At the beginning of time, there were ten suns in the sky, sons of the God of the East, Dijun, and the Goddess of the Sun, Xihe. Each day, the sons traveled across the sky one by one, carried by their mother across the heavens bringing warmth and light to the earth in its course. However, the suns grew tired of the routine, and they decided to rebel against their parents.

The ten suns agreed upon sharing the sky, and at once, ten suns shone from the heaven at the same time. The heat of the suns was unbearable, and the rivers below dried up and crops withered and died. Animals and monsters from deep forests scavenged human settlements for food and the ground became so dry it cracked and split.

Dijun, the father of the suns, tried to persuade his children not to bring calamity upon the earth, but they ignored him and continued in their mischief. Finally, when he had no other option, he summoned the great archer of the heavens, Houyi. Dijin gave Houyi a quiver of arrows and a bow, and he instructed him to subdue the sons and to restore peace on earth.

Houyi took the bow and arrows and arrived on the scorched earth. Like Dijin, he tried persuading the suns to take their turn, but soon gave up, and took up his bow and shot an arrow into the sky. The arrow hit a sun, as it exploded and fell to the ground with a thud, in the form of a black raven with three legs. Houyi proceeded to do this for the next eight suns, and when he finally came to the last sun, a great sage intervened and prevented him from shooting the sun, because without the sun, the world would be a cold and desolate place. So Houyi spared the last sun, leaving it to continue on its daily routines, warning it against any trouble in the future.

Houyi then proceeded to shooting the wild animals that had came out to feed during the dry season. When Houyi returned to heaven, Dijin was sympathetic and enraged. He knew that he had asked Houyi to subdue his sons, but Houyi had in fact killed his children, which Dijin could not forgive either. Eventually, Houyi was sent to earth with his wife Chang E, from their home in heaven.

Chang E was especially enraged by the goddess' decision, for it was not her who had shot down the nine suns. Being demoted from her place in the heavens, she was naturally sore about it. She thus complained constantly about it, and finally, Houyi decided to take the only possible path back to immortality- to find the Queen Mother of the West on Mount Kunlun, and to obtain an elixir of immortality.

When the Queen Mother heard their story, she was sympathetic, and she decided to give in to their wish, but she could not return them to their place in the heavens for it would have been against the will of heaven. She therefore gave them elixirs of eternal life, and put them into a box by which they might keep the elixirs until an auspicious day when they may take it. Before sending them off however, she explain that two elixirs would cause the person to become immortality, in the fashion of the elixir of immortality.

The couple was grateful to the Queen Mother, and returned home and waited for an auspicious day. However, as time passed, Chang E felt more and more indignant on why she should not be returned her place in heaven. Thus, she stole the elixirs from her husband, and took both the elixirs behind his back.

On taking the pills, she began to float into the air. Before she went back to heaven, she decided to visit the moon, for she had not the face to face the gods after having stolen an elixir from her husband. When she arrived on the moon, she found it empty and lifeless, and when she finally decided to go to heaven, she found herself unable to float anymore. Thus Chang E stayed on the moon, as the Goddess of the Moon.

Houyi was distraught when he found out about it. Not only had he lost his wife, he had also lost the elixir of life. Not wanting his skills to die along with him, he took on a disciple, Peng Meng, whom he trained till Peng Meng's skills were matched with his in all fields except in archery, where Houyi was easily able to surpass Peng Meng. He grew jealous of his teacher's archery skills, and his inability to defeat him and finally, while Houyi was vulnerable, he took the opportunity and killed him.

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