Hualian's red thread is a great symbol of Hua Cheng's love. It's reminiscent of the red thread of fate, but Hualian weren't exactly fated--actually quite the opposite, they were kept apart. By putting the red thread himself, Hua Cheng forces fate to never separate them again. It symbolizes all the hard work he's put in to search for and find Xie Lian. He literally creates his own fate, their own fate, with pure will, just like he doesn't pass away out of pure will. It's his love and immeasurable strength and will power.

I'll always be so obsessed with the part where Xie Lian is bracing himself for Hua Cheng finding out about the part of his life that he's most ashamed of. He knows how bad it was, how low he stooped, and truly believes that it would make him unlovable.

And then Hua Cheng kneels before him and reveals that yes, he already knows. He was there. He lived that nightmare with him.

And despite all of that, he still loves Xie Lian. Loved him then and loves him now.

Xie Lian's tears were so real and I could feel how cathartic it was for him to get that reassurance. I could feel his fear dissipate as he realized and WOW.

wow.

What really hits me about Hua Cheng having been there is that the proof of his acceptance is already hundreds of years old. Plenty of people can tell you to your face, "It's okay, I accept this part of you" and then change their mind later after they've thought about it more. But Hua Cheng accepted it way back then. When even Xie Lian was ashamed of himself, Hua Cheng fully understood that trauma gets people some kinda way, and his opinion of Xie Lian never wavered for a little bit. He never had to reconcile Xie Lian's poorer decisions with any perfect image. Hua Cheng's devotion always included Xie Lian at his best AND at his worst.

My friend was watching the show for the first time and they brought up a misconception that I think we see a lot in fandom. So I want to talk about The Gamblers Den and specifically this scene in particular:

My friend genuinely wondered what Hua Cheng would do and then when they heard his explanation they were even more confused:

They basically messaged me saying, wait Hua Cheng would have made the bet. He bets people’s lives and some how Xie Lian is okay with that. How???

And to anyone else who’s thinking the same thing or falling for the Demon King vibe Hua Cheng is trying to sell here I am here to tell you, you have all been duped.

What’s import to understand is that Ghost City actually came from making one of Xie Lian’s ideas work:

Xie Lian is talking about a specialised market here, a place where the common people couldn’t just stumble into without reason and that’s what Ghost City is and The Gambers Den is the foundation of it. While Xie Lian didn’t say hey go gamble, Hua Cheng is taking a risk and playing into his greatest strength and then showing of for his crush is the most dramatic way possible when talking about it.

For Hua Cheng the house always wins! Literally. Or at least what he wants the bet to be will always happen. His luck is just that good. If the gambler wins it’s genuinely because Hua Cheng let him.

In the Den he is acting as Judge and Jury with Xie Lian as his moral code but he can’t just turn down the deals. If he does then these people could go to less safe options (looking at you Qi Rong) to get what they desire which negates the reason he built Ghost City in the first place.

Hua Cheng has to let these people play by his rules if he wants to follow his Gods wishes. So has to be creative and look at loop holes, phrasing and Xie Lians most important teaching finding the third path.

For this moment specifically giving the options I think Hua Cheng would have taken the ten years of his daughter’s life. Why you may ask? Well the phrasing is easier to manipulate. While the eradication of his competitors is pretty well laid 10 years of his daughters life is pretty vague.

Option 1) Hua Cheng could take her away from her shit father and put her in an apprenticeship and marry a man of her choosing since her hand is now her own to decide since Hua Cheng doesn’t want it.

Option 2) She has to work in Ghost City for 20 years and is married to Yin Yu in name only (because Hua Cheng can’t have a wife at all or he won’t win Gege) then gets pleasantly divorced and giving a severance payment after 20 years.

Option 3) He could decide life is a vague term and after she dies she has to spend 20 years in Ghost City and matchmake a future marriage between her and another ghost.

