers and strung with the sinews of dragons. He climbed to the highest peaks, including the sacred slopes of Mount Tai, where the air was thin and the suns felt close enough to touch. With a heart full of resolve, he notched his arrows and aimed at the sky. One by one, he loosed his shafts. Each arrow found its mark, striking a sun and transforming it into a three-legged golden crow that fell lifeless to the earth. Nine times the bowstring sang, and nine times a sun perished. As he prepared to notch his tenth and final arrow, he looked down at the scorched earth and realized that without any sun, the world would fall into eternal darkness and cold. He spared the final sun, commanding it to rise and set according to the proper law, ensuring that humanity would have both light to work by and darkness to rest. For his incredible feat, Hou Yi was hailed as the savior of mankind, and his fame spread to the furthest corners of the empire.
Yet, the act of killing the Jade Emperor's sons, even to save the world, bore a heavy price. Hou Yi and his beautiful wife, Chang'e, were stripped of their potential for divinity and consigned to live as mortals on the earth they had saved. Hou Yi, fearing the inevitability of death and the loss of his beloved wife, embarked on a perilous journey to the Kunlun Mountains, the dwelling place of the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wangmu. The journey was long and fraught with supernatural dangers, but Hou Yi's determination did not waver. When he finally reached the Queen Mother's peach orchards of immortality, she looked upon him with a mixture of pity and respect. She granted him a small jade vial containing a powerful elixir. The Queen Mother explained the nature of the draught: if two people shared the elixir, they would both live forever as immortals on Earth; however, if one person drank the entire vial, that person would ascend to the heavens and become a full deity. Hou Yi returned home and showed the treasure to Chang'e. They both agreed that they did not wish to be separated, and they decided to hide the elixir until a more auspicious time, preferring to live out their days together as a couple.