The Correct Answer Is: Time Is A Construct. Pain Is Eternal.

I honestly pictured it as a more chaotic fandom of Yizhen Gege worshippers, meatheads who love fights and drama, all claiming to have “been there when he descended” and “seen it with their own eyes” telling stories about how “lit it was” when Yizhen Gege threw Paul Jr through the local tavern for calling Yin Yu a bxtch. (Since Paul Jr was annoying and had it coming) and they’re gunna go light some incense rn and ask Yizhen Gege to come beat up Big Bern too since he doesn’t keep his chickens in the coop and lets them poop all over Greta’s flower bed.

But I can also respect a much more distinguished vision of dedicated practitioners who live to learn and treat his violent visitations as an opportunity for growth. Love it.

The fact that Quan Yizhen regularly descended just to beat up his own worshippers, and this only resulted in gaining a larger following… is probably the most realistic thing in this whole high fantasy series.

Hua Cheng doomed Xie Lian

3 parade laps around while playing as Jun Wu in a play. 3 ascensions to heaven, while playing to Jun Wu’s tune.. Hua Cheng both started and ended the cycle.

He started it when he fell and Xie Lian first piqued Jun Wu’s interest by saving him.

Most symbolically, each time Xie Lian touched the boy, his pristine white clothes became dirty. And each time they touched, Xie Lians fortune dropped a little and Honghong-ers fortune rose.

“That child is toxic! He bears a fate of extinction, the sign of the Star of Solitude!17 He is destined to bring destruction to all save for himself—truly the kind that evil loves most! Whoever touches him will have misfortune befall them, and whoever gets close will lose their life!” —Vol. 2 Ch.27

You see, Hua Cheng didn’t just have the misfortune of the star alone, he had been cursed by the accumulated misfortune from the kiln. He needed to be saved many many times to dispel all his bad luck.

“not only can the Kiln produce monsters, it can also curse. Just as you were able to disperse your own good fortune, the Kiln can also disperse its accumulated misfortune…

The hour of the child’s birth was already extremely perilous: if his fate was fortunate, it would be the best of fortunes, but if it was unfortunate, it would be the worst of misfortunes. He probably absorbed all the misfortune the Kiln had dispersed on the day he was born, which was how he became so terrifying upon entering the world.” —Vol. 7 Ch.119

The greatest misfortune was meeting Jun Wu on the bridge. The insane man went from “mildly interested” to “wildly obsessed”…

“One phrase. It sounded so unbelievable, laughable even.” —Vol. 7 Ch.119

This is key. One phrase thoughtlessly uttered. What terrible luck. Yes, Jun Wu was the bad luck that just kept on giving, well past the time that any star or accumulation of bad luck could account for. But what misfortune to have attracted that man’s full focus in the first place.

Then Hua Cheng, as the little ghost light that Xie Lian saved, experienced great fortune when Xie Lian was stabbed those 100 times. He gained the strength to take form. Xie Lian should have died, but it was Hua Cheng who was reborn.

Sooo ya. I totally disagree with the theory that Xie Lians shackle disbursed his luck to Hua Cheng. The shackle simply removed any counterbalance Xie Lian could have had against the power of the Star of Solitude. Xie Lian didn’t give his luck to Hua Cheng, rather, Hua Cheng gave his bad luck to Xie Lian.

Xie Lian could have easily been a Lang Qianqiu. Comfortable in his righteous ignorance.

I mean.. I’m glad that it worked out and I don’t blame Hua Cheng with animosity. I’m just sayin.. it’s all his fault for being born.

Xie Lian cutting loose is probably my favorite thing

Xie Lian: “Someone like Mu Qing… Even though he’s petty, narrow-minded, overly sensitive, paranoid, has a bad personality, is prone to fixating on the little things, never says anything pleasant, likes to nag, is always offending others and has garnered a lot of dislike on that account, has no friends, and remembers small, unimportant offenses for far too long…”

Fu Yao: “…”

Xie Lian: went on and on with a straight face, all in a single breath. He concluded with “…I’ve known him since we were young. He’s still got principles.”

Fu Yao: “…”

Xie Lian: “He might spit in the cup of someone he doesn’t like, but he would never poison the water,” Xie Lian continued.

Fu Yao: “…”

Hua Cheng: “Really? That’s still gross, though,”

Fu Yao: Veins were popping on [his] forehead. “No! He would never spit either!”

Xie Lian: “Laxatives, then,”

—Vol.5 Ch.51

Right up his alley indeed, he didn’t even have a chance to come to terms with Feng Xins departure yet.

