Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 9 & 10

[facethestrange]

Hi, and welcome to this week's installment of the Guardian novel readalong! ♡

Here are last week's chapters, and you can find all previous discussions in the schedule posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4), or via the !readalong tag.

This week's chapters:

• Chapter 9: In Kunlun's memories, the young King of the Gui gives Kunlun a gift, retrieves his soul fire from the Great Seal, and gets kissed twice. Kunlun tells him to keep the soul fire, gives him the power to rule over mountains and rivers, makes him half-divine, and sets him free from the Great Seal. The King of the Gui doesn't want to let Kunlun die, but his death is inevitable. Zhao Yunlan wakes up from the memories and meets Ghost Face, who makes him doubt what he's learned about Kunlun's past. Shen Wei shows up and stops Ghost Face from talking. Zhao Yunlan mysteriously disappears.
  



• Chapter 10: Zhao Yunlan is transported to a white void where he meets Shennong and suspects him of tampering with the memories in the Great Divine Tree. Zhao Yunlan is sent back to the Mortal Realm, but he lands in the past, in 2002. He secretly follows his father/Shennong's Mortar to Antiques Street and to the Netherworld. His "father" meets the Soul-Executing Emissary and accuses him of not honoring his promise to stay away from Zhao Yunlan. They argue about the Great Seal and what Shen Wei plans to do if it collapses. After watching them, Zhao Yunlan is left with even more questions. He finds that his copy of Record of Ancient Secrets is blank, and decides to buy another copy in 2002 to see if it ends up at the SID in eleven years.
  

The corresponding chapters in the Chinese version on JJWXC/the fan translation are 87 and 88.


Excerpts:

1) The young King of the Gui's gives Kunlun a gift

The young king’s infatuation with Kunlun-jun didn’t fade, but he had the innate capacity to feel embarrassment and shame. Listening to Kunlun-jun taught him that it was inappropriate to proclaim those feelings aloud, so he tucked them away in his heart. Instead, he searched every day for ways to make Kunlun-jun happy. But alas, no matter how he tried, there was a limit to his imagination. There simply wasn’t anything fun to be found in the Place of Great Disrespect, with its thousands of li of barren land that boasted not so much as a single blade of grass. The entertainment options were limited to capturing two low-level youchu and watching them fight and tear at each other, until one devoured the other.

This “entertainment” didn’t appeal to the young King of the Gui, however, so how could it have been enjoyable for Kunlun-jun?

The young king went to the great effort of collecting a front tooth from each of thirty-six youchu, which to his mind represented the thirty-six glorious mountains that began at Kunlun. He then braided strands of his own hair into a string and strung the teeth together into an extraordinary necklace, which he gave to Kunlun-jun.

Kunlun-jun’s expression when he accepted these thirty-six teeth was very strange—even stranger than the necklace itself. It was as if he had a toothache and wanted to wince from the pain but was instead forcing his features into a peculiar smile, thanking the little king through gritted teeth. From his reaction, the young king concluded that he probably didn’t like it very much. Either way, Kunlun-jun didn’t wear it a single time, and if the little king mentioned it, he invariably changed the subject.



2) The two kisses

Hooking a gentle finger under the youth’s chin, Kunlun-jun softly kissed his beautiful, clear forehead, then soared up into the tree’s branches.

The young king sat frozen in place for some time. There was no trace left of his aggressive aura. A blush spread from his cheeks to his chin and ears. Eventually, he stood up numbly, as though drunk; even his legs were like jelly. Mind empty, he toppled down from the Great Merit Tree’s massive root.

Having been born a gui—even if he had somehow grown up completely differently from the rest of his kind—all he had ever seen and heard were the bestial, lustful copulations of lower-level youchu. The concept of a kiss was wholly new to him. Now, having experienced it, he felt enveloped by a cage of warmth, drifting lightly in midair.

Not even in the waters of the Wangchuan could he float so freely.

(...)

The smile at the corners of Kunlun-jun’s lips gradually faded. Finally, he looked at the young man and asked, “And what do you want from me?”

“That…” The young king didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how to express what he ached for. Finally, he pointed timidly at his own forehead. “That… Can you do it again?”

Kunlun-jun studied him for a long while. Under his intense gaze, the boy didn’t seem to know what to do with his limbs. Then, suddenly, Kunlun-jun reached out and tilted his chin up. But this time it was the young king’s lips that he kissed, ever so gently; he then took the boy’s hand with a light squeeze, guiding the young king’s long fingers closed around that ever-gleaming ball of soul fire.

“I hold all the world’s famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They’re nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it’s yours.”



3) Ghost Face airs his grievances and reveals too much

Ghost Face approached slowly. Mimicking Zhao Yunlan, he put a hand on the stone tablet. “Tens of thousands of years ago, he and I were twin Kings of the Gui. There was no difference between us. And yet somehow, he managed to gain Kunlun-jun’s—your—favor. Now, millennia later, one of us is within and one of us is without. One of us rots in jail and one holds the keys.”

The upturned corners of the smile fell. Ghost Face lowered his voice, pausing after each word. “But the Great Seal is about to fall apart. That’s why I can come and go as I please. In the end, everything must die, and you are no exception. Kunlun, if my idiot brother hadn’t ambushed you all those years ago and confined your primordial spirit—if he hadn’t forced you into the Reincarnation Cycle to become a lowly mortal, relegated to living one life after another—you would have dissipated into nothing, just like the rest of the primordial gods. In this world, nothing can last forever. The only constants are death and Chaos.”

As he spoke, he touched Zhao Yunlan’s face with one ice-cold finger. The sigh that escaped him was almost a groan. “But ‘death’ itself was set ablaze by your soul fire, bringing us into existence…things that are neither living nor dead. Isn’t that such a fascinating coincidence?”

Zhao Yunlan’s brow furrowed. He tilted his head slightly, avoiding Ghost Face. By this point he’d heard too many versions of how he’d lost his soul fire to know which account was true. “Didn’t Shennong borrow my soul fire? How did it appear later in the Place of Great Disrespect? And what do you mean, it set death itself ablaze?”

This line of questioning seemed to throw Ghost Face for a loop. His mask went blank for an instant, as though he didn’t understand what Zhao Yunlan was asking. Then realization dawned. He flung his head back in wild laughter. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha! So that’s how it was! And here I thought he was so pure and innocent! What a virtuous facade he put up, when really—”

He was cut off by the Soul-Executing Blade slashing down at him, wielded with enough hostility to split him in half. Ghost Face took flight and dodged, but the blade’s momentum drove even Zhao Yunlan back a few steps.

“Shen Wei?” he exclaimed.



4) Zhao Yunlan ends up in the past

Without warning, the snowy white world shattered, admitting a piercing bright light. Zhao Yunlan quickly shielded his eyes. Then, vision blurred by tears, he realized that he had somehow arrived in the Mortal Realm.

He assessed his surroundings, which immediately felt both familiar and…not. It took him a few minutes to recognize where he was.

It was the ice cream shop on the corner that tipped him off. Zhao Yunlan’s eyes went wide. He was near his childhood home! That old ice cream shop had closed ages ago, and the spot had been a small hot-pot restaurant for five or six years now.

At first, he was completely at a loss. He bought a bowl of shaved ice with the meager change he had on him and ate it, staring at the prominent “2002” on the calendar on the shop wall. He stuck out like a sore thumb among a group of middle school girls, the shaved ice crunching between his teeth. He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store.

Somehow he had returned to the year 2002!

The whole thing was like being in a dream, or like watching some shoddy movie that abruptly changed scenes: one minute the protagonist was up in the sky, the next they were underground, and then finally they managed to get back to the Mortal Realm, only to be transported eleven years into the past.



5) Shen Wei's ominous plans

“Then what’s happening with the Great Seal?” Zhao Yunlan’s “father” demanded. “Why would the Great Houtu Seal come loose?”

“The original Great Fuxi Seal lasted only a few hundred years before the Pillars of the Sky fell and broke it, after which it was repaired. Ever since Nüwa descended, the Great Houtu Seal has remained for thousands of years. Truthfully, it’s held up longer than expected,” Shen Wei said icily. “Even dripping water can wear through rock eventually. The Great Seal is weakening because its time has come to an end. Preventing that is beyond anyone’s power, including mine.”

“The Great Houtu Seal was created with Nüwa’s life and is filled with Kunlun-jun’s care and hard work. Of course I wasn’t implying you’d do something to it that you shouldn’t, but what if it were to truly collapse? What will you do then?”

