All Three Audiobook Series, All In One Post! 🎧

Hua Cheng: I built this entire mansion all for you gege

Xie Lian: This is so much! San Lang is very talented indeed!

Hua Cheng: It was nothing <3

~

Luo Binghe: I built this home to look exactly like the bamboo house, so Shizun need not to ever leave me again!!

Shen Qingqiu: A bit of a red flag, but I appreciate the sentiment

~

Wei Wuxian: So where's our home?

Lan Wangji: This is the Jingshi

Wei Wuxian: Did you build it?

Lan Wangji: No

Wei Wuxian: Oh

Lan Wangji: My mother also died here

Wei Wuxian: Oh no

~

Bonus!

Mobei-Jun: I made you a new home

Shang Qinghua: Ah, my king, thanks for the... igloo?

Mobei-Jun: Mn

Shang Qinghua: Does it at least have heating?

Mobei-Jun: No?

Shang Qinghua: Greeeeaaaatttttt

I don't mind at all!

From my understanding, the word "ascend" is only used for the first heavenly tribulation. Ascend is step 1. After that you have your "2nd tribulation" or your "3rd" etc. So when they say "He ascended again?!" in reference to Xie Lian, they are not thinking "He's had a third tribulation?" because that means something else. The tribulations following ascension bring more power once passed. The ascension (basically) just opens the doors to heaven and welcomes you to a new power source.

And this is perf because we have the receipts now:

"For example, a heavenly official who managed horses was likely quite comfortable in their position. People always needed reliable transportation, and they couldn’t very well leave the condition of their horses and carriages to the whims of fate; who wouldn’t want their horses to be strong and healthy, and their travels safe? Thus, this sort of heavenly official would always see regular devotion. "However, what if one day mortals discovered something completely novel that ran faster than a horse? When this new invention inevitably overtook horses, worshippers of the heavenly official who presided over horses would decrease in turn. Heavenly officials such as these made up most of the heavens, blinking to life and flashing by like shooting stars. "This was the cruelest way gods declined because the process could not be reversed. A heavenly official in that situation was destined to watch their own decline until they disappeared entirely—unless they jumped down from the heavens, returned to being mortal, re-cultivated a new path, and then ascended once more as a brand-new god. Not everyone possessed the courage and fortune to do something like that."

Vol.5 Ch.79 7s

I really feel like this is pretty cut and dry in terms of explaining what happens to gods who have 0 believers left. They will die if they don't figure out a way to ascend again. And when they do, it will be their new first ascension.

What I love that you brought into the discussion is the reincarnation. That is a part of tgcf I hadn't paid much attention to and how it ties in. I'll be looking out for it

Editing: oh shoot I totally forgot to address MNQ. That's a loaded topic, but to keep it short, MNQ is "other" and he honestly sketches me out. He is the Birth of Old Age, Sickness, and Death. I have my own theories on that but this isn't the place lmaoo. (His pals are stuck on Jun Wu's face yet their bodies still became independent, sentient, mountain spirits. That's some next level shit.)

Since the shackles were man-made and not part of heaven.. then Xie Lian didn’t ascend 3 times, he went through 3 heavenly tribulations.

And he did the last one in his sleep and had the nerve to describe it as “having weird dreams.”

Legendary.

Some beautiful soul out there did the thing 🥹

Pure Donghua Battle Beats «— YouTube link to Yiling Patriarch shredding it on the ghost flute. 15 mins of unadulterated spook that only gets more intense as it goes.

ALSO. I’d like to say I think it’s a crime that the donghua flutist didn’t get credit. I could not find any information about who the actual musician was. However Qiu Niu who did the audio drama flute sounds a lot like the donghua flute so imma just put that out there.

And it’s a further crime they didn’t put the flute in the ost

Wei Wuxian flute battle soundtrack when? I need that haunting, heart pounding donghua music 🥺 no dialogue, zombie moans dimmed, just straight up spectral rage and melody and battle beats.

I swear if I could blast that while cleaning, laundry would become a moral reckoning. Mopping? A battle for the soul of my household. Dishes? Consider them exorcised.

Ppl out here doin’ mental gymnastics to make Jun Wu seem more palatable 👀 I’m sorry bro but he is actually not just a MisunderstoodSadboi™

He is a monster incarnate.

The saddest line in all of tgcf:

“It’s been so long since anyone listened to me talk. Won’t you stay? Don’t…don’t do this.”

God damn.. it punches me right in the gut. All these people around Xie Lian and only one person actually listens to him 😭

Why is it common knowledge that the flashbacks in Volume 6 (7s) take place starting 4+ years after the fall of Xianle? As in, they’ve been on the run for 4+ years. I can’t find anything to support this in the text, and there’s a lot of context clues that suggest it hasn’t even been a full year.