Option 4) He could decide what she has to do with the next twenty years of her life which could include an actual good marriage and education. Where she has to worship his shrine and be only his devotee for 20 years.

Option 5) He can literally say I’ll collect when I decide and never cash in.

He can do anything because the wording is so fluent and for Hua Cheng debater and Civil God Killer it’s probably easy. He’s not a demon king, he’s a crafty trickster spirit basically a fae lord.

He’s playing the system and he’s winning that’s what Xie Lian figured out and why he supports it. He knows Hua Cheng well enough even back then to trust that he would make the right decision because he believes in Hua Cheng and he’s right too.

I received a very thoughtful anon ask about Qi Rong and in the process of doing research for the ask, I came across a meta about Qi Rong on the Chinese website Zhihu that I absolutely loved, so I translated the meta into English - anon I will answer your ask ASAP, in the meantime I hope you're interested in this excellent meta:

I think Qi Rong's feelings for Xie Lian isn't that of a fan for his idol, but that of a child for an imaginary "father". So he wouldn't try to understand and study XL's character like Hua Cheng; he's only looking up to this "father figure".

This isn't a baseless conjecture - the relationship between father and son has always been a topic that can't be averted when it comes to Qi Rong. I'm guessing that when he was bullied and excluded by other kids in his childhood, it didn't occur to Qi Rong to hate the circumstances of his family; instead he wished for his father to stand up for him and help him teach those nasty kids a lesson. This wish had always existed in Qi Rong's heart and became a traumatising shadow of his childhood.

Whereas his cousin, the prince Xie Lian, who suddenly appeared in his life to help him, was unconsciously used by Qi Rong to fit his expectation of the "father". XL did what he expected a father to do, so he placed XL in his fantasies about a father. Since his abusive and useless father doesn't cut it, then someone as gentle and strong as XL must be the standard for what a "father" is like. Subconsciously Qi Rong had this idea.

Therefore I think a lot of the dumb and horrible things that Qi Rong did for XL is only due to the anxiety that a son feels towards the indifference of the "father", so he tried to do something compensatory to win the father's attention and approval; but this didn't work out at all.

This is also why he's good to Gu Zi, because Gu Zi is just another Qi Rong - he's abused by the father but still begs for the father's love and doesn't allow others to hurt his father. It's probably because Qi Rong understands what this feels like that he'd pretend to be a seemingly decent "father" for Gu Zi.

(Here the author also points out the connection between Qi Rong and Gu Zi based on their names, which needs to be explained to English readers in more detail - Qi Rong's name "Rong," in Chinese "容", is comprised of two parts: 宀 and 谷. The latter part is "Gu" (谷) as in Gu Zi's name, and the former part 宀 stands for a house or a home - in this sense the character "Rong 容" (Qi Rong) incorprates the character "Gu 谷" (Gi Zi) and provides a "home" or "shelter" for "Gu".)

In the nicest way possible, hualian fans really need to read this, and then read this again, and then one more time for good measure. There are just…a lot of really bad takes on hualian, especially Hua Cheng, that have gone from funny meme time to actual mockery.

Hua Cheng loves Xie Lian but he doesn’t love him brainlessly. He’s not blind to Xie Lian’s rage, his weakness, his worst moments. Hell, he was there for it. He loves ALL of Xie Lian, he knows the darkness and he also very dearly knows the light. He knows Xie Lian’s kindness, sense of righteousness, his protectiveness, his unflinching goodness and his capacity for love.

Hua Cheng is not a brainless, mindless simp and Xie Lian himself talks how there was a time when he was at his worst and wondered if anyone would still love him if they knew. Hua Cheng does.

So while the jokes about how much HC loves XL unconditionally can be sweet and funny, they’ve become steadily mean-spirited, mocking HC’s intelligence and personal agency and flattening both him and XL into shallow selfish characters, and turning their warm wonderul love into a toxic relationship.