“Yes,” Shen Wei replied lightly. “What do I plan on doing? I’m an utter fool, but I finally understand what the ancient sages used to say: ‘If one doesn’t die, doesn’t perish, then one cannot become a god.’ But when I stop and think about it, I was never a god respected and worshipped by all.”

“Don’t you even entertain the notion that on the day the Great Seal collapses, you’ll no longer be bound by Shennong’s contract. If my son—”

The sentence broke off unnaturally, like speakers malfunctioning halfway through a movie. Zhao Yunlan’s “father” opened and closed his mouth, but there was no sound.

Even with Shen Wei’s face hidden by black mist, Zhao Yunlan could feel that he was smiling.



Questions:

What is your favorite soft (or angsty, or soft and angsty) Weilan moment in the primordial past? Do you sympathize with Ghost Face? How do you feel about the time travel storyline, and how does it compare to the drama version? Would you also immediately buy ice cream if you suddenly ended up in the past? Are you as confused as Zhao Yunlan about what is true and what isn't?

You can answer as many or as few questions as you like, or just comment without answering any of them at all! And if you see this post and you're not actually reading the novel: As always, I would love to know what you think about any of this with limited context. :D

And here is the new schedule, and that's where you can sign up to host a post!

Comments

[facethestrange]

Ahhhh, I know this storyline is not fully finished in this chapter yet, but first of all I just need to say how much I LOVE that the drama took the idea of Zhao Yunlan being randomly yeeted into the past (and a time loop with no actual beginning) and put it together with the Kunlun and Weilan storyline and made it into the absolute MASTERPIECE of a story!! ♡♡♡ A++++ choices were made! :D ♡♡♡

"Kunlun-jun had joined the crowd a handful of times and listened, and now he regurgitated what he’d heard back to the young King of the Gui. His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun’s mouth. To him, Kunlun’s bullshit was the truth of the world."

This is so funny to me. :D Like, it's kinda mean to SW, learning all this bullshit, but this really feels like they're both just kids - this is exactly how kids learn from each other. :D :D

"Listening to Kunlun-jun taught him that it was inappropriate to proclaim those feelings aloud, so he tucked them away in his heart."

Um yeah, this is made a whole lot worse later, with the whole 'he will die when you get too close' thing, but this is not a good start for SW already. D:

"The young king went to the great effort of collecting a front tooth from each of thirty-six youchu, which to his mind represented the thirty-six glorious mountains that began at Kunlun."

OH SWEET BABY OMG. He's so thoughtful, and he really wants to do art, and I'm so happy he eventually gets to paint Kunlun. ♡♡♡

"It was as if he had a toothache and wanted to wince from the pain but was instead forcing his features into a peculiar smile, thanking the little king through gritted teeth. From his reaction, the young king concluded that he probably didn’t like it very much."

How is this the most precious damn thing, omg BOTH OF THEM BABIES, they are TRYING. ♡♡♡

"The simple, candid youth’s face lit up with yearning. “They’re so pretty. If I braided a chain of them, you’d like it, wouldn’t you?”"

He's tryinggggg. ♡ Gods, I love them.

"He felt that if he gave voice to the admiration he felt, the words would only come out coarse and unrefined. And even then, he might not be able to convey even a fraction of what was in his heart.

He became frantic. Unconsciously, his nails extended into claws. Frustration turned his expression both glum and aggressive.

As people have said, once one was born into the world, most of the pain one endured—other than the hardships fate had in store—came from thinking too much and reading too little."

I've had so many feelings about this, ever since I first read it, re: Shen Wei studying/teaching literature! ♡ Like, not just the fact that he wanted to express what he was feeling, but especially the fact that NOT expressing it makes him aggressive, and that's the last thing he would ever allow to happen. AHHH. ♡

"The young king sat frozen in place for some time. There was no trace left of his aggressive aura. A blush spread from his cheeks to his chin and ears. Eventually, he stood up numbly, as though drunk; even his legs were like jelly. Mind empty, he toppled down from the Great Merit Tree’s massive root."

He's SO PRECIOUS. And has a tendency to fall off of things when flustered. :D

"The concept of a kiss was wholly new to him. Now, having experienced it, he felt enveloped by a cage of warmth, drifting lightly in midair.

Not even in the waters of the Wangchuan could he float so freely."

SO SWEET. ♡

"Holding it with tremendous care, the young king rubbed his face against it, not wanting to be parted from it."

THE SOFTNESS!! ♡ They're LIKE THIS and I can't just not quote everything. :D

"“And what do you want from me?”

“That…” The young king didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how to express what he ached for. Finally, he pointed timidly at his own forehead. “That… Can you do it again?”

He worked FIFTY YEARS for this, aw!!

"The gui were not living beings, but in that instant, he could almost hear his own nonexistent heartbeat."

"The youth’s heart started beating wildly, driven by the suspicion that something more was about to happen."

!!! These quotes are about a page apart, it can't possibly be an oversight, so did SW actually make his heart beat just by wishing that it would? ♡♡♡ Or did it start beating because of Kunlun making him half-god (which is the only thing that happens in between)? And, like, it does beat in the present, otherwise it wouldn't have the fresh clean blood he gives to Zhao Yunlan, would it? (Several posts ago I said that there would be a memorable line about Shen Wei's heart later - this is what I was talking about. :))

"“I can slaughter every living thing. I can strip every trace of green from the mountains and block even the smallest stream from flowing. I can litter the ground with corpses until there’s no sign of life for thousands of li.”

Kunlun-jun lifted a brow as he teased, “Wow, that powerful?”"

This reaction, lol AW!

"But then Kunlun-jun smiled again, warm as the first gurgling waters of a brook once winter’s ice thawed, reflecting the green of life budding along its banks."

This is such a lovely description. ♡

"The truth of his own powerlessness finally sank in for the young king. All his gifts were for slaughter, destruction, and devouring. All the Realms had shaken when he came into existence; ghosts and gods alike feared him. And what use was any of it?"

He is so biased against himself about things that are not even relevant - if he had any other powers, he still wouldn't be able to prevent Kunlun's death.

"As Kunlun-jun watched, the youth’s expression of murderous intent crumbled. The young king hadn’t yet learned how to contain and suppress the emotions in his heart. Once his sheer shock began to fade, tears took its place; the little king broke down in wretched sobs."

So he hasn't even learned to contain and suppress his emotions, and yet he didn't end up killing anyone. Because his emotions wanted him to cry and not to kill anyone. Maybe he simply doesn't need to suppress them, then. (Just facts for older Shen Wei to consider. :P)

“Tens of thousands of years ago, he and I were twin Kings of the Gui. There was no difference between us. And yet somehow, he managed to gain Kunlun-jun’s—your—favor. Now, millennia later, one of us is within and one of us is without. One of us rots in jail and one holds the keys.”

I honestly, genuinely feel bad for him. They made Ye Zun even more sympathetic than that in the drama, but this is already sympathetic enough for me.

"Kunlun, if my idiot brother hadn’t ambushed you all those years ago and confined your primordial spirit—if he hadn’t forced you into the Reincarnation Cycle to become a lowly mortal, relegated to living one life after another—you would have dissipated into nothing, just like the rest of the primordial gods."

Is this supposed to turn Zhao Yunlan against Shen Wei? xD

"As he spoke, he touched Zhao Yunlan’s face with one ice-cold finger."

Gui Mian lowkey flirting with Zhao Yunlan is always my jam, ngl. :P

"By this point he’d heard too many versions of how he’d lost his soul fire to know which account was true."

Lol, INDEED.

"His spine was curved like a cooked shrimp, and he had a basket on his back—the kind often used by people from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Taking a peek inside, Zhao Yunlan saw that it was empty. And yet the old man moved as if carrying hundreds of kilograms, too weighed down to even lift his head. He walked onward with his face toward the ground and his back facing the sky."

The description of Shennong is SO similar to the description of GCC carrying all the stuff at the train station ("What he found instead was Guo Changcheng, bent practically double under a huge woven bag. Guo Changcheng was hunched so far forward by the weight that his body almost formed a circle as he slowly inched along."), and idk if that's intentional or not.

"Zhao Yunlan reached out and put a hand under the basket to help support it."

Aw, Zhao Yunlan paints himself as an asshole and yet he's someone who helps even imaginary Shennong, completely unprompted.

"“Are you the one who brought me here?” Zhao Yunlan sighed. “Why? I finally managed to catch my wife, and you interrupted and ruined it before I got a single word out.”

With a small smile, the old man listened to his griping but didn’t explain or respond.

Zhao Yunlan wasn’t discouraged. “What are you carrying in the basket?”"

