Beware at your own peril.note
The Four Perils (四凶; Sì Xiōng, Shikyō in Japanese) are a group of four creatures that in Chinese Mythology were banished by the gods and loosely correspond to The Four Gods.
The Four Perils are described as follows:
- The Hundun (混沌) represents Chaos, and is described as a faceless, six-legged creature. In Japanese, it is known as Konton.
- The Qiongqi (穷奇) represents Deviousness, and has had its description vary depending on the source material. According to the 4th century BCE work Shanhaijing, the Qiongqi is a winged tiger that eats the heads of people, while the Shenyijing asserts that it resembles a cow with a fox's tail and the head of a dog. In Japanese, it is known as Kyuki.
- The Taotie (饕餮) represents Gluttony. The Shanhaijing and the Shenyijing describe it as a human-faced, sheep-like beast with eyes beneath its armpits and an infant's voice. Its extreme appetite is such that it is commonly depicted on ancient cooking pots. In Japanese, it is known as Toutetsu.
- The Taowu (檮杌) represents Ignorance. The Shanhaijing describes it as having a human face, a tiger's feet, a pig's tusks, and a tail 18 feet long. Its fatal flaw is that of stubbornness, growling at criticism and advice and remaining ignorant of social etiquette. In Japanese, it is known as Toukotsu.
Like The Four Gods, the Four Perils have also made their appearances in various forms of media such as films and video games.
See Beast with a Human Face for depictions of creatures with human faces, which include the Taotie and Taowu. See Extreme Omni-Goat for instances of bovids with gluttonous appetites, which may overlap with depiction of the Taotie. For another quartet associated with doom and other dire events, see Horsemen of the Apocalypse. See Our Yaoguai Are Different for other varieties of Chinese demons.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Four Knights of the Apocalypse: The Elite Four of Camelot—Ironside the Red Knight, Pellegarde the Black Knight, Beltreipe the Green Knight, and Worreldane the White Knight—are collectively known as the Shikyō. It's officially translated here as the "Four Evils", which is an Ironic Name, since the four (sans Pellegarde) are Knight Templars who consider themselves to be heroic defenders against the Four Knights of the Apocalypse, the true heroes.
- Inuyasha: The Shikyō/Four Perils appear as Yōkai led by Beast King Kirinmaru early on in the story.
- Shaman King: The Four Perils feature in the Red Crimson spinoff, where they're portrayed as sealed spirits used by the Tao family in divination practices.
Film — Live-Action
- The antagonists of The Great Wall are the Tao Tei, a Horde of Alien Locusts devouring anything in their path that the Great Wall of China was built to keep out. Their eyes are located in their shoulders and their heads are emblazoned with ridges resembling the taotie motif in ancient Chinese bronzes.
- The Hundun appears in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, where they are also known as Dijiang. They're not 'perilous' at all, instead being peaceful, spaniel-sized Ridiculously Cute Critters. One Hundun named Morris serves as a supporting character, serving as the companion of Trevor Slattery.
Literature
- Iron Widow: For thousands of years, Huaxia has been locked in a Forever War against the Hunduns, a robotic Horde of Alien Locusts that want to feed on the planet's qi, which humanity is in the way of. The most common Hundun type is a faceless, six-legged blob. They're named after the Hundun of myth even in-universe, and the Humongous Mecha Huaxia fights them with are made from dead Hunduns, the same way the original Hundun was killed by human hands but reshaped into the universe. In truth, it's humanity that's foreign to the planet, harvesting its resources the way they accuse the Hunduns of. As the planet's native inhabitants, the Hundun are simply resisting an Alien Invasion.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The creature represented by a Tao-tieh
figurine in Darkest Depths, which is a reference to Pathfinder and acts similarly to said basis, attacking things by eating them and its Pocket Dimension stomachs.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder has a taotieh monster.
- Scion: Hundun is the Titan of Chaos, and the one that the Chinese gods (who represent Order) are opposed to in a conflict of Order Versus Chaos. In addition, the Qiongqi appears as a monster for players to fight or as a potential birthright for Chinese Scions.
Video Games
- The Four Perils appear as myth units in Age of Mythology: Retold.
- The Qiongqi is a Classical Age myth unit available to worshipers of Houtu. Here it appears as a winged tiger with a single horn, able to engage in close combat on the ground and then taking to the air to move quickly.