Yeees, this! So glad you've said this ❤️

Hua Cheng is so often made by fandom to be a shadow to Xie Lian, loving and worshipping him blindly, and taking his morals solely from Xie Lian and what he'd see as right.

It misses the point that Hua Cheng, while he might have been attracted to Xie Lan at first sight, has continued to love him for so many years by choice, because he's seen him through the good and bad times and he loves him still and believes in him still. He has opinions! About everything that happened! And they're not always in agreement with Xie Lian's, but he's always respectful of him even when they diverge.

And idk it's so much more romantic to me to know that these two have chosen each other fully conscious of who they are rather than to think of hualian as a relationship where one of them gets carelessly placed on a pedestal.

TGCF: My theory on the inspiration behind the 4 calamities

In some of the oldest Chinese myths and legends, there are 4 guardian gods of the four cardinal directions - the green dragon, white tiger, crimson bird, and black tortoise, and each have a colour, season and element associated with them. I'm not sure if anyone has made this connection before, but I'm writing it down if anyone is interested. There are spoilers about the calamities' identity.

First, the 青龙 （qing long, green dragon) --> Qi Rong, Night-touring Green lantern.

The qinglong's territory is the East, and its colour is qing, which means green, or turqoise. Its element is wood, and its season is spring. Closely associated with royalty and the imperial family.

Now, for the similarities with our favourite green goblin. "qing" is literally the colour in Qi Rong's title, and his colour scheme. Qi Rong has a habit of hanging corpses from trees, which may be his relation to the element "wood". He does not have any obvious coleration with the season "spring"- perhaps he was born in spring. He is royalty, part of the imperial family as cousin to the crown prince.

Second, the 白虎 （bai hu, white tiger)--> Bai Wuxiang, White Clothed Disaster upon the Earth.

The baihu's territory is the West, its colour is white, element is gold/metal, and its season is summer. It is the king of all beasts, associated with disease and war, often used as a guardian symbol by soldiers.

On the other hand, Jun Wu's title, alias and colour scheme are all white, and has plenty of weapons that may be his link to the element of "gold/metal". I don't think he has anything to do with summer, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. He is king of the gods, a god of war, and the one to spread the human face disease.

As east and west are considered a pair, the guardian spirits are meant to reflect each other. In Chinese poems and such, symmetry is important, and both Qi Rong and Jun Wu were princes, one becoming revered by the highest of gods, covered with masks and false identities, one becoming the object of disgust by the lowest of ghosts, using his real name and face. There is a certain poetic symmetry to it, don't you think?

To the second pair. The 朱雀 (zhu que, crimson bird)----> Hua Cheng, Crimson Rain Sought Flower

The zhuque rules over the south, its colour is red, element is fire, and its season is summer. It is the king of all birds, more powerful than even the phoenix, immortal and undying. As such, in many places it is also considered a symbol of life.

Now, to the most popular ghost king: Hua Cheng. The english translation of his title is "crimson", and his colour scheme is indubitably red and autumn-y shades. He also re-re-met Xie Lian in autumn ( I think - I mean, the leaves were all red in the donghua??), and has died again and again to return like the zhuque. He is the king of all ghosts, with a great determination to live(sorta? are ghosts alive??) for his love.

Lastly, my personal favourite, the 玄武 (xuan wu, black tortoise)---->He Xuan, Black Water Sinking Ships

The xuanwu, also called a tortoise, is actually the only spirit to be a combination of 2 animals, a snake and a tortoise. It rules over the north. Its colour is black( sometimes depicted as dark blue), element is water, and its season is winter. In earlier legends, he is considered a guide and guardian to the netherworld, of death and of long life.

Thus, to our poor indebted water ghost. He Xuan's name is "xuan", the same! goddamn! character! as the spirit! His title and colour scheme are all to do with the colour black, and he is a water ghost because he died because of the Water Master. He has been marked by death, yet survived and vowed revenge. This, and the fact that his house is called the Nether Water Manor, is probably his relation to the netherworld of the xuanwu.