I love Zhao Yunlan being LIKE THIS even when he has absolutely no idea where he is or what is happening. :D

"The whip in his hand transformed into the Soul-Guarding Order, red words on black paper. He rolled it up like a cigarette and put it in his mouth, holding it there as he patiently followed the old man."

This entire aesthetic, YES, very good. :D

"Ever since he’d confirmed that the “memories” he’d seen within the Great Divine Tree were fake"

Did he literally confirm it, or was it always just very strong suspicions? (I know he confirmed it in the original version, and it felt like too much too early. And now I don't remember if later he confirmed it in this version too. :P)

"The parts that had to do with his left soul fire were particularly unclear, and the parts that related to the fall of Buzhou Mountain were especially clunky and forced."

Lol, that's my personal conclusion too, I'm glad to know I'm on the right track. xD

"He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store."

Lolol, did he look very different when he was a teenager then? :D (Also I hope this is not the same ice cream shop that his father had his power trip about. D:)

"The whole thing was like being in a dream, or like watching some shoddy movie that abruptly changed scenes: one minute the protagonist was up in the sky, the next they were underground, and then finally they managed to get back to the Mortal Realm, only to be transported eleven years into the past."

I'm loving the lampshading. :D :D

"Through the shop window, he saw a familiar car driving out of the neighborhood: the old car that had held countless childhood memories—the car that his father had heartlessly replaced!"

He replaced the car, but not the phone. :P

"He flagged down a taxi, digging out his tattered work ID and brandishing the police badge in front of the driver’s eyes. “I need you to follow that car! Stay close!”"

This is obviously extremely on-brand for Zhao Yunlan, but lol, he's not a police officer in this timeline yet - if someone checked, he would suddenly have an extra problem to solve. xD

"The driver had never imagined he’d have the chance to chauffeur a 007. Thrilled by this once-in-a-lifetime chance, he stomped on the gas. The car shot forward like a racehorse, nearly sending Zhao Yunlan sprawling in the passenger seat."

I absolutely love the taxi driver. :D :D

"Hiding his tracks, Zhao Yunlan dry-swallowed a yellow paper talisman."

How. HOW. Good for him I guess, but HOW. xD

"It was one of the ones he’d drawn back when he was blind; he’d sold all the good ones, so the only ones he still had on him were defective."

How about you at least only take good talismans with you if the possibility of DRY SWALLOWING them exists, what the hell. xD

"Having no other choice, Zhao Yunlan took a deep breath and headed down the Huangquan Road for the second time that day, itching to kick that stupid bowl spirit a new asshole."

I love his exasperation, it's hilarious and 100% valid. :D

"His only option was to curl in on himself and hide within the pagoda tree, which left him feeling stuck between the yin and yang realms."

This doesn't sound pleasant!

And here's the 'Zhao Yunlan watches Shen Wei having a private meeting with his father' scene from the drama! :D (I've talked about it somewhere before, how they combined the teashop scene from the novel with this one. :D)

"The chill clinging to him was even more piercing than the desolate Huangquan."

Wow, that's dramatic! Considering that Shen Wei doesn't even have to be cold at all (which means he chooses to), here he's even colder than something that is already colder than having bare feet in winter. :P

“The evening newspaper that Yunlan brought home had my lord’s scent on it.”

Ah, so it is confirmed that he was stalking Zhao Yunlan in this lifetime too. What does touching a newspaper even do for him tho?? :D (He just wants them both to touch the same thing, I guess?)

"I never took the Three Sovereigns themselves seriously, much less Shennong’s treasured mortar."

Hah, Shen Wei doesn't respect gods either. :D

"How could Zhao Yunlan’s delicate, scholarly, easily bullied lover also turn out to be a terrorist who’d put a gag order on Zhao Yunlan’s fake dad?"

I understand the confusion and all, but like, have you met the Emissary before. :P :P

"Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie."

So very valid!

[trobadora]

Hi! I only just managed to post my comment on last week's post, but I'm trying to catch up properly, so here I am! Great choice of excerpts, and great questions. :D

Do you sympathize with Ghost Face?

He's the victim of Evil Worldbuilding™ too, so yes, absolutely!

How do you feel about the time travel storyline, and how does it compare to the drama version?

I can't tell yet; I'll need to see how it ends.

Would you also immediately buy ice cream if you suddenly ended up in the past?

Excellent choice, yes! Especially since the shop doesn't exist any more in the present; take that opportunity while you have it!:D

Are you as confused as Zhao Yunlan about what is true and what isn't?

YES!!!

And my notes:

the great sage Shennong had personally descended to the Mortal Realm

Since we've been talking about realms - descended from where? I'd normally assume from the Heavenly Realm, but all the gods seem to be running around in the Mortal Realm anyway ...

now he regurgitated what he'd heard back to the young King of the Gui. His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun's mouth. To him, Kunlun's bullshit was the truth of the world.

This gives me second-hand embarrassment, ouch. :( Poor Xiao-Wei, he deserves better.

Listening to Kunlun-jun taught him that it was inappropriate to proclaim those feelings aloud, so he tucked them away in his heart.

NOOOOO!!!!! Kunlun is so bad for baby!SW. :(

(I'm so glad the drama changed that completely, and had ZYL actually be good for YOHE!SW.)

Kunlun-jun's expression when he accepted these thirty-six teeth was very strange-even stranger than the necklace itself. It was as if he had a toothache and wanted to wince from the pain but was instead forcing his features into a peculiar smile, thanking the little king through gritted teeth. From his reaction, the young king concluded that he probably didn't like it very much.

Come on, Kunlun! Take it in the spirit it's given!

"I hold all the world's famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They're nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it's yours."

Awww! But honestly, I find Kunlun so inconsistent in his behaviour towards Xiao-Wei, he's veering wildly from judgmental and patronising to teasing to earnest and generous. It's giving me whiplash, it's a wonder Xiao-Wei isn't even more confused by everything! (If it actually did happen like that, which I assume it did.)

(And we're entirely back in "Kunlun is an adult, Xiao-Wei is a teen" territory, which I find unpleasant because it's so unbalanced ...)

The gui were not living beings, but in that instant, he could almost hear his own nonexistent heartbeat.

♥ ♥ ♥

Shennong said, 'If one doesn't die, doesn't perish, one cannot become a god.' I used to think he was spouting bullshit, but now, I'm finally starting to understand..."

Time to link this meta by foxghost! Spoiler warning for the ending.

"Tens of thousands of years ago, he and I were twin Kings of the Gui. There was no difference between us. And yet somehow, he managed to gain Kunlun-jun's-your-favor. Now, millennia later, one of us is within and one of us is without. One of us rots in jail and one holds the keys."

Yeah, can't blame Ghost Face for his resentment at all!

"Didn't Shennong borrow my soul fire? How did it appear later in the Place of Great Disrespect? And what do you mean, it set death itself ablaze?"

All excellent questions!

Ever since he'd confirmed that the "memories" he'd seen within the Great Divine Tree were fake, a suspicion had lurked in his mind. It wasn't as if just anyone could even go to the peak of Kunlun Mountain, never mind tamper with the Great Divine Tree itself. He could count the number of people who'd be capable of it with one hand. Since then, he'd pored over those memories countless times. The parts that had to do with his left soul fire were particularly unclear, and the parts that related to the fall of Buzhou Mountain were especially clunky and forced.

ZYL figuring things out is always fun! I wish we got to see into his head more often.

If any one person in that story hadn't played their part, things would've ended differently; that meant all their actions were directly connected to sequences of events that could be explained. Any one person, except Shennong.

Huh, fascinating!

He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store.

LOLOLOL! :D

With just one look, Zhao Yunlan immediately felt deeply awkward-as anyone would in his shoes, realizing that their "wife" had privately met up with their dad eleven years ago.

And here's the source for the tea shop encounter between SW and ZXC in the drama, right?

Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie.

Alas, this is exactly my problem with the novel: I don't know what's true, and so anything and everything is suspect, which makes it harder to engage with anything.

(This is also why I have so few comments on this. I feel like it's pointless to speculate or think too deeply on much of what's said because who knows if any of it is even real ...)

Version comparison: again almost no meaningful differences I could spot, but there's this:

• When ZYL in the past glimpses his father from the ice cream shop, there's this bit that's ot in the official translation:
  

  At the moment when he's eaten half of the shaved ice, his suddenly glimpsed a person. He immediately sat up straight, and, like a fox, extended his neck to look out from the ice cream shop window. Because the image of a "fierce handsome man eating shaved ice" was so eye-catching, several girls couldn't stop looking at him and thus, uncontrollably followed his gaze, extended their necks, and looked outside.
  
