himmel

I forgot I never shared these here, here are my Lingshuang x OC commisshies I’ve gotten recently!!

Artist 1: heng_hengg on Vgen

Artist 2: Adornmypuppet on Twitter

Artist 3: zertudine on Vgen

Artist 4: Ayasa_KA on Vgen

She is dualistic in everything. This meaning runs like a red thread through her character all the way down to her name and the weapon she uses. Her relationships with the other disciples and with Fu Hua are also ambiguous.

For example, she says that she understands Yanqing better than anyone else, but also clearly states that she does not like him.

Su Mei also holds resentment toward her master because of her mother’s death, but at the same time she repeatedly expresses her grievance that both she and the others were merely “tools in the fight against Honkai” in Fu Hua’s eyes:

Draft dialogue from 7S’s Weibo:
“Fu Hua: I'm not trying to take your life.
Su Mei: Is that so? Well, you’ve changed. In the past, you would never have cared about my life.
Su Mei sighed.
Su Mei: But Master, people are mortal.”

A moment from the game:
“Su Mei: (looks at Kiana) Master finally found someone she actually cares for...”

VN:
“Lin Zhaoyu: Whenever you came back to the mountain, everyone was happy. The seven of us were all orphans. We truly adored you, respected you, and loved you. However, the longer we stayed together, the more we understood in our hearts: ...In your eyes, we were nothing but passersby in a hundred years, disposable chess pieces. You were the kind of person one was attracted to at first, but wanted to keep away from more and more the longer one stayed with you.”

Su Mei: “The outside world is very frightening. It is both cruel and dangerous. It is certainly unlike the paradise here; but it is also beautiful. Don’t be afraid, Suyi. As long as you stay by Master’s side, all the horror, cruelty, and danger will stay far away from you. As long as you stay by Master’s side, you don’t have to be afraid of anything.”

Another part of the VN:
“Unlike the warmth of the master, the girl’s arms were cold, as if she were crushing her to the point of nothingness.”

Su Mei: “The master doesn’t do anything that doesn’t make sense, so you don’t have to remember.”
The red-haired girl whispered in her ear.

All of these moments point to what is most likely respect, or some similar feeling, toward her master, as well as that same sense of resentment toward Hua. At the same time, Su Mei also states again that she feels no attachment to anyone:

VN:
“The red-haired girl laughs.
Su Mei: The master entrusted you to Lin Zhaoyu, and Lin Zhaoyu entrusted you to me.
She spoke at a tongue-twister speed.
Su Mei: Ma Yanqing can’t leave me, but sister Lin Zhaoyu can’t leave Ma Yanqing. But what about me?
The red-haired girl thinks for a moment and smiles, as if she is disappointed or satisfied.
Su Mei: It seems that there is no one else I can’t leave.”

“Su Mei: You are the man who understands me best in this world, but you still don’t know enough; I am the woman who understands you best in this world, but that is not love.
Su Mei: I don’t love you, nor anyone~ Alas, it’s not your fault, and it’s not something you can change.”

I find this very interesting. All seven disciples are quite unique mentally. On one hand, there is resentment over the master’s indifference and the death of a parent; on the other, there is a clear statement of the absence of any feeling of attachment to anyone.

Even despite the “I don’t love anyone” line, Su Mei is one of the few who maintains friendly relationships with the other disciples. She often visits Qin Suyi when she is ill. She also arranged a killing to protect another disciple, and according to the VN text, it was precisely her who organized the other disciples’ “outings” from the mountain so that they could see the world without the master’s control. And in general, her description mentions that she is very sociable and likes making new acquaintances.

Another interesting point is that she essentially understands Fu Hua’s problem and also feels pity for those infected by Honkai (which refutes the assumption of psychopathy that I have seen in discussions about her):

Su Mei: “...Do they really deserve to die? The corrupted are often people who have never come into contact with martial arts. On the contrary, martial arts practitioners are a minority. Most of them are ordinary people, and they don’t have any great evil in them, but... unfortunately, they are taken by ‘Zhen Qi.’ It’s only a curse.”