To the pair of south and north. Both Hua Cheng and He Xuan have suffered and suffered again, yet Hua Cheng chooses to linger on due to hope and love, and He Xuan due to revenge and hatred. But hatred and love are two sides of the same coin. If Hua Cheng hadn't experienced the hatred from his childhood, he wouldn't have thrown himself from the city wall and met Xie Lian. If He Xuan hadn't loved his family, so much, he wouldn't have broken that hard after their deaths to lose himself to hatred and empty vengence.

Aaaaaand that concludes this essay. Keep in mind that this is a theory, and probably even isn't true, but if anybody wants a more detailed description of the guardian spirits, or to know more about the similarities between the mythical creatures of ancient china and tgcf, I will be more than happy to make a part 2.

Thanks for reading!!

This post is just to provide some translation notes and cultural context for Xie Lian’s famous saying “body in abyss, heart in paradise” (身在无间, 心在桃源). The two words that really require some explanation in this saying are “abyss” and “paradise” because much of their cultural implications are lost in translation.

Let’s start with the word “abyss.” The Chinese phrase used here 无间 is a Buddhist term and actually means “hell,” and specifically 无间 is the deepest and most horrific level of hell within the “eight hells” of Buddhism. 无间 literally means “no interval” because those condemned to this level of hell suffer non-stop and without intervals, and the hell itself has “no interval” in the sense that it’s endless both spatially and temporally. In fact 无间 is a fitting term for Jun Wu because Jun Wu’s suffering is agonizing, incessant, and interminable, just like this hell. It’s no wonder that Jun Wu felt personally attacked when Xie Lian said this line in front of him.

As for the word “paradise,” the Chinese phrase is 桃源 which literally means “peach blossom spring.” “Peach blossom spring” is a reference to a famous short story of the same name by Tao Yuanming (365–427 AD) (I’ll link the full text of the story here for people who’re interested). It’s a fantastical story of a guy who, after going through a mysterious cave near a field of blossoming peach trees, stumbled upon a utopian society cut off from the outside world where everyone leads a happy and peaceful life, but where no one is aware of what’s going on in the world outside of their own small community. So 桃源 isn’t so much paradise in the Christian sense as an earthly paradise, or a utopia that people can retreat into to hide from the chaos and strife of the world.

I feel like “body in abyss, heart in paradise” very much reflects the Buddhist view that what really matters and what determines your reality isn’t the world external to yourself, but what happens subjectively within your own mind. As long as your mind is in paradise, body in abyss isn’t so terrible. And I think Jun Wu was so deeply offended by this saying partly because…he vehemently disagrees with this view from his personal experience.  It’s exactly the external world that made Jun Wu’s life and Jun Wu’s reality a living hell – the public who abandoned him, the friends who betrayed him, the ingrates that judged and condemned him, the heaven officials who took advantage of his already desperate situation. When everything in the external world combined to make your life hell, your inner world simply can’t be paradise.

Friendly reminder that the suffering and torment Xie Lian experienced actually made him LESS kind, and the lessons he learned as a result of that pain were that human life is meaningless and compassion is worthless and people don't deserve your help or care or love for them. Xie Lian had to backtrack and reject these new lessons in favor of the old ones he had already known in order to return to being kind.

Xie Lian losing everything he loved and knew, being stripped of his power, autonomy, safety, and community, and being ridiculed and humiliated, did not teach him anything worth knowing. He did not learn any valuable or important lessons from it. In fact, he needed to consciously decide that he wasn't going to let it change him and work to go back to the person he was before all that shit happened in order to avoid turning evil.

What I love about this line is that , we know e'ming is basically Huacheng sacrificing his innocence and childhood to save a bunch of common , helpless people when he himself was so weak. He gave up the last bit of himself to save someone else completely unrelated to him which circles back to when he fell down the parade to doom every unknown common man to death with him.