  This resulted in forming a basketball team of meerkats.



• In the official translation, the talisman ZYL swallows while following his father is one of the ones he drew while he was blind; in the fan translation it's this instead:
  

  The talisman was drawn by Chu Shuzhi. Chu Shuzhi was so poor that all he had left was self-confidence, and he thought of himself as incredibly cool. He claimed that this talisman would be more than effective even if it was to be used to investigate the romantic relationships of the great ancient gods.
  
  Even though Zhao Yunlan thinks he's full of bullshit, he couldn't help but put his hopes on the talisman.



• While ZYL is following his father down the tree, there are two bits that aren't in the official translation. First this:
  

  He knew that the person he was following was not his pompous father but a scum who dared to use the body of a living person to go down to Huang Quan.

  
  And then a reference to Shen Wei:
  

  There was sense in Shen Wei's recommendation that he leave as quickly as possible. It definitely wasn't a great experience for a living person to walk the Huang Quan road.

[trobadora]

I just need to say how much I LOVE that the drama took the idea of Zhao Yunlan being randomly yeeted into the past (and a time loop with no actual beginning) and put it together with the Kunlun and Weilan storyline and made it into the absolute MASTERPIECE of a story!! ♡♡♡ A++++ choices were made! :D ♡♡♡

I really didn't remember any of this at all, and I'm so fascinated to discover where the basic idea for the drama's time loop must have come from!

Like, it's kinda mean to SW, learning all this bullshit, but this really feels like they're both just kids - this is exactly how kids learn from each other. :D :D

Yeah, I wouldn't mind it if I could believe that they're just two kids, but then SW gets treated as much younger and less mature, and I'm just, NOPE. :(

OH SWEET BABY OMG. He's so thoughtful, and he really wants to do art, and I'm so happy he eventually gets to paint Kunlun. ♡♡♡

Kunlun should properly appreciate Xiao-Wei's art! *grumbles*

"The gui were not living beings, but in that instant, he could almost hear his own nonexistent heartbeat."

"The youth’s heart started beating wildly, driven by the suspicion that something more was about to happen."

!!! These quotes are about a page apart, it can't possibly be an oversight, so did SW actually make his heart beat just by wishing that it would? ♡♡♡ Or did it start beating because of Kunlun making him half-god (which is the only thing that happens in between)?

Yeah, I assume he has a heartbeat afterwards because Kunlun changed his state of being.

So he hasn't even learned to contain and suppress his emotions, and yet he didn't end up killing anyone. Because his emotions wanted him to cry and not to kill anyone. Maybe he simply doesn't need to suppress them, then. (Just facts for older Shen Wei to consider. :P)

RIGHT????????

Is this supposed to turn Zhao Yunlan against Shen Wei? xD

Idk, I honestly have no idea what Gui Mian is trying to accomplish with this!

The description of Shennong is SO similar to the description of GCC carrying all the stuff at the train station ("What he found instead was Guo Changcheng, bent practically double under a huge woven bag. Guo Changcheng was hunched so far forward by the weight that his body almost formed a circle as he slowly inched along."), and idk if that's intentional or not.

Ooh, great catch, now that you say it I see it too!

"The whip in his hand transformed into the Soul-Guarding Order, red words on black paper. He rolled it up like a cigarette and put it in his mouth, holding it there as he patiently followed the old man."

This entire aesthetic, YES, very good. :D

Did he literally confirm it, or was it always just very strong suspicions? (I know he confirmed it in the original version, and it felt like too much too early. And now I don't remember if later he confirmed it in this version too. :P)

I don't remember if he actually confirmed it in either version - he's come to that conclusion, but does he have definite proof or just a strong conviction?

And here's the 'Zhao Yunlan watches Shen Wei having a private meeting with his father' scene from the drama! :D (I've talked about it somewhere before, how they combined the teashop scene from the novel with this one. :D)

Yes! So fascinating, I'm always delighted to discover how the drama picked up bits and pieces an wove them into a new narrative. :D

Ah, so it is confirmed that he was stalking Zhao Yunlan in this lifetime too.

Glad to have the confirmation!

I understand the confusion and all, but like, have you met the Emissary before. :P :P

ZYL thinks the Emissary is nice and reasonable! Because he's always been nice and reasonable to him. LOL.

[china_shop]

but first of all I just need to say how much I LOVE that the drama took the idea of Zhao Yunlan being randomly yeeted into the past (and a time loop with no actual beginning) and put it together with the Kunlun and Weilan storyline and made it into the absolute MASTERPIECE of a story!! ♡♡♡ A++++ choices were made! :D ♡♡♡

1000% AGREED!! :D

but this really feels like they're both just kids - this is exactly how kids learn from each other. :D :D

It really does. How old is Kunlun even supposed to be, in this version of events?? /rhetorical

And has a tendency to fall off of things when flustered. :D

Haha, given DQ and ZH, this is starting to seem like a trope. :D

He worked FIFTY YEARS for this, aw!!

I knoooooow!!!

Or did it start beating because of Kunlun making him half-god (which is the only thing that happens in between)?

Ohh, I hadn’t connected it to the gui having no heartbeat, but yeah, I think SW becoming half-god must be the difference.

So he hasn't even learned to contain and suppress his emotions, and yet he didn't end up killing anyone. Because his emotions wanted him to cry and not to kill anyone. Maybe he simply doesn't need to suppress them, then. (Just facts for older Shen Wei to consider. :P)

Yes, this!!!

I honestly, genuinely feel bad for him. They made Ye Zun even more sympathetic than that in the drama, but this is already sympathetic enough for me.

It really is wildly unfair. (And then there’s all the other gui, too, some of whom are presumably not that far from Ghost Face and Shen Wei’s state of complicatedness? Idk.)

The description of Shennong is SO similar to the description of GCC carrying all the stuff at the train station

Yess, I noticed that too. I think it has to be intentional? I really enjoyed it, anyway.

Did he literally confirm it, or was it always just very strong suspicions? (I know he confirmed it in the original version, and it felt like too much too early. And now I don't remember if later he confirmed it in this version too. :P)

Does this count as confirming? It might to him.

There’s no way I’d ever blind a divine dragon for no reason.” His “dad” glanced at Shen Wei and nodded in agreement. “That makes sense.”

(Also I hope this is not the same ice cream shop that his father had his power trip about. D:)

Ohh, that’s a good point. Surely the fact that he’s eating ice cream here suggests the ice-cream-related trauma was a little over-stated? /hopeful

I absolutely love the taxi driver. :D :D

Hee! Me too. It was the perfect taxi for ZYL to choose. :D

How about you at least only take good talismans with you if the possibility of DRY SWALLOWING them exists, what the hell. xD

LOL!!!

And here's the 'Zhao Yunlan watches Shen Wei having a private meeting with his father' scene from the drama! :D

Yes!! I was so happy to see that here. (It makes me think that in the drama, Shen Wei is very restrained and not throwing his weight (and enormous power) around at all! <3

(He just wants them both to touch the same thing, I guess?)

That is so saaaad, and yet, I’m just laughing at it. Sorry, SW!

Hah, Shen Wei doesn't respect gods either. :D

Shared values! :D :D :D

I understand the confusion and all, but like, have you met the Emissary before. :P :P

I’m slightly confused by his description of SW as “easily bullied”, like, what? Even the SW he knows isn’t, except when it comes to very personal/intimate things. ;-p

"Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie." So very valid!

Right? I am right there with him!

ETA: How about you at least only take good talismans with you if the possibility of DRY SWALLOWING them exists, what the hell. xD

LOL, now I'm wondering if the business in ep 8 of the drama with ZYL wanting to dry-swallow his medicine and SW not letting him was the drama writers have exactly this reaction to the novel. :D :D :D

[china_shop]

Excellent choice, yes! Especially since the shop doesn't exist any more in the present; take that opportunity while you have it!:D

Hee! *hearts*

Since we've been talking about realms - descended from where? I'd normally assume from the Heavenly Realm, but all the gods seem to be running around in the Mortal Realm anyway ...

EXCELLENT QUESTION!! Maybe there’s an afterlife for gods that isn’t the Netherworld OR the Heavens??

(I'm so glad the drama changed that completely, and had ZYL actually be good for YOHE!SW.)

Yesss! Helped him open up instead of shutting him down. MUCH better.

Come on, Kunlun! Take it in the spirit it's given!

I mean, though, can he help his first reaction? I don’t think he has that much control over his emotions (when have gods ever needed any?).

