Latest Posts by dillytaunt - Page 2

I can’t stop watching this 😂😭💀

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 😭

I haven’t read the revised version yet, but sounds like mxtx is spelling a lot of things out that were left to the readers to put together. This is both great and kinda sad (sad because I love puzzles lol) but yeah the prayer thing, I had already guessed it was Jun Wu who stopped them but are you implying that Mu Qing and Feng Xin, as retainers, knew? I had not considered that, and thought their surprise was genuine. When I read again, or start the revised version, I’ll pay attention.

Even if that isn’t what you meant to imply, I still find the idea worth exploring. It’s a kernel. A seed. “For his own good.” And then before they realize, a whole wall of secrets is already between them and they’ve taken the first step away.

[Aside. The drought. We know Rain Master was freshly ascended when Xie Lian seeks her out for the Spiritual Device. Which means the drought is likely due to there being no Rain Master at the time and the newly ascended one being too weak to help. We also find out towards the end that replacing the Rai master isn’t something Jun Wu wants to do since the position is too important and the current RM doesn’t have “big ideas” so I wonder what happened to the last RM. They wouldn’t have faded naturally, which means technically Jun Wu caused the drought even if it wasn’t just to fk with Xie Lian]

As for the bell and palace, I’m not sure! I’m leaning more towards cosmic irony than a deliberate action. Or even just literary symbology. I wouldn’t count out the possibility that it was a deliberate provocation though, since the result was that Mu Qing and Feng Xin are immediately hostile. (However, Jun Wu telling Xie Lian that FX paid the bill but shh don’t tell was definitely meant to shame XL)

The second and third ascensions were definitely unplanned and completely natural, as far I’m concerned. The first one is fishy but not impossible.

He never wanted Xie Lian to have hope. He himself couldn’t even ascend a second time and if he actually did, it was centuries after his first fall. How mortifying and rage inducing for a man like Jun Wu.

But unlike Jun Wu who lost most his believers then completely eradicated the remaining, Xie Lian always had a believer and it was a Grand Believer of the rarest kind. One that Jun Wu thought he had just watch die. So he was definitely pissed.

Just my thoughts. I appreciate your thoughtful reply and love discussing/exploring tgcf. Always a pleasure

Mu Qing and Feng Xins overall immaturity, petty passive-aggression, and lack of personal growth over an 800 year span always blew my mind. But I’m starting to really consider that they had someone whispering in their ears about one another.

“Don’t mind him, Mu Qing. You know he always looked down on you and it’s only got worse since you left his highnesses side first. Feng Xin will never let that go.”

And vise-versa. Or even more insidiously, casually playing one another’s insecurities off each other in seemingly unrelated ways.

We all know Jun Wu love psychological games. Immortalizing everyone around Xie Lian not only physically but keeping them all emotionally stunted. (CoughLQQcoughcough)

And this also further serves to isolate Xie Lian, since if the three of them were able to co-exist then they could present a problem and possibly figure things out faster.

Too bad none of them could tread their own paths.

This is all just

Pure Speculation

Mu Qing and Feng Xins overall immaturity, petty passive-aggression, and lack of personal growth over an 800 year span always blew my mind. But I’m starting to really consider that they had someone whispering in their ears about one another.

“Don’t mind him, Mu Qing. You know he always looked down on you and it’s only got worse since you left his highnesses side first. Feng Xin will never let that go.”

And vise-versa. Or even more insidiously, casually playing one another’s insecurities off each other in seemingly unrelated ways.

We all know Jun Wu love psychological games. Immortalizing everyone around Xie Lian not only physically but keeping them all emotionally stunted. (CoughLQQcoughcough)

And this also further serves to isolate Xie Lian, since if the three of them were able to co-exist then they could present a problem and possibly figure things out faster.

Too bad none of them could tread their own paths.

This is all just

Pure Speculation

“…he never could’ve expected the sight that would greet him.

“Hua Cheng was fully nude from the waist up. He had one foot up on a new donation box and was wiping away his sweat.”

Hua Cheng just vibing half-naked in the living room like this is a perfume ad

You just know that the moment that portal started opening he def bolted into position like, “Okay okay okay shirt off, leg up, hand here, smolder- no, casual smolder. Look natural.”