However what is more remarkable is that this weapon was forged by sacrificing his own life and innocence, a part which Huacheng to this day despises and cannot reconcile for being "weak" , was the part which he relied on and saved his existence when everything was lost to him. It wasn't Xielian, it wasn't anyone else. Just his own child self. The entity he gave up any hope for to lean and survive on after years of abuse and belittling done by his family.

It parallels XieLian's reclamation of heroism where he gave up on common people by penultimate part of book 4, but another random common man made him reclaim that part of himself by his random kindness.

Both being protagonists of the story go through the same arc of giving up on value or entity that disappointed them tremendously but then trusting them again to survive and have a new perspective on life.

While I initially believed that Xie Lian was derailed from destroying Yong’an by a random act of kindness, upon further reflection, I don’t think Xie Lian would have gone through with the destruction, whether that old man had stopped to talk to him or not.

The thing about tgcf is it’s about a person still being their core self, whether they are at the highest or lowest point in their life. We see Xie Lian at his highest point: a beloved prince revered by all who ascends to godhood and is personally taken under the wing of the heavenly emperor, who is extremely moral. Then we see his descent into his lowest point: betrayed by the people he abandoned the heavens to protect, abandoned one by one by his loved ones, watching his kingdom descend into civil war before ceasing to exist, all the while he has his faith in himself and his morals tested over and over again. And by the end, you think Bai Wuxiang has successfully broken Xie Lian, shown him that being moral and upright has no benefits because everyone you love will leave you anyways, so why not use your power to oppress instead? Except, Xie Lian doesn’t.

He gets real close to it, sure, when he collects the spirits of his dead soldiers to release in Yong’an as payback for destroying Xianle, but I don’t believe he was ever truly going to go through with it. If we break down that series of events, we see that Xie Lian collects those spirits with “full intention” of releasing them… except he doesn’t. He specifically does not do this when it would have been the quickest and easiest route to revenge, and instead, makes a stipulation to himself that he will spare the people if at least one person shows him an act of kindness by removing the sword he has impaled himself on from his body. By Xie Lian’s own stipulations, a people who are so self-centered and callous as to not help a stranger are deserving of destruction, so he would be justified in released the human face disease. And what happens next?

Nobody helps him.

Sure, some people contemplate it, but those people are easily dissuaded away from his aid and nobody helps him before his deadline. So Xie Lian gets up and is preparing to “enact his revenge,” except the moment he rises, an old man comes up, talks to him for a little, and gifts him his own used bamboo hat. Originally, I thought this was the moment that made Xie Lian see the humanity in mortals again, but that isn’t true. What Xie Lian was trying to convince himself of was the inhumanity of mortals and that that inhumanity was deserving of destruction, but that is not a belief he has at the core of him, so he couldn’t commit. In the same way that the people who were easily dissuaded from helping him didn’t actually want to help him and were just looking for someone else to confirm their base instinct to stay away, so too does Xie Lian want even the smallest crumb to dissuade him away from this genocide that his own morality rails again. Had that man not shown up to talk to him, Xie Lian’s turning point might have been watching some children peacefully play or watching travelers share food and a tale or watching strangers display small kindnesses to each other. The old man was his confirmation in the story, but it didn’t have to be the old man, because Xie Lian would have turned away from his path of revenge for any reason. (On that note, he is then affirmed in his decision to save the people when those same people refuse to commit violence against him in the face of death to save themselves, a reversal of an earlier scene.)

