❁World of TGCF❁

“in my heart, you are god! you are the only god, the one true god! did you hear me? I won't... I won't forget! I will never forget you!”

TGCF DONGHUA weibo update

TGCF chapter 199

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.

TGCF SPOILERS (I guess)

Feng Xin and Jian Lan. Even if they broke up they were a thing once and I want to talk about them. Mostly because I want to talk about how Feng Xin loves, and how sweet his little heart is. (｡♡‿♡｡)

Jian Lan said he'd pay for her time (cause she was a sex worker) but he'd never really do anything with her, he's just sit there and talk cause he wanted to spend time with her. (✿ ♡‿♡)

Now let's take a pause and discuss how starved for affection Feng Xin was. Despite having his really good friend present in his life at the time, Xie Lian was pulling away, Xie Lian was distancing himself. He wasn't even telling him his worst fears anymore for fear of looking crazy and sounding insane. Feng Xin knew there was something wrong but he could never figure it out and Xie Lian wasn't helping and the whole thing was a mess. Such a mess that Feng Xin, who would work painfully from dawn to dusk struggling to earn money for the treatment of Xie Lian's parents would still make time to PAY to go visit Jian Lan. Everything about that situation.

Feng Xin is not the guy to believe that Xie Lian owes him something so it's fine to take his money. He knows that the fallen royalty need the money which means if he was working hard before, he started working tirelessly so that he could earn some extra pocket money so he could PAY for someone to listen to him. ಥ_ಥ He was so lost and confused and Jian Lan clearly treasures those memories but imagine the heartbreak, when she eventually pushed him away too. ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ She knew he didn't have that cash to spend on her. That if she left him to it he'd just work himself to death. They both pushed him away for his own good but for poor Feng Xin...it was probably similar to driving a dog to a street they don't recognize, telling them to sit, and then driving away.

that one scene in ch. 123 where HuaLian come back from the Black Water lair and find these three sleepyheads inside Puqi Shrine 🥺

deviantart: fayolinn instagram: jen.shi95 twitter: koujaaku

another great thing about xie lian as a character is how cold blooded he can get and how incomprehensible he is to others. im still reading the novel but its obvious that most heavenly officials have no idea how to interact with him at all and mostly just ignore him?? unless necessary?? and they obviously underestimate him, see nothing past the “scarp collecting god” title which is why moments like this:

are so! satisfying. because they forgoooot, all of them forgot! he’s known as a joke and a failure and yeah, he’s lying about the scale of his involvement in the gilded banquet but the shift of cold air can be basically felt once all the nearby heveanly officials take a breath and have to quickly rearrange some notions in their heads. 

!!!

Ch. 243

“Last time, they spent eight hundred years running towards each other.

This time, it only took an instant to fall in each other’s embrace.”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY XIE LIAN!!!! 🌼⚔️ always thinking about xie lian’s heart and the kindness that even 100 swords could not cut out from him ;;

(read more under the cut, or read full text on ao3)

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what gets me about hua cheng is how all his life, he’s never been loved, never been shown love, yet to love is what he knows best to do. he knows how to give away freely the love he’d never received, the love the world had always cruelly kept from him and starved him of. i keep thinking about that young abused, abandoned, love-starved boy, offering flowers every day and protecting his god so fiercely,,,, loving xie lian for 800 years with such a soul-deep devotion, without his love ever wavering or weakening by even the slightest fraction,,, no one taught hua cheng how to do that. no one ever gave him love for 800 years, yet he still knew how to love with an all-consuming intensity, ferocity and depth

“A martial god! Quick, use your martial god ways!”

Why does this make me laugh so much? XD

dumb of ass

i love it so much when hua cheng flexes in terrifying ways. it’s very cool and sexy of him

rereading shit about qi rong and apparently he knows how to perform an autopsy???

bro the fuck kinda skills were you acquiring during those 800 years?? your repertoire is HUGE????

the way tgcf bk 2 seemed to be telling us that being too kind and trying to save people and striving to fulfill your ideals is naive and foolish and will only backfire on you and have terrible consequences, that there is no point and you shouldn’t try.

and bk 4 seemed to be making it all peak with ch 190, until the bamboo hat scene turned it all around to say: no, saving people will always, always be worth it, fighting for your ideals will always be worth it, no matter how large the cost to yourself, because no cost is too great for the cause of saving lives.

that no matter how hopeless it seems, no matter how loud the voices of the selfish and the cold-hearted, there really are people who are kind at heart, that there will always be at least one person who cares. that choosing kindness and compassion is really worth it, that you should never give up on your ideals, no matter how painful. that even if you can’t save everyone, even if you can only save one - one person, just one person is enough.