He’s such a dork for Xie Lian 😍

It’s definitely a real possibility that Xie Lian’s first ascension wasn’t fully natural, and I’m not sold on either/or. The situation is muddy for a reason. Jun Wu had both the motive and the power to manipulate the outcome from the beginning. Xie Lian had the willpower and the talent to have ascended himself.

You’re also right that Jun Wu took an interest in Xie Lian early. One of his favorite tactics was humiliation, and what better way to humiliate someone than to make their subordinates surpass them? Putting Mu Qing and Feng Xin in positions Xie Lian once held, while keeping him ‘rolling in the mud’, is exactly the kind of longterm power play he specialized in.

We already know Mu Qing was assisted by Jun Wu, and Feng Xin’s ascension is hella murky but the bow Fengshen is an lol level clue. (but they’re not the strongest, they’re weakest of the named martial gods excluding Yin Yu and maybe Pei Xiu.. which is weird since they’re the oldest.. except Pei Ming but he ascended around the same time as them)

Editing to add in: just because they were assisted in ascension doesn’t mean they couldn’t have ascended themselves at some point and it doesn’t they’re bad people, it means Jun Wu is.

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.

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.

Hua Cheng is Actually a God.

Just because he rejected heaven, doesn’t mean he rejected godhood. What he rejected was Jun Wu’s reign. And since he never gave that psycho a chance to shackle him, he couldn’t be considered anything less than a god. He passed the heavenly tribulation.

His first few believers were the people he sacrificed his eyeball for. Then, his first order of business was to slap 33 gods out of their posts and nab their followers. 2 birds, one stone.. or.. 33 birds?

The reason Jun Wu left him alone was probs not only because of his power (this dude was a Supreme Ghost King and an actual fricken God) but because Hua Cheng knew heaven was a scam. Hua Cheng was walking proof that Jun Wu was a fraud. Proof that Jun Wu’s “laws” weren’t divine laws.

What god was he? God of Luck, probably. Seems legit that the cosmic order would see fit to add a God of Luck since a God of Misfortune suddenly manifested due to belief

Speculative: You have to worship the God of Luck and the God of Misfortune together since if you only pray to the god of luck he won’t listen, and if you only pray to the god of misfortune.. well.. results may vary.

Expounding a little on why Jun Wu is obviously a demonic cultivator since my last post just dropped it in without backup and tgcf tap dances around what Jun Wu was doing with the kiln… It says it plainly without actually saying it.

Starting at the the low hanging fruit, Jun Wu’ first sacrifice:

“He set up a ritual site near the Kiln, and I accompanied him there every time, both of us enduring the curses and thrown rocks of the refugees as we conducted services to try to suppress the volcano’s fury.”

“Conducted services” lmao.. fancy way of saying “ritual sacrifice.” and “enduring the curses and thrown rocks” is nice way of saying “against their will”

“…but an infinite darkness is suppressed deep within his heart. Resentment, pain, anger, hatred…he must release those poisonous emotions to maintain his internal balance, lest he go berserk and slaughter everyone around him.”

Yeah um.. you say that like it’s a regular Tuesday therapy session, but it sounds a lot like ‘how to avoid yin-poisoning’

“He regularly releases his dark emotions into the Kiln, using the millions of Wuyong souls within as kindling to stoke the flames of hell and forge many malicious things..”

Oh ok. So he’s practicing his hand at twisting the souls of the dead. Nbd- wait. What?

“…Supremes came later, since he…changed the refining method…”

By.. “changed the refining method” you mean “perfected soul corruption”.. right? The way you say it is a bit umm-

“…In the early days, he’d have a session every few years, and each time the results would be different—endless batches of dark beings poured from its depths.”

✋ MNQ, please stop. That’s.. worse than demonic cultivation-

“Perhaps that had something to do with his unstable emotions-”

No. Shut up. This isn’t about Jun Wu’s feelings.

“…it produced nothing but monsters forged from his hatred and resentment. There are probably a few familiar names among them—”

It produced monsters because he was there to produce monsters. wtf are you on? I’m leaving.