But honestly, I find Kunlun so inconsistent in his behaviour towards Xiao-Wei, he's veering wildly from judgmental and patronising to teasing to earnest and generous. It's giving me whiplash, it's a wonder Xiao-Wei isn't even more confused by everything! (If it actually did happen like that, which I assume it did.)

It’s so hard to tell if it did. And it’s such a different vibe from the Divine Tree vision. ;-p

Thanks for the meta link! I’m not going to read it (because spoilers, yes, even though I’ve read the novel before /dork), but hopefully will remember to revisit it once we’re done.

And here's the source for the tea shop encounter between SW and ZXC in the drama, right?

I’m so happy it’s here! I have a lot of feelings about that scene and Shen Wei caught between his diplomat and son-in-law roles. :D

Alas, this is exactly my problem with the novel: I don't know what's true, and so anything and everything is suspect, which makes it harder to engage with anything.

Yeah, agreed! I’m reading everything through a haze of sceptism, and it does make it hard to know how to feel about any of it.

This resulted in forming a basketball team of meerkats.

LOLOL!

Thanks as always for the version comparison!!

[facethestrange]

Hiiii! I'm nowhere near caught up on the comments on the last post myself, but now that I made this post - soon, very soon. :D :D

"He's the victim of Evil Worldbuilding™ too, so yes, absolutely!"

Hah, the main villain of this story, the Evil Worldbuilding. *nodnod* :D

"I can't tell yet; I'll need to see how it ends."

100% valid, and fwiw, this is basically where it ends - it turns out that it is where the book came from and that's it? I may be forgetting something minor, but the whole time travel thing is this tiny and brief. :)

"Excellent choice, yes! Especially since the shop doesn't exist any more in the present; take that opportunity while you have it!:D"

Hahah, true! :D I got a bit confused when he just left the ice cream behind when he left but I guess it was in a glass or something, not in a takeout container. xD

"Since we've been talking about realms - descended from where? I'd normally assume from the Heavenly Realm, but all the gods seem to be running around in the Mortal Realm anyway ..."

I think the gods used to leave in the Heavenly Realm, and they all ended up living in the Mortal Realm eventually after they descended to it.

"NOOOOO!!!!! Kunlun is so bad for baby!SW. :(

(I'm so glad the drama changed that completely, and had ZYL actually be good for YOHE!SW.)"

He's just regurgitating what he was told - if his emotions were too much for everyone, then he can teach SW that having emotions is just too much? Doesn't make it any better for SW whatsoever, but Kunlun doesn't actually know what he's doing.

(ITA on that though! ♡♡♡ None of this can compare to YOHE ever. ♡♡♡)

"Come on, Kunlun! Take it in the spirit it's given!"

He doesn't know the spirit, though? It's all SW's thoughts, all Kunlun can see is the necklace itself. (I mean, I guess getting a gift could give him a hint of what the spirit is, but later with the flowers he's still not even sure if it's not just an attempt to get out of the Seal.)

I don't like the part where they never talk about it again (they should, and this is where the intention should be revealed), but the first reaction, with a thank-you and a genuine attempt to smile and no criticism at all is already pretty impressively nice to me, considering no one has ever been nice to Kunlun about the things he did. He parrots all the criticism that used to be directed at him, and here he doesn't even do that. :) (Though he may be parroting someone else's fake smile at a gift that he made for them. But at least he knows to choose the kindest of the reactions he knows?)

"But honestly, I find Kunlun so inconsistent in his behaviour towards Xiao-Wei, he's veering wildly from judgmental and patronising to teasing to earnest and generous. It's giving me whiplash, it's a wonder Xiao-Wei isn't even more confused by everything!"

Hah, ITA, he's a mess. The way I see it, it's all him flip-flopping between his upbringing and knee-jerk reactions and how he actually, genuinely feels. (Again, it doesn't make it better for SW, and it must be super confusing indeed.)

"(And we're entirely back in "Kunlun is an adult, Xiao-Wei is a teen" territory, which I find unpleasant because it's so unbalanced ...)"

To me this is SUCH a case of telling and not showing! There's nothing that Kunlun does (or even thinks privately) that makes him even remotely more mature than SW, and there are definitely several things that make him a lot less mature (for example throwing around words he doesn't understand, when SW thinks about them quietly and wonders why they're being used). The way the narrative seems to say that he actually is more mature is just very confusing to me because there's just zero proof.

"Time to link this meta by foxghost! Spoiler warning for the ending."

Oh, neat, thank you!! ♡

"Alas, this is exactly my problem with the novel: I don't know what's true, and so anything and everything is suspect, which makes it harder to engage with anything."

I kinda love this lampshading, like, this is the reading experience and this is Zhao Yunlan's actual life. :D

"Because the image of a "fierce handsome man eating shaved ice" was so eye-catching, several girls couldn't stop looking at him and thus, uncontrollably followed his gaze, extended their necks, and looked outside.

This resulted in forming a basketball team of meerkats."

This is hilarious and adorable. :D :D :D

"He claimed that this talisman would be more than effective even if it was to be used to investigate the romantic relationships of the great ancient gods."

Omg I LOVE this, because this just happens to be exactly what Zhao Yunlan is doing. xD :D :D

(Thank you for the comparisons as always! ♡♡♡)

[facethestrange]

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind it if I could believe that they're just two kids, but then SW gets treated as much younger and less mature, and I'm just, NOPE. :("

Treated by the narrative or by Kunlun? (By the narrative - see my reply to your comment. :) It is a wild discrepancy to me.) By Kunlun - I totally see it as just another part of how incredibly immature Kunlun himself is? It's like a 5-year-old talking to a 3-year-old, going 'don't you worry, I'll explain everything to you, and I even know the mysteries of the world that you can't possibly understand until you're older', and the 3-year-old goes 'it doesn't sound like it makes all that much sense, but you clearly know what you're doing because you're so grown up *heart eyes*'.

"Kunlun should properly appreciate Xiao-Wei's art! *grumbles*"

As much as I think he already did as well as he could back then (but that's in my other comment :)), I do hope that he fully and completely appreciates it now, not just the painting but the necklace too. :)

"Yeah, I assume he has a heartbeat afterwards because Kunlun changed his state of being."

I got stumped again a bit later when I remembered what Daqing said about the blood: "As a King of the Gui, he was born to stand among the sages. He most likely doesn’t have an inner core as the yao do, so…the only option left is blood from the very tip of his heart, right?" He doesn't know that SW was made half-divine, does he? Which would mean that at least the Kings of the Gui (if not all of the gui) do have blood in their heart. But I guess they still don't have a heartbeat regardless.

"I don't remember if he actually confirmed it in either version - he's come to that conclusion, but does he have definite proof or just a strong conviction?"

I mean, idk what counts as hard proof vs. Shennong's Bowl spouting bullshit, lol, but there was this thing in chapter 2 where in the original he says "How did Lord Kunlun find out that the memories inside the holy tree aren't your true memories?" and in the official translation he just says "Oh?"

"ZYL thinks the Emissary is nice and reasonable! Because he's always been nice and reasonable to him. LOL."

Lol AW! I think he has seen him be stern and scary, but maybe not often enough? At least on the roof executing the youchu, near the beginning of the novel, but I guess that was more understandable to ZYL than SW's current actions. (Oh, and he's also seen him be unapologetic about killing everyone. Nah, I think ZYL is just in denial at this point. ;D)

[facethestrange]

"It really does. How old is Kunlun even supposed to be, in this version of events?? /rhetorical"

Hah, ikr, he not only doesn't sound more mature than SW ever, he actually sounds less mature than SW a lot of the time. xD

"Haha, given DQ and ZH, this is starting to seem like a trope. :D"

LOL AW, I didn't even put that together! :D True facts - whether it's shock or infatuation, someone's gonna fall off of something. :D

"And then there’s all the other gui, too, some of whom are presumably not that far from Ghost Face and Shen Wei’s state of complicatedness? Idk."

They are not that far indeed - it comes up later, and it was quite jarring to me because it turns out it has always been a bunch of people being imprisoned like this.

"Does this count as confirming? It might to him."

There’s no way I’d ever blind a divine dragon for no reason.” His “dad” glanced at Shen Wei and nodded in agreement. “That makes sense.”

Oh, awesome, thanks for the find! It's a lot less direct than in the original, but in a way it's still there, yes.

"Surely the fact that he’s eating ice cream here suggests the ice-cream-related trauma was a little over-stated? /hopeful"

He's eating shaved ice, so maybe the different texture makes a difference, idk, but honestly I would absolutely love if it was the exact same shop and the exact same ice cream, and Zhao Yunlan just goes 'I still like it, YOU CAN'T STOP ME'. :D (Also he didn't even remember it happening, so there may be no conscious trauma at all.)

