The most insulting thing about the “miscommunication trope” being misapplied to mdzs is that it’s probably the one mxtx novel where literally everything is laid bare at one point or other.
Did Jiang Cheng know that his new golden core was actually Wei Wuxian’s? No, but he knew that he was “using Wei Wuxian’s only link to his mother’s sect” to get himself a new golden core, which means he knew he owed Wei Wuxian.
Did Jiang Cheng know about the Wen siblings’ involvement in the golden core transfer? No, but he knew that they saved his life, brought him his parents’ bodies for proper burial, and hid him while healing him.
Did the cultivation world know why Wei Wuxian raided the labor camp? Yes, he interrupts a Jin banquet, specifically tells everyone who’s bothering to listen (which is everyone because they’re all gossips) that he’s going there to get Wen Ning, who was unjustly arrested, and then after he does this, the surviving guards relay what he did and said. Then Mianmian repeats this reasoning and calls for an investigation during the emergency conference, only to get slandered and shouted down.
Did the cultivation world know who Wei Wuxian took out of the labor camp? Yes, they start off the emergency conference with an inventory of who’s still missing: 50 individuals. Later, Jiang Cheng literally goes to the Burial Mounds and sees for himself who all is there, then when the first siege happens, the cultivation world as a whole is able to witness what was in the Burial Mounds. Granny Wen didn’t smash her own head in.
Does the cultivation world know that Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian owe the Wen siblings a debt? Yes, because Jiang Cheng says that they do in front of all the attending clans during the emergency conference. He elects not to elaborate on why they owe such a debt when Lan Xichen asks because Nie Mingjue sarcastically asks why Jiang Cheng would owe a debt to Wen “who killed his family,” angering him.
Did literally anyone think Wei Wuxian was evil? No, they were angry because Wei Wuxian’s ghost path was such a game-changer that they feared any new promising disciples would elect to join the Jiang Clan’s martial sect (pre-defection) or Wei Wuxian’s Burial Mound settlement (post-defection), outshining the orthodox clans and causing their power and influence to decline. They say this during the Phoenic Mountain Hunt, the crashed Jin banquet, and the emergency conference.
Did anyone know that the Jin were the ones spinning lies and slandering Wei Wuxian in order to steal his power and gain influence over the rest of the orthodox clans? Yes, not only does Wei Wuxian call this out during the Jin banquet before the labor camp liberation, Lan Wangji calls it out during the emergency conference and is promptly shut down by Lan Xichen. In private, Lan Xichen praises Jin Guangyao’s ability to spin lies to earn the crowd’s favor, while Nie Mingjue, who also noticed the lies, elected to stay silent and only address it in private so as not to seem to defend the Wen remnants or their savior in public.
Do people know that Jin Guangyao was a murderer? Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue did, but Lan Xichen brushed it off as “he had a reason (to kill people I have no attachment to)” while Nie Mingjue kept his secrets due to a sense of debt for Jin Guangyao “saving his life” during the Sunshot Campaign. The rest of the cultivation world knows about his betrayal of Wen Ruohan, his hand in the events leading up to the first siege, and the massacre of the clan framed for killing Jin Rusong. But because these are all misfortunes that happen to “other people,” nobody cares until it turns out that he’s also been killing the people they consider “their own” (Nie Mingjue).
Hell, even the incest was a poorly-kept secret that needed not much more than a bribe to some maid to uncover.
Literally nothing except the golden core transfer was a “secret,” and knowledge of the transfer is so inconsequential to the conflict that pops up because even without it, Jiang Cheng still owes a debt to the Wen siblings that he admitted to in public! There’s not a single thing in the story that could be chalked up to “well if only Wei Wuxian had played nice and communicated, this wouldn’t have happened.”
