This Is My Fanart Dump pile

In a traditional wuxia/xianxia setting, the master-disciple relationship is often far more binding and hierarchical than a modern teacher-student relationship. There is a traditional saying, “一日为师，终身为父” (“A teacher for one day, a father for life”), which captures some of the cultural logic behind it. Once someone formally 拜师 and becomes a disciple, the master essentially becomes a quasi-parental authority figure, and the disciple belongs first to their master and their master’s lineage.

Genre conventions often treat the affairs between master and disciple as unusually private and grant the master enormous authority. Because of this, even someone of higher rank may not easily interfere with how another master disciplines their own disciple unless it becomes serious enough to violate sect rules. (Hence, Bai Zhan Peak’s tradition of beating up their disciples is apparently completely fine.)

Furthermore, Yue Qingyuan may be the head of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, but Shen Qingqiu is not his subordinate in the modern workplace sense. He is the lord of Qing Jing Peak and one of the twelve peak lords, with considerable authority over his own peak and disciples. Luo Binghe, meanwhile, has formally entered Shen Qingqiu’s personal lineage.

So being Sect Leader does not necessarily give Yue Qingyuan unquestioned authority to micromanage Shen Qingqiu’s treatment of individual disciples. He can intervene when sect rules or the welfare of the sect are at stake, but constantly overruling Shen Qingqiu on how he disciplines his own disciple would undermine Shen Qingqiu’s authority as both Qing Jing Peak Lord and Luo Binghe’s shizun.

This is further complicated by the fact that much of Shen Qingqiu’s mistreatment of Luo Binghe can be framed as discipline or training. For Yue Qingyuan to intervene decisively, he would effectively have to declare Shen Qingqiu unfit to exercise authority over his own disciple.

Now, I’m sure Yue Qingyuan realizes to some degree that Luo Binghe did not deserve such harsh treatment, as shown by his attempt to persuade Shen Qingqiu not to punish Luo Binghe further in Chapter 1. But keep in mind that Yue Qingyuan himself was raised within the same system and is therefore predisposed to accept its norms. Despite how severely he was punished by his own shizun after his qi-deviation, I’d wager that if he had died in Lingxi Cave all those years ago, his spirit would still have thanked his shizun for raising him and believed the punishment was justified.

a shared song

smart, selfless and thoughtful? i’m in -adrian probably