Sorry, when I say “if” I actually mean when, and this scene from the 1st s3 trailer is just one out of the several reasons I have for why.

I remember the first time that I saw this, and of course my mind went to it being a suicide attempt- hey, this is Link Click, I wouldn’t necessarily put it past the show to do something like that! I did rewatch the scene a few times over however and I realised that there was no train, all that there was was lil Lu Guang and lil Cheng Xiaoshi balancing on the train tracks for what hopefully seemed like fun…? Then Lu Guang started to overbalance, and he would’ve fallen if Cheng Xiaoshi hadn’t caught up and saved him before that happened.

I will say that I don’t think that they were childhood friends, maybe they knew each other a little while before going their separate ways and then meeting each other again in university like they did, and Cheng Xiaoshi forgot not because Lu Guang messing with the past caused him to but because he just forgot considering how much time had passed and he hadn’t known him for that long in the first place, but that moment must’ve been important to Lu Guang for some reason.

Cheng Xiaoshi saved Lu Guang from falling all those years ago, and then again many years later when he quite literally took the bullet for him, and now? Lu Guang will be the one to save him, not from falling but from death.

And don’t think I’d forget about Qiao Ling, I know that the show has so far only been focused on him saving Cheng Xiaoshi, but he has been trying to alter both of their deaths after all, and at first I thought… how would that work with my “life for a life” theory I had? Because if he’s already gonna have to trade his life for one of them then surely someone else would also have to willingly trade their life for the other, right?? Well I think I figured it out, if the time traveler, the lawbreaker dies then all would be right with the universe.

This is where the time sickness comes in, he’s not meant to have stayed so long in this timeline, and he’s most certainly NOT meant to alter a death node let alone 2 of them, the timeline’s been trying to kill Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling, whether it’s the day of or before then doesn’t really seem to matter as long as they die, seeing as they’ve already had some close calls, and assuming that s3 is approaching upon the day they got murdered, if they manage to survive then Lu Guang will practically be handing over his own life as compensation.

And he hasn’t realised this yet.

“The future may not change due to a ripple in the past, but I don’t care. I don’t believe I can truly change anything by coming back, all I want is to be with them, and head into a new future together. Because I know that this is the last time.”, this quote came from the near end of the Bridon Arc, he says that he knows this is the last time, I’m sure there’s a double meaning here because I think what he meant when he said that was that he will get it right, there will be no more failed attempts… and he will in fact get it right this time, and they will head into a new future together… but he’s not going to get out of this mess scot-free.

I did say that Lu Guang hasn’t fully realised this yet right? Well he will and when he does, he’s going to try to make sure that they don’t find out, especially Cheng Xiaoshi, at least not the full thing- because if he found out what the cost for saving them is then Lu Guang’s plan would probably end in failure, I do think Qiao Ling will end up not only knowing the bits and pieces about what he’s seen and what his plan is as I’ve mentioned before but knowing everything, and she would know and understand the gravity of the situation, unlike Cheng Xiaoshi, who wouldn’t see the full picture, because in the moment he’d only be thinking about how much of a toll it’s taken on his best friend.

And when Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling are finally out of the woods, this is when it’ll all hit Lu Guang at once… and unfortunately there is no way in hell that he’ll survive.

Which reminds me, I’ve yet to discuss why Cheng Xiaoshi is the one who will live, and I cannot think of a better time to talk about it than now!

In one of the recent-ish chibi shorts, Li Haoling was asked to describe season 3 in 3 phrases and one of those phrases was “Cowherd”, I hadn’t heard of the myth before, although I did read a handful of comments saying that “we’re cooked” so uhm- I will admit that did concern me just a bit! So I thought I’d do some reading.

Now in the myth, the Cowherd Niulang and the Weaving Maid Zhinu fall in love, and for a while the Queen Mother of the West didn’t know but after eventually finding out, she orders her troops to abduct Zhinu, and due to not wanting to take any chances on the possibility that Niulang were to save her, the Queen Mother of the West drew her hairpin and blew on it, creating the heavenly river thus permanently separating them.

Oh, and we also got this.

Lu Guang is the Cowherd, Cheng Xiaoshi is the Weaving Maid, and that’s not all! I’m certain that the Queen Mother of the West is the timeline itself, and those who are after Cheng Xiaoshi are the equivalent of her troops while the hairpin is the time sickness and then we have the heavenly river, which is the price.

Ya may be wondering “Why so sure that it’s Lu Guang? What about Cheng Xiaoshi?”, and so I want to push aside all that I’ve talked about so far for just a second to explain.

CXS is the immortal one, immortality essentially means to “live forever”, obviously he isn’t literally immortal, my point is that immortality doesn’t equal mortality and vice versa, he’s the one whose death node will be altered by LG, who has broken the laws of time, the one who the timeline is fighting against, his death is the final measure to ensure they’re separated.