And this is without getting into how he rearranged Heaven, the fact that the shackles aren’t a function of heaven but something dark and parasitic, what the heavenly capitol actually is etc etc etc.

This isn’t even a “theory” fam. This is the book.

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.

“…[Pei Xiu] turned to Xie Lian. ‘So you see, there are many things in the world that simply cannot be clearly defined or resolved. You can only fight.’

Xie Lian sighed. ‘I’ll agree to the first part.’

San Lang, on the other hand, said, ‘Hm. I’ll agree to the second part.’”

Hualian: A True Power Couple.

The TGCF Appendix is Bunk

If I’m going to look at an appendix, I want facts. Not conjecture, and definitely not someone injecting their own thoughts and feelings into someone else’s work and presenting it as fact.

Using Vol.8 seven seas since it’s complete, let’s take a brief look at some of the character descriptions I personally found the most galling:

Pei Xiu: “…His ascension to godhood occurred because he led the charge to slaughter the Kingdom of Banyue, and his exile from godhood occurred because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.” —Appendix: Characters. Vol.8

Morally dubious? Since when is slaughtering an immeasurable amount of innocents over the course of 150+ years considered “dubious” by moral standards? And that’s assuming that he was actually trying to “save his childhood friend”

Let’s look at the facts. Pei Xiu, although he cared for Ban Yue, sent her to infiltrate Banyue which directly caused her death.

After succeeding in his scheme, he ascended. But he had a mess of resentful ghosts that were unliving proof of his war crimes.

In order to maintain his squeaky clean image, he routinely fed living people to the ghosts in an attempt to disburse their resentment.. quietly.

Did this help Banyue? No. It actually did the opposite. She spent 200 years being hunted down and hung over the sinners pit in an endless cycle of pain and suffering. Not only that, but Pei Xiu used her snakes, which further dragged her name into the mud and (ironically) fueled the ghosts anger and hatred for her.

So how.. just how.. does the Official Appendix Character Description get away with saying “…because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.”??

[I didn’t use quotes from the story because it would make this post congested, but the details are in Vol.1 Ch.10 about 86%]

You know what? I was going to continue ranting, like how He Xuan has almost no factual content or backstory yet practically ships him with Shi Qingxuan like “maybe he likes her idk 🤷‍♀️” and his unknown relationship with Hua Cheng. Instead it could have said at least something about Scholar He..

It’s a reoccurring thing that sometimes comes off as absolute fanon and sometimes comes off like they’re trying spin a picture or soften a character to a more sympathetic light.

Just give me the facts.

That’s the only reason I’d ever look at an appendix, I’m not here to read your drivel!

\rant

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.

Weibaybay

I’m re-reading book 6.

*deep breaths*

I’m not prepared. But I’m doing it anyways.

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.

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

Feng Xin.. is kind of an ass?

Rereading for the umpteenth time and wondering why no one ever talks about how Feng Xin was regularly spending money at a brothel to chill with his crush, but had the gall to shame Xie Lian for trying to steal money just to afford his dads medicine.

Hua Chengs Budaoweng Dolls

and their bitter irony..

How do ghosts get their powers? Some type of cultivation path. Like how Blackwater eats water ghosts and Qi Rong tries to copy this by eating people.

Hua Chengs cultivation path is Xie Lian. Everything he’s capable of is Xie Lian. The butterflies, the crimson rain, the luck. And yes, even the budaoweng dolls.

What is a budaoweng doll?

It’s a doll that is weighted so when knocked over it stands upright.

Impossible not to see the symbolic meaning there, am I right? Just in case: Xie Lian is a living budaoweng doll. He gets knocked down constantly and has no choice but to get right back up again.

Now for the dark irony of turning foes into budaoweng dolls..

It is both a tribute to Xie Lian, and punishment for its victims.

He is making them powerless, yet forcing them stand back up no matter how many times they’re knocked down. They can do nothing but get up.

He’s forcing resilience onto them while making them helpless. He’s mocking them. He’s making others feel a fraction of what Xie Lian felt.

“You pretend to be so righteous and upright? Well.. now you’re at least upright.”

It’s brilliant. It’s beautiful. It’s poetic justice. It’s little things like this that make me fall in love with tgcf over and over

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.