- The Taotie is a Heroic Age myth unit available to worshipers of Nuba. Here it appears as a horned, eyeless beast that can eat enemy units to power up its Breath Weapon, which weakens after every use.
- The Taowu is a Heroic Age myth unit available to worshipers of Goumang. Here it appears as a human-faced, four-legged creature with dog-like fur and a long tail, making it resemble a long-tailed baboon. It serves as a slow, powerful assault unit similar to the Egyptian Scarab or Atlantean Behemoth.
- The Hundun is a Mythic Age myth unit available to worshipers of Huangdi. Here it is a faceless, six-legged, four-winged creature that can make enemies flee in different directions, or temporarily banish a group of enemies that then return having taken damage from unseen forces.
- In the second DLC pack for Immortals Fenyx Rising, which is based around Chinese mythology, Tao Wu appears as the antagonist.
- In Kingdom Rush Alliance's Wukong's Journey DLC, one of the enemies is the Qiongqi. It's depicted as a blue winged lion that shoots lightning and serves as a slow but extremely hard-hitting Airborne Mook.
- The Big Bad of the The Legend of Korra video game is Hundun, an ancient human king who wants to plunge the world into chaos. Along with being an Earthbender, he's also "master of the Chaotic Attack", which means he's an Evil Sorcerer with strange powers completely separate from the series' defining elemental and spiritual magic system.
- MapleStory: The Four Perils have little resemblance to their mythological counterpartsnote and are instead robots created by Kaling for use in the war against the Ancient Gods, being sent to Grandis to devour lesser fiends and become an ultimate weapon. When the war ended the researchers of Odium redirected their efforts to stopping them and their creator: Three of the Four Perils were sealed away by the sage Tai Yu, while Hundun was merged with the World Heart, fully conscious for eons as he was used to power Odium. In the present day Taotie was accidentally unsealed by then re-sealed inside of Hoyoung — playable character, White Tiger Anima, and Tai Yu's student — and the two work together to recapture all the fiends that had escaped Taotie himself; over time they become genuine allies. Much, much later, Hundun gives up his life to grant the powers of the World Heart to the player so they can save Grandis, though his corpse is later reanimated so Kaling can use him and the other two Perils she unsealed. Hundun, Taowu, and Qiongqi then become a core mechanic of Kaling's boss fight, with the party splitting up into three duos to face them separately but simultaneously. After they're defeated and absorbed/destroyed by the World Heart, Taotie, still loyal to Hoyoung, is the only surviving Peril.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The Treasures of Ruin are the legendary quartet of Paldea which are loosely inspired by the Four Perils and serve as Foils to the Forces of Nature, which are inspired by The Four Gods.
- Wo-Chien may be loosely inspired by the Taowu, which in the 16th century was re-imagined as a creature that recorded evil deeds and punished wrongdoers. Wo-Chien's tablets that form its "shell" are its true body, which gained life from the evil deeds of an evil king written on them in ancient times.
- Chien-Pao may be inspired by the Qiongqi, given its feline form.
- Ting-Lu may be inspired by the Taotie, given the resemblance of its head-bowl to the bronze vessels associated with the Taotie.
- Chi-Yu may be inspired by the Hundun, as without the beads that form Chi-Yu's "eyes" it takes on the form of a headless beast.
- Shin Megami Tensei: The Four Perils make sporadic appearances as demons within the franchise, most notably in the Devil Children sub-series where all four appear as opposed to one or two members per game in other sub-series.
- Titan Quest: The Eternal Embers expansion includes Qiong Qi as a two-time boss encounter.
- Touhou Project: Yuuma Toutetsu is a taotie who serves as the head of the Gouyoku Alliance of the Animal Realm, and is infamous for her ability to eat almost anything and turn it into her own power.
- Warriors Orochi has Hundun as a playable character in the third game. But to unlock him, the player has to defeat him in the final stage of the Gauntlet Mode. It's also in that stage where it's revealed he's possibly the reason Orochi merged the Three Kingdoms era and the Sengoku Period.
- Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty: The protagonist and Liu Bei fight a Taotie created by the Taoist in Black during the events of "Centuries of Glory Burnt Away", where he uses his dragon's corrupted Elixir field to absorb a large amount of Demonic Qi and form the Ultimate Elixir.
Western Animation
- Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld: The Four Perils are the gatekeepers of the Underworld, briefly appearing in episode 11. The Hundun is later summoned to attack Jentry's classmates.