Feng Xin doesn’t lash out with jabs and barbed wit like Mu Qing, but hes absolutely no better. His way of hurting Xie Lian is just as problematic.

It’s more sanctimonious, more judgmental, more “I’m disappointed in you,” which in some ways is even worse because it masks cruelty as morality.

“Where is your dignity?”

“Aren’t you ashamed?”

“You call yourself a man/god/whatever?”

Might as well say

“You used to be better.”

“Look how far you’ve fallen.”

It’s never overt abuse, it’s moral posturing. It’s humiliation disguised as righteousness.

There’s one scene where Xie Lian asks about Nan Fang and Fu Yao, and both of them claim they’re in detention. Mu Qing, ok yeah. He’s just like that, but Feng Xin? Willingly and publicly saying ‘I punished my subordinate for helping you’

That wasn’t the only time Feng Xin would pretend like Xie Lian meant nothing when others were looking iirc

And I 100% agree with you. by the end I think Mu Qing and Xie Lian are closer and I think it has a lot to do with Mu Qing being honest with not only himself, but Xie Lian. They both had a chance to express themselves in a healthy way and come to terms with the past. Because both of them made mistakes.

Meanwhile Feng Xin is still in his own world of “I did nothing wrong, theres no reason to reflect”

Hello there!

I saw the thread about topics within the book and one I had to ask about is what is this spicy take on the black water arc? Like now, I'm super curious and have to follow up on this!🤣😅

Veering sideways about the one on if Jun Wu did it or not. Xie Lian's parents being either killed or manipulated by Jun Wu to do so would track with him. Have you determined which stuff was probably him and which wasn't? It's honestly really terrifying to think how long he was terrorizing and ruining their lives until things unraveled with Xie Lian's third ascension.

And the three clowns one - what's that referring to?

TIA!🌸

Some of this is going to be tough to answer without going into full dissertation mode but I’m going to try to keep it brief and platform appropriate. I’ll save Blackwater for last haha you're tryna get me blacklisted

The thing that sold me on Xie Lians parents was the fact that they used his white silk band to do it, which is hugely symbolic and basically screams “It’s your fault.” First read through, I thought they did it because they were feeling as if they were a burden to Xie Lian. Since then though? No. That silk band was used by Xie Lian every single day, and he had to search for it. His parents were not so cruel. Then there's the amount of trauma that band would have had to endure to become sentient. A quiet acceptance of death by suicide doesn't fit the bill. 

I actually want to keep on that to further compound my thoughts, but I'm wont, because the point is; in finding out what Jun Wu may or may not have done, looking at out-of-character actions and what doesn't add up is best. Like Xie Lians sleeve getting caught on a cloud during his descent. The Spirits at Mt. Taicang that attacked Honghong'er. Mu Qing just so happened to show up at the blessed mountain when Xie Lian finally thought he was catching a break. Who killed Ming Yi? The friggen drought.

And yes, the clowns. MQ/FX. This ties into the prior: Why are they so unbearably acidic towards Xie Lian? Some past grievances, yes. But they are hostile, they think he's an idiot, and they're never there when Xie Lian needs them yet fight over who's the worse friend- not who is the better friend. It's not a bitter past, its more like their flames were stoked beyond reason. Then, time and time again, they deny any association with him in public, leaving him hanging. Are they just afraid of rumors? Mu Qing, maybe. But the noble and just beacon of righteousness, Feng Xin? Would watch his friend and former liege be humiliated and not say anything? 

And could I, in all confidence, after reading multiple mxtx works say "It's just because that one event upset them,” and leave it at that? 

And no, I have not verified all. Some have backup, some are speculation. It’s something I’d like to work on the next time I return to tgcf though. 

The Blackwater arc.. woof. Ok, bracing myself for incoming projectiles. 

In a nutshell, it's that Shi Wudu stole Shi Qingxuans fate of wealth and that's how he gained the title God of Wealth, contrary to popular belief. I could go full blown dissertation.. and actually I might, but first I'll just start with where I started:

Shi Qinxuan had a fate of wealth that was verified to not have been touched by Blackwater, nor consumed by the Reverend of Empty Words. So why was he a destitute beggar at the end? Not poor, not struggling, but a crippled, starving beggar. 0 wealth. None. Not a single coin.

The wealth he has as god was showered on him by Shi Wudu and most Shi Qingxuans temples were shared. I actually dont recall it saying he had his own temples at all (doesn’t mean it didn’t happen)

Then I asked myself "Why was 'wealth' used so many times in this tangled arc? Qingxuans fate, Wudu's domain, He Xuans windfall.." 

