Chapter Eleven: Three Hundred Giants:

3,000 years ago, giant monsters roamed free across the continent of Asia. They brought misery upon humans, basically treating them like snacks while by chowing down on their crops, livestock, and even their babies. It was worse when the humans fought back. Wherever the monsters walked, the ground shook, people trembled and scurried away in fear. Those with wings whipped up storms that went on for days to months. The humans barely had time to bury their dead.

Pretty soon, the humans grew tired of the chaos. They turned to priests for help.

“Please!” they begged. “We can’t take this anymore!” The priests got to work straight away. Everything they tried—spells, charms, rituals— nothing worked. The giants only became angrier. Over time, their hunger increased to the point where they began to consume the adult humans too. What made things unbearable was that the attacks became more frequent, bloody, and random.

It took more than a decade for the gods to intervene. They grew bored with the constant destruction in Chijou. Killing the monsters proved fruitless. When one died, two more sprang forth from its dying shell. The new generation turned out to be scarier than their forebears. When the slaughter didn’t yield the desired efforts, the gods met to decide on a new course of action.

“We can’t go on like this,” Houtu complained. “There will be nothing left of us.”

“Killing them hasn't worked,” Guo Ziyi pointed out.

“We just can’t leave them as is,” Laozi said. “We’ve got to do something!”

The gods argued for twelve days. They kept going around in circles, chattering endlessly, but not making any progress. Interestingly, one of their number -Pangu- sat quietly among them the entire time. In his mind, he had been working out his own solution. He was exacting in his details. Each part of the plan had to be absolutely flawless. There was no room for error. Any miscalculation, no matter how small would bring his entire plan to ruin. On the last day, he rose to his feet and addressed his peers.

“Why don’t we trap them” Pangu asked. The gods looked up, stunned.

“What?” they asked.

“Please listen,” Pangu said. “We can’t kill them and they can’t stay on the earth as they are. Why not lock them away somewhere?”

“Where would we put them?” Ao Guang asked.

“I have just the place,” Feng Bo said.

From there, the guards began plotting. On August 6th, Longmu attracted the giants with song and steamed rice cakes. Her dragon children fanned the food’s aroma into the wind with their wings. One by one, the giants walked toward a massive pit dug in the center of the city. It was a portal straight to the bowels of hell. They fell in like lemmings over a cliff. The gods counted each one as they tumbled into the pit. After the last monster fell in the pit, the gods sealed the pit forever. For the first time in years, humans enjoyed peace and quiet.

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The seal, however could only hold the pit closed for so long. Descendants of the gods could feel it in the earthquakes shaking East Asia. It wouldn’t be long before the seal finally broke and the giants shook the earth. On August 6th, 1944, the seal was destroyed when the A-bomb fell.

The scientists in China have diligently worked to create a special “key” to keep the giants sealed in the pit in Hell, ever since. They struggled with spells and charms to keep the seal intact while each successive attempt failed. The keys had been useless.

Finally, in 2010, a successful key was created.