"That is so saaaad, and yet, I’m just laughing at it. Sorry, SW!"

Hahah, the terrifying Emissary cuddling a newspaper is sure A CONCEPT. :D Still SAD THO.

"I’m slightly confused by his description of SW as “easily bullied”, like, what? Even the SW he knows isn’t, except when it comes to very personal/intimate things. ;-p"

I think that's exactly the things he's thinking of at this point, yeah, lol. Like making SW blush with his stupid comments. But he sure is forgetting about a whole lot of other things. xD

"LOL, now I'm wondering if the business in ep 8 of the drama with ZYL wanting to dry-swallow his medicine and SW not letting him was the drama writers have exactly this reaction to the novel. :D :D :D"

I immediately thought of this scene tooooo (obviously :D :D one of my favorite scenes/episodes ♡♡♡), but I didn't have any way to actually connect them, but I love this omg LOL! :D SW would have the exact same reaction to dry-swallowing talismans. :D :D :D

[facethestrange]

"Yesss! Helped him open up instead of shutting him down. MUCH better."

Ahhh, my first thought was 'that's because no one taught novel!Kunlun to open up', and then obviously my second thought was 'and it was future Shen Wei who taught drama!Kunlun to open up', and now I have even more feelings. :D ♡♡♡

[china_shop]

Great post, and ooh, fantastic choice of quotes, yay!!

Here are my rather extensive notes. It's late now, so I'll come back and answer questions and stuff tomorrow.

My very first note for chapter 9 is: "Is this another lie?" Which is kind of colouring my view of everything, but oh well. (I had the same problem with eps 32 & 33 of the drama, with CSZ's dreams, my first few times through; so hard to invest when it might be all a dream.)

His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun’s mouth. To him, Kunlun’s bullshit was the truth of the world.

Oh dear! I wonder if Kunlun realises exactly how ignorant Wei is at this point. Like, if he thinks they're just sitting around shooting the shit, this feels pretty normal. But if he thinks he's raising/shaping Wei, then... oh dear. And then, otoh, this is kind of just how gods are, right? They say whatever they feel like, and people take them seriously and get bogged down trying to make it all make sense. ;-p

Slowly, a sort of mutually reliant affection took shape there at the maw of hell.

Mutually reliant, but there's still a massive power differential. Which at least is sort-of-flipped in contemporary times. And awwwww, Shen Wei desperately searching for fun things for Kunlun, to ease his boredom. (And then I went, wait, I'm confused: how did they end up there, guarding the Seal? Is there an explanation for that? Does it follow on from the Divine Tree vision, or are we just supposed to understand/guess? This feels like an alternate first meeting. Argh, why won't this all stay in my head? ;-p)

The entertainment options were limited to capturing two low-level youchu and watching them fight and tear at each other

Soooo if there are low-level youchu, are there also high-level youchu??? /o\

THE TOOTH NECKLACE!! The tooth necklace was one of the few things I was spoiled for before I started reading the novel, and honestly it was what put me off reading for years, because it was so "this is not my Shen Wei." BUT I misunderstood and thought that they were human teeth from people SW had killed, rather than youchu teeth. That makes a difference! Nowhere near as bad. (This feels like the gui equivalent of a shark-tooth necklace or something?) And also, when I read on to the point where Kunlun gives Wei his tendon/spine (again?), at that point I went, well, that puts the tooth necklace into perspective, lol.

I do think Kunlun could be more gracious about the gift, but a) he's Kunlun, he's always been careless and thoughtless and trampling all over everyone's feelings/dignity, and b) I guess he doesn't need to attach romantic feelings to it (like he does to SW's coat in contemporary times) because he has Wei right there, you know?

There’s a kind of flower that looks like a bell

Oh, bells again! Presumably this is after all the stuff on Kunlun Mountain, and Kunlun making the bell for Daqing... speaking of which, WHERE IS DAQING?? How can this be real if DQ isn't here?

He became frantic. Unconsciously, his nails extended into claws. Frustration turned his expression both glum and aggressive.

This sounds like he's becoming more like a youchu. I wonder if that's deliberate imagery... I've forgotten the gui's family tree.

The paragraph about how reading makes you a better person felt out of place to me, interrupting the flow of the scene. I don't understand what it has to do with Wei at this point, or how it fits into their story, unless it's implying that Wei is one of the sages. It's not like there's a public library at the Great Seal, right? ;-p

Wei's reaction to the kiss is adorable, but also, it made me laugh because it's such a "what is this thing you call kissing?" kind of alien/robot cliche. And then he immediately turns tail and runs away... setting the tone for the rest of their relationship up till now. ;-p

OMG, he spends 50 years gathering Kunlun's soul fire!! (I have no idea if this is true, but it's such a fairytale true-love QUEST!! And he set it for himself!! <333) And the way he rubs his face against it, awwwww!!

The smile at the corners of Kunlun-jun’s lips gradually faded. Finally, he looked at the young man and asked, “And what do you want from me?”

Ooooh, I wonder if this got ported into the kitchen scene in the drama. Shen Wei having made a self-sacrificial gesture, and ZYL really not understanding what it means?!

Finally, he pointed timidly at his own forehead. “That… Can you do it again?”

ADORABLE!! (It would really help if Wei wasn't referred to as a boy all the time. /o\ "Young king" is fine; "boy" is DNW, for me.)

I hold all the world’s famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They’re nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it’s yours.”

This convinced me that this can't be real. When would Kunlun EVER say that his sacred mountains are just a bunch of rocks? And if he would say that, then it's even worse. Nope, DNW! (The other version, where he's dissing his contemporary worldly possessions is so much better!!)

As he spoke, he swiftly shaped a series of complicated hand signs with his fingers. The divine tendon was transformed into a stream of golden light that, guided by his fingers, drove straight into the King of the Gui’s forehead. In an instant, the youth seemed to hear the passing of millennia, accompanied by the sound of ten thousand great mountains rising.

It's like the drama!Sundial energy exchange! Did they just become soul-joined??

Ohh, the tendon is a divine travel pass that lets Wei move freely through the realms. Interesting!

Oh no, Wei being all "I'll tear the world apart if it'll save you." This is heartbreaking! (Where is DQ??)

Shennong said, ‘If one doesn’t die, doesn’t perish, one cannot become a god.’

I haven't read the post trobadora linked to, but this reads to me like Shennong saying sacrifice is part of godliness? Or godhood requires sacrifice? Which I think would fit with the novel themes? (I'm glossing over Kunlun calling Wei "child". /o)

The "I should have killed you" really brings home to me how different their relationship here is to the one in the Divine Tree vision. Like, the Wei here just doesn't sound like the one who said:

“I don’t want to live like that,” he said. “If I must, then I might as well not live at all. I would rather die than live in a way not of my own choosing.”

And Kunlun seems so different, too! Tree!Kunlun seems older to me. (I just saw that he also calls Wei "child".)

So, in the Tree vision, Kunlun gives his soul fire to the gui and/or Wei:

• It was true that Kunlun-jun had lent his soul fire to the gui, but his intention had been only to break the Path to Heaven. He didn’t deign to interact with these primitive, low-level things; he didn’t particularly care for them.
• “This is the soul fire from my left shoulder.” Sweat beaded Kunlun-jun’s forehead, but still he smiled. “And I… I’ll give you something else.”

And here, it says he let Shennong borrow it. *so confused*

From Kunlun's description of fate (but in the end, there’s only one path you’ll inevitably choose) it feels like it's about essential nature, rather than anything the Heavens are doing. Interesting.

The truth of his own powerlessness finally sank in for the young king. All his gifts were for slaughter, destruction, and devouring. All the Realms had shaken when he came into existence; ghosts and gods alike feared him.

Already? Like, just from him being the Little Ghost King? He isn't even the Emissary yet!

Ahhh, his sobs are heart-rending. He’s facing an eternity without the one person who matters most. :-(((((((((((((

I don't know if Ghost Face is trying to recruit ZYL with his "if my idiot brother hadn't ambushed you [...] you would have dissipated into nothing," or if he's saying, "Look, none of this is any of your business!" Like, if the natural order of things is that Kunlun just shouldn't exist anymore, then maybe his point is that ZYL should butt out?

By this point he’d heard too many versions of how he’d lost his soul fire to know which account was true.

ME TOO! (I think Ghost Face's reaction means that the Great Seal visions were doctored by SW?)

They kept the maniacal laughter for the drama, lol.

