Local Demon Lord Fucker

They are basing their opinions off of the circumstances/scenarios of the story, not the actual characters involved.

Shen Jiu's circumstances are tragic and his outcomes are miserable. He lives a terrible life, is thoroughly misunderstood, gets replaced by an imposter who everyone likes better, and then dies and is largely unmourned (in part because no one knows he's gone, but mostly because no one cares that he's gone).

This is like, primo angst for a certain inclination of person. Hits all the buttons for those feelings of "no one would even care if I was gone and all the world has wronged me". So reinterpreting the story in that light, with Shen Jiu as an ultra victim and Shen Yuan as a callous and cruel monster who doesn't deserve to be liked better, who should be revealed as a fake and then ostracized to create a fantasy where Shen Jiu gets to live happily ever after, really appeals to them. They make Shen Yuan out to be way more of a villain than he ever is because then they can refute the idea of him being better than Shen Jiu, and they defend Shen Jiu and ditch his actual character in order to lean into the narrative of him being wronged at every turn.

He did not care Binghe lived in poverty his entire life. He didn't care his mother died a miserable death and he's an orphan now.

It's the same with Liu Qingge. Shen Jiu hates him for three reasons:

For being talented.

For having living parents.

For coming from a rich household.

It's said in the extras that ANY of these would make Shen Jiu despise someone.

He does NOT actually care all that much about background or personality or behaviour. He just assumes that someone has had a better life than him and therefore doesn't deserve to be happy or successful. Reminder: his definition of better life includes "has a parent". Completely ignoring, once again, that he is now one of the richest and most powerful people in the world and thousands WISH they were him and they will never be.

Shen Jiu clings to hate, bitterness and violence as coping mechanisms despite the fact that those cause qi deviations. He is walking a path of self destruction.

This is what abuse can turn people into and it does not make them any less victims of abuse.

Shen Jiu deserves happiness?

The concept of having to earn happiness (through suffering or otherwise) is already fucked up on its own.

The fact that most of Shen Jiu's personality and actions get erased by the people saying that is just proof that no, they do not think he deserves happiness. Because Shen Jiu is not the perfect victim they want him to be.

Nothing is going to simply make him happy! He needs to WANT to be happy, he needs to WANT to HEAL! And that's not something you can force on someone. It's something they need to want on their own! He needs to decide that he does not want to live with resentment and bitterness anymore. He needs to decide that happiness is something he wants!

But that's not simple. It's not black and white. It takes time.

They are basing their opinions off of the circumstances/scenarios of the story, not the actual characters involved.

Shen Jiu's circumstances are tragic and his outcomes are miserable. He lives a terrible life, is thoroughly misunderstood, gets replaced by an imposter who everyone likes better, and then dies and is largely unmourned (in part because no one knows he's gone, but mostly because no one cares that he's gone).

This is like, primo angst for a certain inclination of person. Hits all the buttons for those feelings of "no one would even care if I was gone and all the world has wronged me". So reinterpreting the story in that light, with Shen Jiu as an ultra victim and Shen Yuan as a callous and cruel monster who doesn't deserve to be liked better, who should be revealed as a fake and then ostracized to create a fantasy where Shen Jiu gets to live happily ever after, really appeals to them. They make Shen Yuan out to be way more of a villain than he ever is because then they can refute the idea of him being better than Shen Jiu, and they defend Shen Jiu and ditch his actual character in order to lean into the narrative of him being wronged at every turn.

When we read other novels like MDZS, we read our protagonists facing physical punishment. WWX is whipped bloody by Madam Yu, has been for years. LWJ is whipped until he can't move for his crime of fighting against his elders to protect WWX. Both of them were physically punished as disciples, and hurt so badly they had to go to a special cultivation spot with cold water to numb their injuries.

Was that physical punishment right? Did it change anything for the better? Did WWX become any less of a troublemaker, or did it make him more likely to hurt himself in favor of others? Did LWJ become a better person for taking on physical punishment, or was he already a better person than those punishing him?

Shen Jiu was a villain, not just for abusing Luo Binghe, but for how he treated everyone around him. He was the reason for his students being bullies, for Ning Yingying not progressing like her peers. You think that pidw!NYY would have stood up to LBH for her Shizun like svsss!NYY did? Never.

And plenty of people disregard this as "SY's/LBH's bias," but we know that Shen Jiu drove away plenty of other promising disciples just like Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe was only there for so long because he had the (mis)fortune of being stubborn, not having anywhere else to go, and having a constitution that let him survive.

If Shen Jiu didn't habitually mistreat his disciples, how else was Ming Fan gleefully ready with a plan to dump Luo Binghe in the woodshed instead of being shocked at the sight of his Shizun throwing tea on his new shidi's head? Is throwing tea on someone's head normal Shizun behavior? Maybe for Shen Jiu it is! Like, even Yue Qingyuan, who doesn't do shit to stop Shen Jiu, tells him that he shouldn't keep mistreating Luo Binghe when SY!SQQ first wakes up. Even someone who lives in the system doesn't think it's right.

And for anyone who still thinks that Shen Jiu had the "right" to treat Luo Binghe like he did, did Qiu Jianluo have a "right" to mistreat his slave? Young, rich, powerful - in "ye olden days," of course he did. In fact, Shen Jiu killing him, even in self defense, wouldn't be forgivable. That's what landed him in prison. And while Shen Jiu's crime of killing all of the men in the Qiu household might seem more justified because of his mistreatment to our eyes, remember that it was just as much of an overreaction as Luo Binghe burning CQMS to the ground.

Shane hums, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear as he scans the document in front of him. The soft afternoon light is doing its best to turn the room into a warm, sleepy haze. Though, his current seating arrangement is doing most of the heavy lifting in the haze department, if he’s being honest. He feels a sly smile tugging at his lips, his face glowing with a faint, heat-induced flush.