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sid_guardian2025-06-22 01:09 pm
china_shop) wrote in sid_guardian2025-06-22 01:09 pm
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Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 13 & 14
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 13: Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan untangle the truth about the past. Zhao Yunlan recaps the whole saga back to Shen Wei to verify his understanding. Shen Wei recounts his promise to guard the Seal and stay away from Kunlun, and he confesses that he orchestrated all the visions and other events (including Zhao Yunlan seeing him drawing his heart blood) so that Zhao Yunlan would stay with him and they could die (ie, cease to exist) together. Back at the flat, they start making out, then stop to talk about the blood-drinking. They decide to live together like mortals for the next few decades.
Chapter 14: Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi stake out a motorway off-ramp in the freezing cold and search a number of buses to look for a ghost's missing daughter. Chu Shuzhi calls Daqing to ask about Guo Changcheng's flame-coloured merits. Chu Shuzhi slaps a talisman on Changcheng to check he's human. Changcheng finds the missing girl, and Chu Shuzhi arrests the kidnapper.
The corresponding chapters in the Chinese version on JJWXC and the fan translation are chapters 92 to 94.
Excerpts:
1) Primordial Wei looked for Kunlun before they met
“Actually, the day of my birth should’ve been the first time I saw you. But you were standing too far away, unwilling to take even a single step closer to me—as though I were something filthy. My eyes hadn’t fully opened yet, so all I could see was the vague shadow of a green robe.”
Shen Wei shut his eyes. Gently, longingly, he rubbed his cheek against Zhao Yunlan’s hand. “But from birth, I was more ferocious than my brother. I had consumed more of our brethren than he had. At that point, I could already hear, and could vaguely understand, what you and Shennong were saying…so right from the beginning, I knew exactly what I was. Later, I searched the world for you, resisting the temptation of the flesh and blood of the living. I ate only the things that crawled out of the ground—other gui, which I felt were just as disgusting as I was.
“I searched for you because I desperately wanted to ask you what life is.” When he said this, Shen Wei felt Zhao Yunlan’s grip on him tighten. “But then when I finally met you at the edge of that grove, when you were about to climb up Penglai… As soon as I saw you, the words all died on my tongue.”
2) Wei's deal with Shennong
“Then I confined your primordial spirit and went down to the Reincarnation Cycle to plead with my enemy, Shennong,” Shen Wei said. “He was the only one I ever begged for anything… At that point, the Reincarnation Cycle already had its own order, and the Netherworld had just been established with its own set of rules. I begged him to let you into the Reincarnation Cycle like a mortal. That way, even though you would never remember me, you would still exist. But he wouldn’t do it. He said primordial gods could not enter the cycle because it was his own primordial spirit that was supporting it. It could accept all sorts of souls—humans, yao, gods, demons—but it would not be able to hold the true Mountain God…unless he sealed all your divine powers himself and washed your souls completely clean, turning you into a mortal. If he did that, Shennong’s own primordial spirit would fade away too…like exchanging one life for another. His life for yours.”
“What did you agree to that made him do that?”
“I swore to protect the Great Houtu Seal forever. As long as I existed, the Seal would exist too. If the Seal broke, then I would meet my death along with the rest of the gui.” Shen Wei’s fingers were ice cold. “And…for all of eternity, I could never see you again. If I couldn’t help myself, then I would drain your life force and you would die, your souls shattering into a million pieces.”
[There's an enormous chunk I desperately want to quote here, omg. *resists*]
3) Negotiating the blood drinking
“Hey, wait!” Zhao Yunlan grabbed Shen Wei’s hand. “I’m not drinking your blood.”
“It’s no worse than a mosquito bite to me.”
“That’s all well and good for you, but it’s nowhere near the same to me.” Zhao Yunlan pushed him off and tried to feel for the bedside light, but his arms were almost immediately pinned. Shen Wei’s tongue flicked over his Adam’s apple, and Zhao Yunlan panted quietly, unable to hold it in. “Stop messing around.”
“Even if I dug out my entire heart, I won’t die at once. I’d still survive longer than the Great Seal.” Shen Wei’s voice was terribly low. The scorching heat of his breath caressed Zhao Yunlan’s collarbones with each word. “I did consider it at the time—would it be more effective to cut out my heart for you? But I was afraid you’d be too badly frightened, so I only let you see my blood being drawn.”
After a silence, Zhao Yunlan said dryly, “Thanks so much for remembering that I’m a scaredy-cat.”
4) Chu Shuzhi and Daqing on the phone
Lowering his voice, Chu Shuzhi quickly asked, “And you’re sure xiao-Guo is human?”
“Mmph. Of course he’s human,” Daqing said. “Wang Zheng even has a copy of his ID.”
“I want to find his proof of birth, the kind that says, ‘x year x month x day, a live male infant was born’—the kind you get from a hospital,” said Chu Shuzhi.