Like facethestrange noted, the description of Shennong is very reminiscent of Changcheng at the railway station. I wonder what that means... (I like ZYL's use of "wife" even less in this context, ftr.) And Shennong is chanting the Soul-Guarding Order motto, right?

I have a note about ZYL putting the Soul-Guarding Order into his mouth: "oral fixation or protection like the Leaves of Illusion?" Now I'm going: Why not both? ;D

and the parts that related to the fall of Buzhou Mountain were especially clunky and forced.

LOL!

He looked exactly like someone the mafia had sent to collect protection fees in exchange for not smashing the store.

This doesn’t seem like a very helpful look for a cop?? But maybe he's looking especially rough after all his adventures.

the car that his father had heartlessly replaced!

LOLOL! There are many ways in which his father(s) are terrible, but I don't feel like getting a new car is any kind of crime. Sorry, ZYL. Let the old one go.

Ha, I love the taxi driver. (It might be less charming if I thought about political realities too hard, so I'm not gonna.)

Swallowing defective talismans feels so reckless. What if it doesn't just not-work-very-well? What if it does something entirely different??

I'm so interested by the Moses reference. Is that the first Christian imagery so far?

Finally, it was Zhao Yunlan’s “father” who cracked. “The evening newspaper that Yunlan brought home had my lord’s scent on it.”

Maybe stop sniffing your son's newspapers, lol!

So the mortar deliberately became ZYL's fake dad, right? Versus in the drama, where I think it's coincidence/fate. I lowkey love Shen Wei being so rude to him, anyway. It's such a contrast from when he appears in front of ZYL's mother as ZYL's partner.

“Yes,” Shen Wei replied lightly. “What do I plan on doing? I’m an utter fool, but I finally understand what the ancient sages used to say: ‘If one doesn’t die, doesn’t perish, then one cannot become a god.’ But when I stop and think about it, I was never a god respected and worshipped by all.”

This is a clue, right? Either a) Shen Wei is quoting Kunlun here, or b) the "memories" in the Seal were manufactured by Shen Wei. Anyway, I feel like Shen Wei and the mortar are speaking at cross-purposes: the mortar thinks SW will use the broken Seal as an excuse/way to get closer to ZYL (even though this would harm ZYL), and what we actually see in the first two volumes is SW doing everything he can to shore up the Seal and kinda sorta keep his distance, while (maybe??) knowing that he may have to sacrifice himself to keep the Seal intact as part of his promise/duty to Kunlun(?).

The "Do you think your 'son' would accept you" feels like the seeds of Zhang Shi's coming out scene in the drama.

There was a gurgling in the silenced man’s throat. He clutched at his own neck, eyes bulging, but he couldn’t make a sound.

Very Star Wars! :D

Re Shen Wei's parting words to the mortar: it would have been so fascinating to get the drama equivalent, but also entirely different since Shen Wei and Zhang Shi are both Dixingren... But anyway, I think all this explains Shen Wei's urbane, ostentatiously "I'm staying out of this" behaviour at the teahouse. He's already made his position clear -- now just his presence drinking tea is enough of a threat to put the frighteners up the mortar, right?

Somehow, he still doubted that this was real. He was starting to get used to being lied to; at the rate things were going, he was going to become paranoid and suspect that everything was a lie.

ME TOO!

Haha, I love the reveal that the Record of Ancient Secrets is just blank pages! Was it always? Surely they checked when they were considering its provenance at the SID?? In fact, no, it definitely had writing in then:

“Impossible.” Zhao Yunlan flipped through the book, which had neither an ISBN nor any publication details. “Looking at the printing and typeset quality as well as the age of the paper, it was printed in the nineties at the earliest. There’s no way it’s older than I am now.”

And then: deliberate time loop! Because why the hell not? :D

[autodach]

Either way, Kunlun-jun didn’t wear it a single time

Goddamnit Kunlun, how dare you shun Xiao-Wei’s gift!


“I hold all the world’s famous mountains and rivers in my hand, but what of it? They’re nothing but a bunch of rocks and wild waters. Of all that I am, the only part worth anything may be my heart. If you want it, it’s yours.”

Aaaaah it’s THE quote!!!


if he hadn’t forced you into the Reincarnation Cycle to become a lowly mortal

I have feelings about the fact that these two both forced an unnatural one-of-a-kind existence on each other. Kunlun made Xiao-Wei into a god/gui chimera, and Xiao-Wei made him a god/human in turn.


How do you feel about the time travel storyline, and how does it compare to the drama version?

I’m just amazed there is a drama version of this scene. How do they manage to circle back around to the novel time and time again, despite all the differences?


Would you also immediately buy ice cream if you suddenly ended up in the past?

I would set up a bank account and buy some apple shares. And then ice cream :D

[autodach]

a story!!

100% agreed!❤❤❤

so did SW actually make his heart beat just by wishing that it would? ♡♡♡ Or did it start beating because of Kunlun making him half-god

Good question, that never occurred to me before! I think he gained the heartbeat when he became a god, rather than wishing for it.

Is this supposed to turn Zhao Yunlan against Shen Wei? xD

“He saved your life, idiot! Don’t you hate him?” lol
But more seriously, there’s something in here about the cycle of rebirth being a negative thing that one is meant to escape from. Gods are not part of the cycle because they are above humans – becoming part of the cycle is to lower themselves.
It’s not infeasible for a god to prefer death over becoming mortal. I read some really good meta about that once – I’ll try to find that later.

I absolutely love the taxi driver. :D :D

Best day of that guy’s life :D

Zhao Yunlan’s delicate, scholarly, easily bullied lover

Bwahaha, this is what he thinks of Shen Wei? Delicate XD

[facethestrange]

"Goddamnit Kunlun, how dare you shun Xiao-Wei’s gift!"

Yeah, I don't hold his initial reaction against him at all, but the ongoing avoidance of this topic is not okay.

"I have feelings about the fact that these two both forced an unnatural one-of-a-kind existence on each other. Kunlun made Xiao-Wei into a god/gui chimera, and Xiao-Wei made him a god/human in turn."

I literally have never put that together before, wow, MIND BLOWN.

"I’m just amazed there is a drama version of this scene. How do they manage to circle back around to the novel time and time again, despite all the differences?"

Yesss, I am always so incredibly impressed with this, I've never seen any other adaptation done this way! And they made the time travel completely inextricable from the novel's (and drama's) main theme, instead of just vaguely adjacent. HOW. ♡♡♡

"I would set up a bank account and buy some apple shares. And then ice cream :D"

Hahah. :D :D I would have no idea if 2002 is early enough for that (too late for google, for example :D), but hey, now that you say it, I'd probably still give it a try. xD

[facethestrange]

"“He saved your life, idiot! Don’t you hate him?” lol
But more seriously, there’s something in here about the cycle of rebirth being a negative thing that one is meant to escape from. Gods are not part of the cycle because they are above humans – becoming part of the cycle is to lower themselves.
It’s not infeasible for a god to prefer death over becoming mortal. I read some really good meta about that once – I’ll try to find that later."

Yeah, mythologically speaking I can see that (and the meta sounds super interesting!), but the Zhao Yunlan he's talking to would much rather be alive than to have dissipated into nothing, so it does sound exactly like that first line to me, and to ZYL probably too. xD

"Bwahaha, this is what he thinks of Shen Wei? Delicate XD"

Ikrrrr, it's like he's having the biggest case of selective memory ever. xD

[autodach]

I would have no idea if 2002 is early enough for that

I guessed that this was before the iphone, so apple hadn’t taken off yet. Looked it up and omg 2002 is the perfect time actually:Here’s the graph!

[facethestrange]

Oh wow, that is such a coincidentally perfect time indeed! Zhao Yunlan chose ice cream tho, it's a shame, he could have bought an even fancier house for Shen Wei. ;D

[autodach]

While looking for that meta, I found this post.
Zhao Yunlan’s contempt for reincarnation is no doubt related to him being forced into the cycle against his nature.

[facethestrange]

OHH, this is the coolest foreshadowing, with Shen Wei's reaction especially! I never would have spotted it myself, thank you for sharing! ♡ (I do still think that 'wouldn't you rather never have been born' is not an argument that will work on human Zhao Yunlan who likes his life just fine, but knowing this, Ghost Face could have made a better case!)

[autodach]

It’s the kind of detail you only really notice on a second reading. Love that kinda stuff❤

Oh yes, and it indeed doesn’t work on Zhao Yunlan XD
It’s just not as ridiculous as it would be to say this to an actual human.

[trobadora]

Yesss! Helped him open up instead of shutting him down.

