This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Vermilion Bird of the South gathers the twenty second through twenty eighth lunar mansions, the closing stretch of the twenty eight lodge system read as the southern quarter's guardian bird.
Jing, the Well, opens the palace with stars in Gemini, named for a water well and governing water, law and matters of drink; it is one of the widest lodges in the whole set and was the lodge in which the sun stood at the summer solstice when the system was fixed, giving it particular weight in calendar work. Xing, plainly named Star, centers on Alphard in Hydra, an isolated bright star in an otherwise empty stretch of sky, which is why the lodge carries the simplest name in a set otherwise drawn from objects, body parts and buildings; Alphard's Arabic name independently carries the same sense of solitude. Zhen, the Chariot, closes the entire twenty eight mansion cycle in Corvus, whose four main stars form a clear quadrilateral despite the faintness of the palace around them, making it a dependable closing marker; from here the sequence returns to the Horn in the east with no gap and no privileged starting point beyond convention.
The set has been transmitted under the same names and in the same order for more than two thousand years, and the southern palace's own width, from the broad Well to the narrow lodges beside it, is further evidence that the twenty eight divisions were drawn from where the stars actually stand rather than imposed evenly on the sky.