I need you all to understand that WenZhou literally gave up everything and chose to be with each other for eternity. And I don’t mean that in an exaggerated way, when I say eternity, I really do mean eternity.
To save Zhou Zishu, Ye Baiyi taught Wen Kexing the art form that allowed himself to live for so many years without aging. However, nothing comes without a price, especially when we’re talking about attaining something close to immortality. In this case, the sacrifice is that the practitioner is pretty much confined to living in areas of extreme cold and they can only feed off on ice and snow as human food would deteriorate their body (yes, that’s why Ye Baiyi’s hair started turning white, he’s tired of living for so long and wants to end it all so he’s been eating a lot of food).
If they can maintain this restrictive way of living, then they pretty much live forever, with no end in sight (per Wen Kexing’s own words).
After Wen Kexing explains this to him, A-Xu makes the following comment:
“To live like that, or to die right here… I’ll have to seriously weight [the pros and cons].”
This is an important comment because recall, this is the man who willingly nailed 7 nails into his body in exchange for 3 years of freedom, that’s how much he values being free.
And yet, even though his words appear to indicate that he needs to consider his options, it seems more like he’s already made up his mind and he’s just teasing Wen Kexing at this point because to Zhou Zishu, all the freedom in the world means nothing to him when compared to the choice of more time than he could ever ask for with Wen Kexing.
That being said, you might remember the following scene from episode 14, where Zhou Zishu said that he’d rather live freely for 10 days than spend 10 years living against his own will.
Originally, I understood this scene as highlighting the importance of physical freedom to Zhou Zishu; however, now I realize I was wrong. The wording here is so important because his choice at the end of episode 36 isn’t out-of-character or something that goes against his previous claim from episode 14. If anything, it reinforces it because to him, choosing eternity with Wen Kexing IS his own will.
To Zhou Zishu, being able to roam the world and enjoy all the liquor and food it has to offer is just materialistic freedom. Being physically constrained to one location is not living against his own will, nor is it “losing his freedom” because true freedom is the option to choose where he wants to be and to him, where Wen Kexing is is where he wants to be.
This is supported by the following comment made in the special episode:
“The two have been fighting for a whole lifetime. When immortals start fighting, who knows when it’ll end.”
This implies that Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing have forever on their hands, which they spend a lot of sparring.
If they have forever, that means that they willingly gave up roaming the human realm and chose to stay in a place of extreme cold, feeding on nothing but ice and snow.
Together.
Forever.
