Yi is an archer, and the Huainanzi introduces him as an instrument of government. In the reign of Yao, ten suns rise together and the crops burn; six monsters are abroad in the land. Yao does not fight them himself — he commissions a specialist.
逮至堯之時，十日並出，焦禾稼，殺草木，而民無所食。猰貐、鑿齒、九嬰、大風、封豨、修蛇皆為民害。堯乃使羿誅鑿齒于疇華之野，殺九嬰于凶水之上，繳大風於青丘之澤，上射十日而下殺猰貐，斷修蛇於洞庭，禽封豨于桑林，萬民皆喜，置堯以為天子
“By the time of Yao, ten suns came out together; they scorched the grain and the crops, killed the plants and trees, and the people had nothing to eat. Yayu, Zaochi, Jiuying, Dafeng, Fengxi and Xiushe all preyed upon the people. So Yao sent Yi to execute Zaochi in the wilds of Chouhua, to kill Jiuying on the banks of the Xiong River, to net Dafeng in the marsh of Qingqiu, to shoot the ten suns above and slay Yayu below, to cut Xiushe in two at Dongting, and to take Fengxi in the Mulberry Forest. The people were all glad, and set up Yao as the Son of Heaven.” — Huainanzi, “Benjing”; tr. Mythos Atlas
The passage is worth reading closely, because it is not really a monster-slaying story. It is an argument about legitimacy: the disasters come first, Yi clears them, and the people therefore enthrone Yao. Yi’s marksmanship is the evidence of the ruler’s mandate, and the archer himself gets no throne out of it.
The suns are the sons of Dijun and Xihe, and there were meant to be ten of them taking turns, one each day, driven across the sky in order. They come out together out of mischief, and the world begins to die. Yi shoots them down one by one — later tellings have crows fall from the sky with each hit, three-legged crows being what a sun contains — and stops at nine, either from mercy or because Yao quietly removes an arrow from his quiver. The single remaining sun is the one still overhead.
Having saved the world he is punished for it, in a way that varies by source: killing the sun-children of a god is not a thing that goes unanswered, and Yi is expelled from heaven to live as a mortal. This is why he seeks out Xiwangmu in the west and obtains from her the drug that would restore his immortality — enough for one person to ascend, or for two to live long on earth. His wife Chang’e takes it while he is out, and rises alone to the moon.
The shape is close to Heracles: a commissioned strongman who performs an ordered list of impossible tasks for a ruler he does not replace, saves everyone, and is undone at home rather than in the field. The Chinese version is bleaker about the bargain. Yi does everything asked of him and ends with neither heaven, nor the elixir, nor his wife.