In conclusion, at his highest and lowest points, Xie Lian cannot conceive of himself using his power and authority to destroy others for his own petty reasons because that isn’t who he is at the core of him, and what he needed in that moment was just the validation in himself to see that being good was still worth personal tragedy, as long as you helped someone and could prevent more suffering. Because tgcf is about being yourself and being able to remain true to yourself in the face of adversity, not about random kindness saving the day.

it’s 4am feelings about hua cheng again. just reading the early arcs and thinking abt hua cheng’s perspective.

he’s 800 years old, a ghost king who has very much reached the end of his growth. he’s powerful he’s confident he’s peaked. and now he gets faced with his god, able to meet him on equal footing, and equally able to PROTECT his god from any harm that might come to him. and he MEETS his god. he doesn’t go in feeling entitled to anything, but he thinks he at least knows what to expect. he knows what points of his character he will be judged for. he knows what a righteous god will and won’t like.

he steels himself for the rejection at those moments — but instead, his god turns out to be the weirdest funniest little guy ever. so sweet and good and kind, but also beaten down and tired in the same ways hua cheng is. he doesn’t ever judge hua cheng for his choices. every time hua cheng thinks he knows what’s coming xie lian turns it around on him, and hua cheng can’t help but just. laugh. and fall in love.

Crimson Rain Sought Flower – Hua Cheng

This is a meta that’s been in the works a while now, and yesterday I posted it to Twitter for Hua Cheng’s birthday! It’s June 10th in my timezone now, so here it is reformatted, tweaked, and with a few additions for Tumblr.

This is quite the long thread, so grab some snacks! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ

Hua Cheng and Morality

First, we need to understand Hua Cheng’s origin. He is a reject of society. He was cast aside by the world, and thus in return, holds zero esteem for it. He couldn’t care less what happens to the world, apart from the one person left in it who treated him with compassion and humanity. However, Hua Cheng is not ever intentionally cruel. He is not a cruel person, yet he’s also not a particularly nice person. He’s neutral. He has known severe poverty, and has suffered at the hands of hypocrisy and injustice—so he hates these things too.

That is why he’s sincere in his actions (even if they are not always “good”), and a man of his word. That is why he rules Ghost City with an iron fist, yet is fair. He does not abuse his power, and is always clear about terms in an agreement, but is not very forgiving. If you cross him, or try to swindle him, you will be put in your place. Pray to him with less-than-honest goals, and he will ignore you. Or if he’s in the mood, ruin your life to teach you a lesson. Wrong his beloved, and there will be hell to pay—full stop.

Meanwhile, he will protect innocent humans trapped in Tonglu, not only because that’s what his God would have done, but because those people are helpless. Hua Cheng knows helplessness. Especially to use them for his own gain is a hypocrisy he cannot accept for himself. And then, he will build a city for other ghosts (serves also to keep them in line), so that they won’t be taken advantage of like he was as a small ghost fire. He will give shelter to a ghost who got revenge on her rapist, and even for animal spirits who seek their vengeance.

These can be seen as benevolent acts, yet it’s more accurate to say that Hua Cheng’s hatred of bullies and the abuse of those who are vulnerable is the basis for whatever moral code he has. It’s an eye-for-an-eye (sorry) ideology. Rather than kindness or righteousness, it’s about balance.

[CONTINUED UNDER CUT DUE TO LENGTH.]

Keep reading

something something infinite glory vs fallen from grace, how tgcf’s whole point is its range. how the whole point is to show extreme contrasts: xie lian floating through the sky as a hero vs lying drunk and filthy at the bottom of a grave pit. shi qingxuan the vibrant privileged god vs the disfigured beggar. pei ming the great warrior vs the easily humiliated coward. hua cheng the too-brave solider boy vs the fearsome ghost king vs the playful and sometimes vicious san lang. it’s still just you.

it’s you when you’re glorious and worshipped and loved and beautiful, it’s you when you’re vulnerable and pathetic and desperate and ugly. it’s you when you are dressed up in finery, it’s you when you are filthy and covered in mud. its you when you’re kind and benevolent, it’s you when you’re petty and angry. it’s you when you are dying for a noble cause, it’s you when you wield a sword for twisted vengeance. it’s all you, in all that it is possible for a human to be. and all that is worth loving. because it is you.