Please point me in the right direction to confirm this.

Is that timeline fanon or canon?

😭😭😭😭 it was so sad that I couldn’t stop laughing. #JusticeForYizhen

Probs so [someone] knows who to sacrifice for maximum gain at [the place where people are sacrificed for power]

Power of belief and all.

NO BUT WHY DOES HE HAVE A SWORD THAT DETECTS VIRGINS??????

Ohhh. I see, you were talking about the initial accusation of why he got the shackle my bad. It gets so hard to unravel via conversation because things get tangled.

And are we off topic? I can’t tell cus when tgcf is the topic everything’s on the table for me 😂 no sah.

But really, I could go on a tailspin about tgcf and I have to stop myself. It’s just so incredibly fascinating! Things like..

The Entire Narrative is Propaganda: How Jun Wu used bureaucracy for control. He usurped the heavens centuries before anyone present ascended. He created the rules, the division of territories and the “divine laws” we thought were above him. Everything we knew was a lie.

Jun Wu, or Nah? A study on how many pies his fingers were actually in: what does he get blamed for that he didn’t do. What did he do that he doesn’t get blamed for? Part 1: Xie Lians parents were actually murdered, here’s why..

The astounding amount of foreshadowing and symbology in the God Pleasing Parade: 16 white horses and 16 named officials?! What does it mean?

“You are what they believe you are.” And how much that actually impacts their lives, relationships and abilities..(like some theories on why the Shi brothers relationship is pseudo-incestuous, cus I don’t think mxtx accidentally made them coded that way. No, I don’t think they’re actually incestuous. )

The Clown Show: but why are they really like that 800 years later? What could have happened?

Is Jun Wu the Missing Fire Master? The volcano and his seat of power.

And… some spicy takes on the Black Water arc that I usually keep to myself because they tend to ruffle feathers. 😅

All that to say, I totally relate to falling headfirst into this story and needing to untangle every thread. I really appreciate conversations like this, ones that don’t turn into arguments but actually let us question things and share interpretations. I made a Tumblr just to find alternative takes and dig into things with people who care as much as I do. So thank you— this has been such a pleasant and thought-provoking exchange. Doors always open.

Why do so many fans think Jun Wu has no control over who ascends? Like, yes.. people ascend without his permission because there really is a cosmic order in this universe but he literally only needs to fill the slot to prevent randos from ascending.

And YES he CAN artificially ascend people and he DOES. I’m fr about to write up a whole essay on ascension this weekend istg.

The man literally says:

“Even fates can be swapped. Why not spiritual power?” Jun Wu said. “There are many things that are hardly as difficult as you assume. It is only a matter of a few words and a few brush strokes from a few great heavenly officials.”

Right after he sucks out one homies spiritual power and injects it into another.

And let’s be real.. Do y’all really think Jun Wu actually ascended a second time using his own power?

The dude who has the suffering souls of his first attempt at human sacrifice plastered on his own face and.. screaming?

Hell nah. This dude became the grandmaster of demonic cultivation. He experimented on fetus spirits like some mad scientist interested in unethical stem cell research. He probs invented the damn fate swapping ritual himself.

He has an entire fucking Burial Mound volcano where he vents his resentful energy. You think all that energy is accumulating just cus he’s mad? Or from just the three faces?

No way fam. This man is actively cultivating the dark arts and probs needs so many followers just to help balance the yang to his yin.

I mean.. c’mon. You fr think Feng Xin and Mu Qing ascended back to back naturally? And just after they left Xie Lian? There’s a whole damn arc about how unusual it is for two people so close to ascend so fast and so young

Jun Wu gifts Feng Xin a bow called Fengshen which is a homophone for the name of an entire Chinese myth about appointing mortals to godhood for political reasons.

Blows my mind to see that so many collectively deny the possibility when the narration is screaming clues from every digital and physical page.

Interesting! I like that. I also like that ghosts are sustained solely from their own internal desires and gods solely from the external desires of others.

🤔

Does that technically make fallen gods ghosts? Since they’re supposed to be dead but their existence is dependent on attachment? Fascinating. And Hua Cheng.. a ghost turned god.. oop that’s a tailspin, I’ll stop.

Thank you for sharing! I had a fight with jjwxc and we’re longer friends, so I have no way of reading the revised version anymore 😭

@dillytaunt idk why I just remembered this, but more fodder for your musings: gods without followers really do just faze out of existence just like ghosts who lose their obsessions do, but also like ghosts, they can survive long past the point of abandonment if they have an adequate enough obsession, even if they never re-cultivate to the point of ascension. This all comes from the new additions to Xiao Ying's character from the revised version.