Su Mei: “‘Zhen Qi’ has no eyes, and ‘Divine Will’ is unkind, so people are humble dogs. You say that Master wasn’t wrong in killing people, and I am right. But the fault must exist. If the fault is not in the master, not in me, and not in the dead, then the fault lies in heaven.”

Su Mei: “Little Ma’er, Taixu is just a cage. Master’s martial arts are outstanding, but she was also a prisoner of ‘Heaven.’ Now that she has been dead for twenty years, can the commandment of ‘eliminating demons and the corrupted’ still restrain her?”

All of this leads to a very interesting psychological portrait: a sociable, vivid person, without feelings of love or attachment, but with a sense of pity and understanding toward other people.

Although all of this is only an inference based on what we have, since the novel is unfinished and we never learned Su Mei’s true intentions. Perhaps she had entirely different motives, and there were also some small hints in that direction. In the author’s drafts for the novel, there was also a moment in which Su Mei reflects on her own “three secrets”:

“There was a gentle wind outside the house.
Su Mei put away her swords and walked to the top of Heaven’s Pinnacle. This is the second step for twenty years, three secrets have been hidden deep in the heart of the ‘Ushuang Exarch.’ The first one she has revealed to Lin Zhaoyu; today, the second secret can no longer be hidden; and the third ......
When the third one is no longer a secret, everything will end.”

We never learned the last two secrets, so unfortunately, the analysis of this character will never be complete 🥲 Even so, she is very interesting.

Links to vn translations with all fragments

(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vCSIOWXYogEPSYYsVzQCrpgOadw6-udABBgd5eAvoZ8/mobilebasic)

(https://docs.google.com/document/d/16op_lv_jZIYLE4hNt4h7ABoKzWOAAqsjtNLnP1f2lFg/mobilebasic)

One easter egg I found interesting about Su Mei is if you zoom in on this art you can kinda see the “threads” from her blade sanction ability.

I have a few questions that I couldn't find answers to on my own. If it's not too much trouble, could you please help me figure them out?

My first question: what was the ultimate reason for Fu Hua's murder? Did the students kill her out of fear (of being killed themselves), or out of resentment because they felt they meant nothing to Hua? Or was it revenge for their parents?

And what was the reason behind the assassination attempt by the protector — Su Mei? In general, what kind of relationship did Su Mei and the other students have with their teacher?

I saw that you once asked the author of the novel about Lingshuang, and I would really love to read your analysis of the other students as well!

If you're not available, I apologize in advance for bothering you.

Ahh yes I love to talk about 7s, it’s not a bother at all!!!

About Fu Hua’s murder, the main cause of her disciple’s betrayal was that she intended to kill one of her own disciples who had become sick from Honkai corruption.

Hua at the time when she took her 7 disciples was merciless and unlike her normal self due to effects from one of the treatments Dr Mei did to her during the previous era. As Hua was one of the youngest Mantises, Dr Mei put her through a treatment called the Swara treatment which would help fill the gaps in her strength caused by her aging process being halted at a younger age than the others.

This Swara treatment was a subliminal hypnotism which instilled her purpose to defeat the Honkai alongside its other strength growth effects.

Due to Hua’s extended lifespan, as a human brain can only hold so many memories, she would eventually need to erase her memories to make room for new ones. She was extremely against doing so during the ancient times of the current world, as her brief memories of the first 17 years of normalcy in her life were the reason she fought and she was most afraid of losing those memories. However eventually, she had to give them up, and once those memories were gone, she lost her own reason to fight and her reasoning was replaced with the reasoning from the Swara treatment that Dr Mei had instilled in her.

After that, Hua disassociated from herself, and followed the will of the Swara treatment as it had become her only reason to fight. This treatment instilled a deep sense of duty to eliminate all traces of Honkai corruption without mercy.

