Pun Always Intended

1/ Jishi 济世 

济世 Jishi is a Chinese term denoting a philosophical ideal pursued by certain classes or castes of people since ancient times in China. It means to sacrifice and save the world. It’s self-sacrificial heroism in the most ideal and purest sense of the concept, similar to our modern-day Doctors without Borders.   

This is Xiao Xingchen’s higher calling, his chosen purpose. Xiao Xingchen came down from Baoshan Sanren’s mountain at 17 years old with one purpose: to make the world a better place. He rejected no one who needed his help. He went out of his way to reject the invitations from the cultivator Houses to join their ranks and enjoy the wealth and privilege it might bring because he didn’t want to be distracted from a higher calling.

Using modern Western vernacular, Xiao Xingchen is a hero. That’s his religion and identity. That’s on top of a personality that already holds high self-responsibility. So is there any wonder he feels he’s responsible for Song Lan’s loss and must give Song Lan both eyes?  

2/ Enyuan Yinguo 恩怨因果

恩怨 En Yuan. Yuan is resentment, spite, hatred, grudge. But En is a lot harder to nail down in English. It’s commonly translated as favor, but ‘favor’ has none of the cultural weight and encoded social obligation of En. The pure meaning of En is ‘a good deed done from the heart.’ A kindness. A mercy. A gift. 

For example, Jiang Fengmian taking Wei Ying into Jiangshi is En. Wen Ning saving Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying is En. Wen Ning reclaiming Jiang Fengmian and Yu Furen’s corpses and artifacts is En. Big En, comparable rebirthing an entire household. Wen Ruohan teaching Zhao Zhuli (later on known as Wen Zhuliu) and granting him a chance to prove himself is also En. Nie Mingjue doing the same to Jin Guangyao is the same level of En (granting critical knowledge and opportunity to completely change one’s life). Jin Guangyao taking in Lan Xichen and hiding him from Wen pursuers before the Sunshot campaign is En.   

因果 Yinquo = Karmic Bonds, the fruits that bloom from the seeds one sow. It’s also understood as a link between people’s life. Our lives collide, intertwine, and diverge like threads on a tapestry. We are each bound to each other by the threads of Karma and our debt to each other. This is yinguo. 

There is a deep-seated belief in China that a person’s life is a ledger. To live is to constantly add to and take away from the ledger. When other people perform En for you, that means you take from their ledger and add to yours. When someone takes from your ledger, a yuan/grudge is born. From the moment you were born, you were granted the greatest of En, the gift of life from your parents.   

In Chinese culture, it’s believed that one must try one’s best to square the ledger. One must repay En and reclaim Yuan. Entangled Enyuan eventually leads to tangled Yinguo, and that’s just a big headache nobody wants because it directly impacts your afterlife, your next life, your descendants, and sometimes even your ancestors that are already dead. 

To strive your best to repay En is seen as a virtue. Of course, not everyone is capable or even wants to reach this ideal. Like when we say it’s good to be honest, but being truly and completely honest in daily life is… a task, shall we say. Sometimes, it’s very hard to truly repay what you owe. And sometimes, your Enyuan with a person or with a House is so entangled that it’s either hard to really say who owes who, or hard to admit to the fact that you are the one in the reds.  

You are seeing parallels between Xiao Xingchen and Wei Wuxian because they both embody this ideal to the extreme. Both would take it upon themselves to repay. Xiao Xingchen paid with his eyes. Wei Wuxian repaid Jiang Fengmian’s En by giving Jiang Cheng his jindan, helped Jiang Cheng rebuild Jiang Shi using Guidao (Path of the Dead), gave up all his war achievements for the rebuilding of Jiangshi and left Jiangshi without a penny to his name despite being a major contributor to victory, and then… repaid Wen Ning, Wen Qing’s En to Jiang Cheng and Jiangshi in Jiang Cheng’s place when the other didn’t.  

In some ways, you can say that both Xiao Xingchen and Wei Wuxian are flawed in that they underestimate their own value and well-being and overestimate what other people do for them. You can even say that they are foolish because they pay for En that isn’t theirs to pay, and that eventually leads to their suffering and death. But this is just the kind of people they are. They are true idealists who genuinely believe in a Truth greater than mortal squabbles. They are pure, uncorrupted Daoists, the kind that holds the founding precepts of Daoism in their heart.  

In the novel, there are many examples of different people and how they see Enyuan Yinguo and how much value they put in them. 