“Huh?” Daqing exclaimed. “Holy shit. Humans are such weirdos. They have something like that?!”
5) Changcheng takes being 'killed' surprisingly calmly
Guo Changcheng’s reaction time was always a little slow, but by this point he understood that his soul had just left his body. According to his understanding, “soul leaving body” was no different from “death”—which to him meant that Chu Shuzhi had nearly killed him with a talisman. He cowered back against the car door. “Ch-Chu-ge… W-what’s this about…?”
“Are you human?” Chu Shuzhi asked.
Guo Changcheng gaped at him, not at all sure if Chu Shuzhi was being literal or insulting.
Questions:
Do you understand the primordial past backstory now? Who comes off worst in this real version of events? How do you feel about Shen Wei going to these lengths to deceive Zhao Yunlan and guilt-trip him into staying with him? What does it mean that Zhao Yunlan called Shen Wei his husband, rather than wife? Would you prefer to be on a stakeout with Guo Changcheng or Chu Shuzhi? Do you have any thoughts about how moments in these chapters affected or were remixed in the drama adaptation?
(As usual, these are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the readalong!)
Our schedule for this round -- please sign up to host a post if you can!
no subject
Except only the hun souls reincarnate; the po souls belongs to the body. And the gui apparently have neither. *very confused*
But we know SW and Ghost Face are special / not like other gui. Is it wrong for SW to identify with the other gui, then, do you think?
Honestly, we don't even know how special/different they are from ordinary gui. And I think SW identifying with them should be great in theory (solidarity in the face of Evil Worldbuilding) but not in practice (self-hatred against his entire species).
Yeah, but it's weird how in the Seal vision, Kunlun treats Shen Wei like a stranger (and in some ways, like a random gui who's trying to escape the Seal) -- after they've been travelling around together and everything??
Yeah, I've got nothing there. He definitely doesn't act like they've been spending much time together before!
Was he deliberately tipping ZYL off? I've lost track, LOL.
No, not at all! He was trying to deceive ZYL, but changed things that inadvertently tipped him off. And I don't see why he changed some of these things ...
Idk, I totally get why this would be a hard DNW. Especially since can he even trust SW to say if it hurts him or not? Of course SW's going to downplay the cost to him. (But even if not, I think DNWing blood-drinking is completely fair. ;-p)
I think DNWing blood-drinking and worrying about SW's wellbeing are both entirely fair, but he's been feeling the consequences of being close to SW, and he's heard the explanation, and he's not willing to give SW up and not willing to take the medicine that will take care of those consequences. What is SW supposed to do? Just watch ZYL suffer and die? That's pretty unreasonable to ask for.
no subject
the po souls belongs to the body.
But what does that meeeeean??
Honestly, we don't even know how special/different they are from ordinary gui.
Their origin story makes them sound very different, plus the fact that they're immediately the Kings of the Gui.
no subject
Wikipedia has an article on hun and po souls, if that helps any? I guess you can see why "this sort of being doesn't even have a po soul" is so WTF to Shennong, not that it excuses wanting to kill them all!
Their origin story makes them sound very different
Honestly, it doesn't to me? It seems more like a difference in degree, not in kind.
no subject
Right. It's like saying "They're alive, but they don't have a lifeforce" or something, yeah? (So what would killing them even mean?)
Honestly, it doesn't to me? It seems more like a difference in degree, not in kind.
Maybe it's just because they differentiated as individuals. I have no idea if regular gui have personalities; they're always spoken of en masse.
no subject
Yes, pretty much!
I default to assuming all the gui are individuals; I don't feel like we have any reason to assume otherwise. (The wu are also only ever mentioned collectively; it's just what happens with groups of beings that aren't in focus.)
no subject
This is so well-said, yeppp, Shen Wei identifying with the other gui could be a really great thing, but it's really not. And yeah, the difference seems to be "in degree, not in kind", as you said. In volume 2, chapter 19 it says:
"The laughable truth was that even these wretched things had a hierarchy. The lowest of them bore no resemblance at all to humans. They were like muck, rolling across the ground and feeding on rotten corpses.
Above those in the hierarchy were gui who had heads and bipedal bodies, giving them the approximate shape of humans. But they were covered from head to toe with pustules, and their features were twisted. Their nature was one of brutality. These were known as “youchu.”
The higher-ranked any individual gui was, the closer they seemed to human. At the top were the Kings of the Gui: ethereally lovely, like flowers blooming in blood. The more blood-tainted they were, the greater their beauty."
(This is Shen Wei's first story, the one that is largely a lie, so that's why it's still so derisive.)
"I think DNWing blood-drinking and worrying about SW's wellbeing are both entirely fair, but he's been feeling the consequences of being close to SW, and he's heard the explanation, and he's not willing to give SW up and not willing to take the medicine that will take care of those consequences. What is SW supposed to do? Just watch ZYL suffer and die? That's pretty unreasonable to ask for."
And this too, 100% ITA!