When she took her disciples, one of them became corrupted by Honkai and she decided without hesitation to kill her. In order to save their martial sibling, Su Mei organized an assassination of their master, which all the disciples agreed with except for the 7th disciple, Sushang’s mother Suyi.

I personally believe and evidence also seems to point to the fact that Su Mei had ulterior motives while spurring her martial siblings into action, but the others were just motivated by their desire to protect their martial sibling. Some of them feel more guilt than others about it. (Lin Zhaoyu is sad about it but Lingshuang dgaf lol)

Lingshuang was the one who dealt the final blow and stabbed Hua in the forehead. Her body “died” somewhat temporarily, and while the mountain burned down, Suyi brought Hua’s body down the mountain and found her a safe place to recover.

There’s a lot of symbolism with the forehead wound actually, a few of the Taixuan sect characters have the taixuan stigmata (a diamond shape) on their forehead, or a similar motif or jewelry in the same spot. For example, Lin Zhaoyu has a huadian (a traditional design painted on the forehead) of the taixuan stigmata symbol. Totori from GGZ has the actual Taixuan stigmata mark there. When Kiana or Sushang use edge of Taixuan, a diamond shape appears on their forehead. Senti also has a little diamond charm over her forehead on her headdress.

There’s also a bit of genuine martial symbolism to this, the forehead is known as the upper Dantian or heaven Dantian. There’s three (heaven, man, earth) and the lower one (earth) is the one you usually hear about if you read or watch and wuxia stories lol. It has to do with Qi and cultivation and those are the main places energy flows through in the body. The upper Dantian is connected to the mind and spirit as well as consciousness and mental cultivation.

Anyways, this stab to the forehead forcefully reversed the effects of the Swara treatment and once her body healed and came back to life, she was no longer obsessed with eliminating corruption in the way she had been before dying. She was disoriented and confused when she came back, hurt by the betrayal as she didn’t understand why her disciples had killed her. She supposedly goes around to find all of her disciples after that but the VN isn’t finished so we don’t know how that goes down.

Aaaaand about each disciple’s relationship with Hua, each one has a different opinion of her and the assassination. Lin Zhaoyu has a deep respect for Hua that continues after her death, but she doesn’t “regret” participating in the assassination in the sense that she would not want to go back in time and change her actions. She does “regret” it in the way that she’s regretful it came to that point and wishes they would have had the option to solve it another way. I believe she’s one of the most intuitive to the fact that the Hua who was their Shifu isn’t the same as the Hua from the past. She chooses to save the life of her fellow disciple over saving her master as she believed Hua’s heart couldn’t be changed.

Su Mei does hold a grudge against Hua for killing her parents, and I think Su Mei is really interesting but sadly the VN got cut off before the author could get super in depth about her motives.

Jiang Wanxi and Wanru respect Hua, but there’s no way one twin would let the other die even if it meant participating in the assassination.

Lingshuang has no sense of filial piety and holds little proper “reverence” which was culturally expected at the time for her Shifu beyond the fact that she’s the person she learned from. Some of the other disciples thought Lingshuang didn’t like any of them because of how she acts, but Lingshuang actually cared about her martial siblings and her motive for participating in the assassination was genuinely to protect her older martial sibling.

Yanqing was arguably groomed by Su Mei in my opinion (not in a sexual way) but he seemed to find little value in his own feelings regarding his master and instead listened to Su Mei’s opinions.

Suyi is very perceptive about other people and has a similar understanding to Zhaoyu that Hua isn’t the person she used to be. However, Suyi understands that the reason for Hua’s behavior is her memory loss, and since Suyi was a person who recovered from memory loss, she had faith that Hua’s recovery would also be possible. This is why she’s the only person who stands with Hua even though I’d argue morally Suyi is not in the right for some of her behavior. Mainly the way Suyi used her sword which had the ability to alter memories to trick Lingshuang into raising Sushang as her disciple.