We have Su Se, who was saved by Wei Wuxian twice but didn’t even acknowledge it. Instead, he saw that as a Yuan because he probably hated the fact that it showed how weak and insignificant he was. Yet Jin Guangyao merely remembered his name and gave him some support to create his House, and he was willing to be Jin Guangyao’s attack dog, going so far as to abandon his own House members in Fuma Cave when Jin Guangyao’s plan failed and using his life to buy time for Jin Guangyao in Guanyin temple. 

We also have Jiang Cheng, who was well aware that he owed Wen Ning and Wen Qing, but didn’t want to acknowledge it because he was poisoned with trauma and hatred at the hands of Wen Chao and felt that because of his relationship with Wei Ying, he was entitled to Wen Ning’s En. And yet he is rational enough to understand that admitting to owing this ginormous En and not repaying it is a huge stigma on House Jiang, and so even when he answered Nie Mingjue, confirming that the Wen remnants did have En with him, he answered in such a way that downplayed the enormity of En. Answering truthfully would have exonerated Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants because the laws regarding Enyuan are so foundational that no one could have blamed the Jiang for saving the Wen remnants. But answering truthfully would have been admitting to his owing the Wen, setting House Jiang against House Jin, and turning House Jiang into a target of ridicule for other Houses because such an En should have been paid long before Wei Wuxian had to take drastic measures and jailbroke the Wen remnants from Quiongqi Path.   

We also have Lan Xichen, who effectively compromised his entire House and compromised his own judgment because he saw Jin Guangyao as having granted him a huge En (which is not wrong, per se). 

And then we have Jin Guanyao, who killed both people who bestowed En on him (Wen Ruohan and Nie Mingjue both gave Jin Guangyao critical knowledge, opportunities, and elevated him above his station. And yet when it came to Lan Xichen, despite his effectively pushing the Lan to death in the second Burial Mound Siege, Jin Guangyao still acted like Lan Xichen was in the wrong for not paying Jin Guangyao’s En even more than he already had. 

Then finally, look at these Enyuan and consider the way it binds the various characters in both good and bad ways. 

So it’s a deeply embedded and very nuanced concept that manifests differently in different characters.  

3/ The Quest for Truth 道 Dao:

Dao/Tao 道: the truth, the path, the knowledge, the faith, the ideal, the natural order of the universe, that from which everything comes and that from which everything returns. 

What does Dao have to do with Xiao Xingchen? 

Well, because Xiao Xingchen is a Daoist. Remember when he reminded A-Quing to address him as Daozhang? That. 

He’s not the only Daoist in MDZS, either. The man who created Dao as a philosophy and spirituality, Laozi, is also the man who created the concept of cultivation in the first place. So every single cultivator in MDZS, indeed every single cultivator in xianxia genre, treads in Laozi’s footsteps, takes from his wisdom, and stands on his shoulders in their quest for heavens. 

The first sentence in Laozi’s definitive work on Dao, the Tao Te Ching, says: 

‘Dao that can be told is not Dao. Truth that can be named is not truth. Path that can be walked is not the right Path.’

The Tao Te Ching is a foundational Chinese Classic. It is the shortest but also the most complex and hard to understand. 

This first verse of the Tao Te Ching means: truth is not something that is fixed. Truth is nuanced. Knowledge is not something that can be given to you by words only. You must find this knowledge by yourself. Path is not something that anyone else can tell you. Your path must be walked by your own feet. Faith is not something that can given to you by someone else. You must find faith in yourself.  

So then, apply this sentence to Xiao Xingchen’s journey. Do you see it? Xiao Xingchen choosing Jishi is his journey to find and prove his Dao. Jishi is Xiao Xingchen’s Dao. 

Yi City is not a tragedy. Yi City is Xiao Xingchen’s tribulation and the unavoidable consequences of choosing to remain pure to the founding precepts of Dao while the rest of the cultivator Houses, including Nie and Lan, have long betrayed their origin. 

Even if, by some miracle, Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen never entangled with each other, there will always be a Xi City or a Zi City for Xiao Xingchen. Because it is a consequence and a price to pay to find the truth that he desires. And he did find that truth. Song Lan, who he had left in a decisive gesture of severing their Karmic Bond, returned and would likely spend decades if not centuries walking Xiao Xingchen’s path, waiting for the day Xiao Xingchen awoke. And A-Qing never left Xiao Xingchen, never gave up on him either.