So, Lu Guang will save Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling, and once their death nodes have been successfully altered, the timeline will go straight from the punishment which is the time sickness, to the price aka Lu Guang’s life.

But I doubt that he would drop dead instantly, if anything it’s more likely that he’d collapse, only just having long enough to talk to Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling one last time before he succumbs to the time sickness… and hey, that’s alright, because he’s finally succeeded in what he’s been trying to do this whole damn time, Lu Guang saved his found family, he’s with them and he knows that they’re safe.

I think I’ve talked about Cheng Xiaoshi’s feelings regarding this enough already so I want to focus on Qiao Ling’s for a second, she’s like a big sister to the both of them, so her losing one of her brothers like this? Heartbreaking, like seriously though what the frick? None of them can ever catch a break it seems.

And with their last chat, I do think that Lu Guang will also get Cheng Xiaoshi to promise not to go back in time and change things, and Cheng Xiaoshi will do exactly that, he knows it all now and he isn’t about to throw away everything that Lu Guang has done to save them for the chance that he might be able to stop him from dying since it would be pretty much impossible.

Unfortunately this means that their time travelling gig will have to come to an end since Cheng Xiaoshi would no longer have Lu Guang to guide him, meaning any dives he does would be extremely dangerous and could seriously screw up the timeline.

And that’s when it clicked, Lu Guang’s trying to keep CXS from getting killed, he’s been sticking to the script in the hopes that by doing so then once they finally reach the moment where CXS was meant to die he’d be able to prevent it since now he knows when and where it happens and how it plays out… or so he thought, but unfortunately the timeline has other plans, it’s been trying to catch him off guard, actively fighting against him to keep him from preventing it by changing events that he had planned to follow to the letter according to how it happened in the previous timeline, which makes this whole thing unpredictable, because you can’t just alter a death node, it isn’t that simple.

So in order to save Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang will have to trade his life for his.

There was this conversation that CXS and Lu Guang had which we heard in the Bridon Arc where CXS asks Lu Guang what would happen if they stayed longer than 12 hours and he tells CXS that he doesn’t know, that he can’t see past that and then he proceeded to list some of the possibilities which included being stranded, getting lost in the endless waves of spacetime and all, but something that he said after that caught my attention.

“Whatever the consequence may be, one thing’s certain. Those who break the law will pay the price for it. Without exception.”

I think that although the original reason for the 12 hour rule was because Lu Guang couldn’t see further than that, meaning he wouldn’t be able to guide CXS (and we know why that’s bad), there’s now 2, he has been in this timeline way longer than 12 hours, in fact he’s been here for years, him having stayed in the current timeline past the 12 hours that he could see is the cause, the timeline fighting against him is the effect of that cause and the price he mentioned is what he had initially thought him getting sick was which is why he wasn’t confused or surprised when he woke up after passing out, but he hasn’t gotten far enough to actually saving them yet, the time sickness is the punishment for attempting to alter something that is supposedly unalterable, and if he were to succeed then the price is actually his life, not the time sickness.

Lu Guang’s failed before but this time around he’s determined to get it right.

The car ride scene from the first episode of season 2 is something that I want to look a little deeper into, in my first watch through of the show there was something that stood out to me, and that was the difference between their reactions towards each other’s deaths, I think that this will show how they’d handle it depending on who dies, and y’know we already know how one of them took it, and oh boy… was it not taken well!

First of course is Cheng Xiaoshi.

Since the start, Cheng Xiaoshi had always been the emotionally driven one thus leading him to act on impulse more often than not, now after he was told that LG didn’t make it, he came to the realisation only a while later that if he could go back in time and stop all this from happening then he’d be able to save LG, he only needed a photo, when he was handed Officer Chen Bin’s phone, he had found out that the photo used for the lock screen was taken long before everything went to shit, before LG had “died”, he almost used it to dive back in time, but as he was about to clap his hands, he had remembered what LG had told him before, that the past and future must remain untouched and out of respect for him and his rules, Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t go through with it.

I’ve come across some people’s posts/comments where they’ve said that despite not actually going through with trying to change the past, he would’ve definitely done it later if LG’s death was for real, and I think that it completely diminishes the meaning of this scene.

Meanwhile, Lu Guang was seemingly the level headed, strict enforcer of rules regarding time travel, he told CXS countless times over that no matter what, he must not change the past and future, that it had to remain untouched… yet we later find out in the end of season 2 that he had gone against his own words.

In the previous timeline after CXS dies and he passes his ability to Lu Guang, it didn’t take that long before Lu Guang clapped his hands and dived into the past so he could attempt to save CXS.

Lu Guang has shown that he cannot and will not accept this, not to mention the fact that him moving on after all this time wouldn’t even make any sense after everything, Cheng Xiaoshi though? He didn’t try and change the past, he stopped himself, it’s going to be hard and it will be painful as we’ve seen when he’d been told that Lu Guang “didn’t make it”, he was devastated, but I believe that the car ride scene shows that he’ll get through it eventually.