Long before the written history of man, the universe operated under a strict and celestial harmony governed by the great Di Jun and his wife, Xihe, the goddess of the sun. Deep in the Eastern Valley of the Morning, there stood the Fusang tree, a colossal mulberry of such immense proportions that its branches brushed the very edges of the firmament. Upon this tree lived the children of Xihe: ten suns, each manifesting in the form of a golden, three-legged crow. These creatures were not merely birds, but entities of pure, unadulterated solar energy, their feathers shimmering with the intensity of a thousand fires and their third leg representing the generative power of the yang principle. By the decree of the heavens, the ten suns were meant to take turns. Each morning, Xihe would bathe one of her sons in the celestial waters of the pool and then drive him across the sky in her dragon-drawn chariot. While one sun illuminated the world of mortals, the other nine rested among the leaves of the Fusang tree, awaiting their designated day in the ten-day cycle. This order ensured that the Earth received exactly the amount of warmth and light needed for the crops to grow, the rivers to flow, and the people to prosper in peace.
However, the sun birds were young and possessed a wild, untamed spirit. They grew weary of the repetitive cycle and the long periods of rest in the branches of the Fusang tree. One morning, driven by a collective impulse for freedom and a desire to see the world together, all ten sun birds took flight at once. They burst into the sky, ignoring the frantic calls of their mother. The result was immediate and catastrophic. The combined heat of ten suns was more than the fragile Earth could bear. The lush forests of the Middle Kingdom turned to ash in moments; the great rivers, including the Yellow and the Yangtze, began to boil and vanish into steam. The soil cracked into deep, jagged chasms, and the harvests were incinerated before they could be gathered. People fled into caves to escape the blistering rays, but even there, the air grew so thin and hot that many perished. Monsters and demons, driven mad by the heat or sensing the weakness of the world, emerged from the shadows to prey upon the survivors. The harmony of the universe was shattered, and the world stood on the precipice of total annihilation.
Yao, the virtuous Emperor of China, looked upon the suffering of his people with a heavy heart. He offered prayers and sacrifices to the heavens, pleading for mercy. Di Jun, hearing the cries of the mortals and seeing the defiance of his sons, realized that the celestial order had to be restored by force. He summoned the divine archer Hou Yi, a being of extraordinary strength and precision who possessed a bow made of tiger bone and a quiver of arrows fashioned from the wood of the celestial laurel. Di Jun commanded Hou Yi to descend to the mortal realm and deal with the sun birds. While Di Jun hoped his sons could be frightened back into submission, he granted Hou Yi the authority to do whatever was necessary to save the Earth. Hou Yi, accompanied by his beautiful wife Chang'e, descended to the Kunlun Mountains, the highest peak that touched the heavens, serving as the axis mundi where the divine and the mortal overlapped. From these jagged, snow-capped heights, Hou Yi could reach the suns with his arrows.
Standing upon the highest ridge of Kunlun, Hou Yi felt the blistering heat searing his skin and the blinding light threatening his vision. He looked up at the sky, where ten suns moved in a chaotic, celebratory dance, oblivious to the destruction below. Hou Yi first tried to reason with them, shouting warnings that echoed across the mountain peaks, but the sun birds only laughed, their cries sounding like the crackling of a great forest fire. Seeing that words were useless, Hou Yi reached into his quiver and pulled out the first arrow. He drew the bowstring back with a strength that caused the air itself to hum with tension. He aimed at the center of the brightest sun bird and released. The arrow streaked across the sky, a line of white light cutting through the golden haze. It struck the sun bird with unerring precision. A great explosion of light followed, and then, to the amazement of those watching from below, the sun lost its spherical brilliance. It transformed back into its true avian form—a golden, three-legged crow—and plummeted through the atmosphere. As it fell, it left a trail of dark smoke, finally crashing into the distant horizon with the force of a falling star.