Ten Suns Rise
In ancient times, the ten sons of the Heavenly Emperor — the three-legged golden crows — were meant to take turns driving the sun chariot across the sky. Each dawn, one crow would depart from the Fusang tree in the east and traverse the heavens from east to west. But one day, all ten crows took flight at once.
Ten suns blazed across the sky simultaneously. Fire poured from the heavens like waterfalls. Rivers dried up, vegetation withered, and the earth cracked like a spiderweb. Fierce beasts burst from the forests, monstrous birds swooped from above, and the people cried out in anguish amid scorching heat and famine.
The Divine Bow
Emperor Yao could not bear his people's suffering. He prayed earnestly to the Heavenly Emperor, who dispatched the divine archer Houyi to the mortal realm — armed with a red divine bow and white arrows — to discipline the ten suns and save all living things.
“Yao sent Houyi to slay the tusked beast at Chouhua, kill the nine-headed serpent at Xiongshui, bring down the great wind at Qingqiu, and shoot down the ten suns while destroying the Yà yǔ below.”
— Huainanzi, Běnjīng Xùn
Houyi climbed a great mountain and drew his divine bow. The bowstring's thunder echoed across heaven and earth. A white arrow streaked across the sky — the first sun fell, becoming the wreckage of a golden crow. Unmoved, Houyi drew again. Arrow after arrow, nine suns crashed to earth. As he raised his tenth arrow, Emperor Yao stopped him: leave one sun, so the world still has light and warmth.
The Hero's Price
Yet the nine fallen suns were the Heavenly Emperor's own sons. Though Houyi had acted under orders, the Emperor could not forgive him. As punishment, he stripped both Houyi and his wife Chang'e of their immortality, banishing them forever to the mortal world.
The Many Faces of Houyi
Across different texts, Houyi appears in vastly different forms. In the Shanhaijing, he is a god. In the Huainanzi, a hero acting on Emperor Yao's orders. In the Chuci, a tragic figure who lost everything. Together, these versions form one of the most complex hero archetypes in Chinese mythology.
Houyi refused to accept his fate. Hearing that the Queen Mother of the West possessed the elixir of immortality, he journeyed to Mount Kunlun. Moved by his sincerity, she gave him enough for two. But the tragedy of fate was only beginning — this is the prologue to the tale of Chang'e Ascending to the Moon.