"Who benefitted the most?"

Then questions like "What was Shi Wudu's overprotectiveness really about? Mostly optics, right?" 

Because... what if someone found out..? His overprotectiveness really only flares up once the spiritual power is gone.. you could say it's all about safety but.. 

And so I read through carefully to either confirm or deny the hypothesis and regardless of how much no one wants to hear about it I'm firmly in the camp that this isn't a head-canon but possibly an intention. The timelines of Shi Qingxuan and He Xuan dont back the idea that the fate swap only happened at the last moment before ascension. Shi Wudu moved them to a home less than an hour away from He Xuans hometown before he even ascended. The power of the RoEW was not insurmountable. And just because Shi Qinxuan wasn’t “fated” to ascend doesn’t mean he couldn’t have, but Shi Wudu sure wasn’t going to wait to find out. 

Maybe it was greed, maybe it was a necessity in order to preform the fate ritual idk. But Shi Qinxuans fate is gonezo and neither the RoEW nor Blackwater laid claim to it. 

The fact that Quan Yizhen regularly descended just to beat up his own worshippers, and this only resulted in gaining a larger following… is probably the most realistic thing in this whole high fantasy series.

If I was going to make this analogy it’d probably be more like:

“imagine if you attended a car rally where you and hundreds of people murdered your brothers friends then started plans to hit your brother with a car and kill him (since he’s using diesel instead of gasoline.) But then your brother shows up with a bunch of remote control cars and it turns into some kind of deadly demolition derby. Metal flying everywhere, flaming tires arcing across the sky, the ground is littered with oil and glass.

Then your sister shows up with no car, barefoot, and she’s just running around in the chaos. She’s hit by one of your brothers car and your brother races to get her. She’s injured asf and needs immediate first aid. Then some asshole on your own side drifts in, tires screeching, and slams into her.

Raging mad, you murder him with your car.. only to find out years later that the car you killed him with.. was given to you by your brother. And you wouldn’t even have been able to attend the death derby from hell if it wasn’t for him.”

Imagine you're in a car with your brother and you keep telling him "slow down, you're going too fast" and he insists "I've got it under control!" And then he hits someone and you get out of the car and find out it's your sister. Your brother goes crazy from guilt and starts running over people left and right until you have to kill him to make sure no one else dies. Then years later he comes back to life and his boyfriend reveals oh guess what fuckhead. The reason he had to drive recklessly everywhere? Because he gave his legs to you in a secret operation you didnt know about. That's mdzs from Jiang Cheng's pov

It’s been months but I’m still thinking about this tweet that said out off every character from Xianle that we meet, Hua Cheng is the most representative of their love for the arts, for riches and beauty.

Like truly he in many ways comes to personify Xianle in a way, both in the high society luxurious culture that Xianle was famous for but also he’s the orphan from the four famous tales making him the representation of Xie Lians care for the common people. Like he is both the lowest of the low and someone who’s kept the Xianle ways alive.

Like all my brain is thinking of is how Xie Lian distanced himself from all that to cultivate, then to become a God, then a poor peasant and how homesick he’s been his whole life.

Only for his husband who was a poor peasant, then a solder, then a king who represents everything Xianle stood for and how their stories are going backwards and forwards and how Xianle is gone but how Hua Cheng embody all of Xianles culture from the poor to the rich and and how he feels like home to Xie Lian now.

I found it in an afterword. I don’t think I’d take what she said as Bible, since prior and after she is walking us through where her inspiration came from (a place she visited, a flower she saw, a storm she witnessed) and then it takes us through her iterations (it was intended to be 35k words, it was supposed to be a cozy fantasy the amount of manuscripts she had and threw away etc) so idk.

About the concept:

It feels off to me that she would make his abilities as an ode to his mom when the trajectory turned from “cozy serial” to a “dark epic” where the ML has an obsessive all consuming love.

How the story evolved:

Hold on while I have a breakdown about how Xie Lian is the only mxtx character to legitimately try to kill himself. This fandom spends all day and night crying about his deadbeat friends “suffering” over their abandonment of him, meanwhile he is the one who almost died over it—by his own hands AND others—and the only thing that “saved” him was Jun Wu’s curse of immortality.

Reading mxtx novels is watching a very clear walk into tragedy, where any other person at ANY MOMENT could intervene and say “actually, let me do right,” yet actively choose not to, only to cry years later about “well what did you want from me?” when their sins gets shoved back into their faces and their guilt starts gnawing at their flesh.

…Let me stop right here before I say something regrettable.

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?

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.