Yes! You put your finger right on the issue. So so glad for the drama.

I mean, though, can he help his first reaction? I don’t think he has that much control over his emotions

He could at least show some sign, now or later, of appreciating the gesture ...

Yeah, agreed! I’m reading everything through a haze of sceptism, and it does make it hard to know how to feel about any of it.

This is exactly me, yeah. It disengages me so much from what's going on, it's a shame.

Thanks as always for the version comparison!!

I do find it fascinating that there are fewer differences now than in earlier chapters!

[trobadora]

LOL, now I'm wondering if the business in ep 8 of the drama with ZYL wanting to dry-swallow his medicine and SW not letting him was the drama writers have exactly this reaction to the novel. :D :D :D

Ha, OMG, I'd totally buy it! The writers have been so great at picking up small things and incorporating them in unexpected places. Great catch! :D

[trobadora]

Hah, the main villain of this story, the Evil Worldbuilding. *nodnod* :D

You know, I really think it is! :D

I think the gods used to leave in the Heavenly Realm, and they all ended up living in the Mortal Realm eventually after they descended to it.

"Heaven is empty, and all the gods are here?" Hee! I guess that would make sense!

(Though it does make you wonder if some stubborn curmudgeonly god stayed behind, and ended up running the place by default, LOL.)

He's just regurgitating what he was told - if his emotions were too much for everyone, then he can teach SW that having emotions is just too much? Doesn't make it any better for SW whatsoever, but Kunlun doesn't actually know what he's doing.

I don't even blame him much, I just think it's so sad that they're both so bad for each other. Kunlun is bad for Wei because of this, and Wei is bad for Kunlun's reincarnations because of being a gui, and I don't like that in my ships. I want them to be good for each other! On every level! *grumbles*

but later with the flowers he's still not even sure if it's not just an attempt to get out of the Seal.

On the one hand, good point, but on the other, that suspicion itself says a lot about how little he knows and understands Xiao-Wei at this point, which sucks. Poor SW!

I don't like the part where they never talk about it again (they should, and this is where the intention should be revealed)

Yeah, then it would be relationship development! But we don't get that at all.

Honestly, I just find these PP dynamics so lacking as a basis for a ship, but also I don't know if it's real or not, so ... idek.

The way I see it, it's all him flip-flopping between his upbringing and knee-jerk reactions and how he actually, genuinely feels.

Yeah, my issue is that I can't tell how he actually feels - whether the judgmental stuff he's spouting is how he genuinely feels, whether the sweet things are, whether both things are. (Or if that scene even happened at all, LOL.) But as you say, either way, not great for SW.

To me this is SUCH a case of telling and not showing!

Yeah, that's a good point! Kunlun doesn't seem to act more mature at all, but the narrative treats him as if he is, and we're apparently supposed to buy it. And the fandom clearly did buy it, going by everything I've seen. Makes me wonder if I'm missing something there.

and there are definitely several things that make him a lot less mature (for example throwing around words he doesn't understand, when SW thinks about them quietly and wonders why they're being used)

Yes! Though that may be more of an extrovert/introvert contrast? Idk.

I kinda love this lampshading, like, this is the reading experience and this is Zhao Yunlan's actual life. :D

Haha, glad it's working for you! But I'm just struggling with not entirely disengaging from the reading experience here, because I can't meaningfully engage with what any of this means for the characters, the plot or the themes while I have no idea whether it's true or not.

Omg I LOVE this, because this just happens to be exactly what Zhao Yunlan is doing. xD :D :D

LOLOLOL, I hadn't looked at it that way, but OMG! :D

[trobadora]

Treated by the narrative or by Kunlun?

Yeah, I meant by the narrative. And in other places the narrative has absolutely undercut ZYL's self-importance and mocked him, so it not doing that at all here with Kunlun makes me more convinced it wants me to genuinely buy into this.

He doesn't know that SW was made half-divine, does he? Which would mean that at least the Kings of the Gui (if not all of the gui) do have blood in their heart. But I guess they still don't have a heartbeat regardless.

I honestly don't know what Daqing knows - the Underworld knows the Emissary is a demigod (the Magistrate talks about it), but how much about his state of being is known beyond that I have no clue.

there was this thing in chapter 2 where in the original he says "How did Lord Kunlun find out that the memories inside the holy tree aren't your true memories?" and in the official translation he just says "Oh?"

Oh right! Thanks for the reminder!

Nah, I think ZYL is just in denial at this point. ;D

LOL! You're not wrong. He's been like that about him from the start, though - everyone was afraid of him, and he was all, why???? he's so nice!!!! *g*

[trobadora]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH you're so right, that makes it even more amazing, I love it so much. ♥ ♥ ♥

[trobadora]

so hard to invest when it might be all a dream

Yes! This! I don't know how to engage with this stuff without knowing whether it's real or not. *flails*

His retellings made sense only half of the time, as he was mostly doing it to dispel the boredom. But the young king was utterly ignorant and hung on every word that came out of Kunlun-jun’s mouth. To him, Kunlun’s bullshit was the truth of the world.

Like, if he thinks they're just sitting around shooting the shit, this feels pretty normal. But if he thinks he's raising/shaping Wei, then... oh dear.

Yeah, and the latter was unfortunately my impression, which ... is not endearing this sequence to me, LOL.

Slowly, a sort of mutually reliant affection took shape there at the maw of hell.

And then I went, wait, I'm confused: how did they end up there, guarding the Seal? Is there an explanation for that? Does it follow on from the Divine Tree vision, or are we just supposed to understand/guess?

I think it's meant to follow on from there (toward the end of chapter 8, Kunlun says, "We’re in your territory now. Why are you still following at my heels?", which seems to be referring back to what we previously saw), but there's kind of a huge missing link, and I don't know how it all hangs together either.

And also, when I read on to the point where Kunlun gives Wei his tendon/spine (again?), at that point I went, well, that puts the tooth necklace into perspective, lol.

LOLOLOL, good point! :D

speaking of which, WHERE IS DAQING?? How can this be real if DQ isn't here?

Another very good question I have no answer for!

The paragraph about how reading makes you a better person felt out of place to me, interrupting the flow of the scene.

Yeah, it's a pretty weird intrusion and feels a bit like it's trying to offer an excuse? "Of course they don't know any better, they didn't have any books to read!" (Idk.)

Ooooh, I wonder if this got ported into the kitchen scene in the drama. Shen Wei having made a self-sacrificial gesture, and ZYL really not understanding what it means?!

Oh, yeah, I could see that!

Finally, he pointed timidly at his own forehead. “That… Can you do it again?”

This convinced me that this can't be real. When would Kunlun EVER say that his sacred mountains are just a bunch of rocks?

What, really? It sounds entirely like him to me!

The other version, where he's dissing his contemporary worldly possessions is so much better!!

But this is really just the god-equivalent, isn't it?

The "I should have killed you" really brings home to me how different their relationship here is to the one in the Divine Tree vision. Like, the Wei here just doesn't sound like the one who said:
“I don’t want to live like that,” he said. “If I must, then I might as well not live at all. I would rather die than live in a way not of my own choosing.”

That's a good point, all of that understanding between them is entirely missing here. And I don't know if it's because one or both never happened that way, or some other reason, but it's definitely weird and changes my impression of their relationship in ways I don't much like.

I think Ghost Face's reaction means that the Great Seal visions were doctored by SW?

That's the impression I got, yeah.

This doesn’t seem like a very helpful look for a cop??

Just like drama!ZYL's scruffy disreputable image!

I'm so interested by the Moses reference. Is that the first Christian imagery so far?

I'm not sure, but I'm fascinated that it's well known enough to use it for a casual comparison like this!

So the mortar deliberately became ZYL's fake dad, right? Versus in the drama, where I think it's coincidence/fate.

It seems to be deliberate for Shennong's bowl; I think with Zhang Shi it could be interpreted either way - that it was coincidence, or that he'd somehow figured out who Zhao Xinci's son was going to become, and deliberately put himself in his path. But I think I like it more if it wasn't planned.

This is a clue, right? Either a) Shen Wei is quoting Kunlun here, or b) the "memories" in the Seal were manufactured by Shen Wei.

Or both! But I think that line genuinely comes from Shennong, and Kunlun and Shen Wei are both quoting it.

But anyway, I think all this explains Shen Wei's urbane, ostentatiously "I'm staying out of this" behaviour at the teahouse. He's already made his position clear -- now just his presence drinking tea is enough of a threat to put the frighteners up the mortar, right?

Yes, exactly!

And then: deliberate time loop! Because why the hell not? :D

Hee! :D