Pekky

Alright, now as I've already said... yeah, this poll greatly depends on whether or not you think Liu Min was out to get people in the past timeline(s). And if cxs and lg got involved. Cuz there's obviously no reason for cxs to be chasing after a suspect that he has no idea about, and there really isn't much to it beyond that...

Although I do wanna point out that Cheng Xiaoshi runs out in the middle of the conversation:

But that Lu Guang seems to have shared the full message anyways

I really noticed this in the English dub, so I mean. idk if I count that as the definite intention. But still. In the og, Dong Yi's voice fades out completely so you really hear what he was saying before Xu Shanshan ran away from him. But in the english dub, you can still hear him talking, and he's still at the beginning of the message and talking about how he can't stay in the city.

Now, I'm no expert on Chinese talking speed, word length, or if you wanna argue that maybe the length of Cheng Xiaoshi's thoughts is meant to cover the majority of Dong Yi's message and it just appears shorter in the show because creative liberties and episode length or something... but I mean. It very much does not seem like Dong Yi got that far into what he was meant to say.

Ooohhhh nooooo, if only there was someone who could have already heard the message some other time...

(side note, this is my favorite picture of Lu Guang's reaction to cxs' dumb ideas 😅 Just look at him. So funny)

This would ofc imply that this mission has happened before, and that it went a bit more smoothly last time.

However, after that...

Does anyone else feel like Lu Guang is crazy calm about this whole thing? He gets mad when Cheng Xiaoshi runs, but he doesn't seem all that stressed about him being in the alley (he's not totally uncaring ofc, but just not that... surprised? By it all? idk, maybe I'm reading too much into it. But the Doudou part seemed more tense than this scene, even after Lu Guang points out that if it was the killer this would be a much more dangerous situation that that was.)

And then when they get the strange message and call from Xu Shanshan's phone

Cuz this is a stressful and confusing situation, and it'd be even more so if you know it's a major change from what it's supposed to be. But Lu Guang is very quick to contact the police, connects the event to the article that was written about Xu Shanshan, then runs off by himself to go to the police station

He even tells Qiao Ling to take Cheng Xiaoshi's phone away before he goes...

I'm gonna stop there for now cuz that'll come back up in next week's poll 😅

I think it was confirmed in an interview that Lu Guang "killing" Vein caused some things

(x)

I don't think I've seen any full translations of this though, so idk if it was any clearer, but this is vague enough to cause a lot of questions.

Like, what does the creator mean by "Emma's ending"? Was she not murdered in the first time around? Totally possible ofc, but would it start there or earlier? Because Li Tianchen's appearance probably wouldn't affect Liu Min's motives, and I mean, there are probably other hitmen he could've hired that weren't ltc, right?

But on that topic, it's awfully convenient that Liu Xiao is kinda the one who inspired Li Tianchen in the first place, and then his "opportunity to become a hunter" happened to be in the form of Liu Xiao's own family. Obviously they don't seem too close, but we already know that Liu Xiao is a mastermind manipulator, so it's totally possible that he manipulated the scenario that led to Liu Min hiring a hitman (getting him financially cut-off and/or sensitive to online bullies or smth), which worked to keep ltc close enough for him to swoop in later at the end of s2??

Excuse my ramblings, I hope I make sense. But essentially, I don't think ltc's appearance had anything to do with Liu Min's wanting to kill Emma, so how was it different the first time around? Furthermore, as the tweet above says, how on earth did Lu Guang's actions with Vein influence an event that already should've happened?

This is somehow the mission that I feel like would be the craziest but also the only one where I feel like I know the answer 😭

Anyways, let's look at some screenshots. The first one is, ofc, this one:

I feel like I've seen the thought floating around that it's possible that Lu Guang wasn't intending for Cheng Xiaoshi to discover the date/realize there was going to be an earthquake? The last message was relayed and the mission was over, cxs was the one who wanted to stay. I used to think that at least 😅

But on the rewatch, I do find it really interesting that we don't see Lu Guang say anything after the last message until after Cheng Xiaoshi is freaking out. That's when he tells cxs to get out, and is very obviously stressed

Obviously this could be him panicking at Cheng Xiaoshi finding out, but if he did know what was coming I can totally imagine him just being capital letters STRESSED OUT the entire meal. Maybe he wants things to go the same for ~character development~ or some other reason, but if so I def think he'd be dreading this if so.

Personally I think biggest evidence that he knew is this

Cuz unless his power automatically updates as cxs changes things (could be true idk I can't remember) I just don't get how he'd know that Chen Xiao's mom would rescue him and that seems like a HUGE gamble to take 😭 Cheng Xiaoshi would probably just get pushed out of the photo if the host died but the timeline would be pretty different if nothing else. Makes me wonder if there was a timeline where they legitimately did try to save her that Lu Guang walked through the motions of this time?

and then ofc there's this

I added the part about playing in the game really just cuz, as we know, the reason Chen Xiao played at all was cuz the flash went off when he took a picture

Lu Guang does seem annoyed by this, but otherwise is pretty calm.

If Lu Guang was expecting it, it seems like it would be fairly easy to avoid the later mess of having Cheng Xiaoshi play at all if he had just said something about turning the flash off before then

but we also know that the basketball game really wasn't that big a deal anyways? So maybe he didn't see the point in having this part play out any differently/worrying about him playing in the game at all??

And idk, seems like if Lu Guang knew that Cheng Xiaoshi was going to play, he probably knew that Cheng Xiaoshi was going to want to win (plus going off what I already said about the game not really mattering) but he does have more of a reaction to that

Going of his reactions isn't exactly an exact science though. Hard to tell what if he's going through the motions or getting swept up in the same emotions that he felt at the time, so it could always go either way of course