Mentha

Chesed. The Kindness and Mercy of God. His all-encompassing love that accepts and joins all, for only God fully understands your heights and depths, your best and your worst. Thus, it’s no coincidence that Dante’s awakened to its corresponding Sapling of Light’s ability in the Canto whose Sinner is the kindest of all, the one who couldn’t bring himself to hate his siblings, parents, and elders.

But such a thing really goes against what we hold as common morality, right? It’s alright—No, you must hate those who bring you and others harm, and not to forgive them as long as you want even if they have changed or are in the path to do so. Doing the contrary will certainly win you some disapproving/confused glares… Why does that sound familiar?

“Xinchun: ... Right. I guess... if it was anyone else among my siblings, they would have sent their lackeys after us already... Or... maybe I'm not even worth that much effort already.”

“Dissapointed Audience: We raised that failure as our own son? What a pathetic disappointment… Excited Audience: Don't worry... I have faith in our third child. I mean, it's not like we expected anything from this one, right?”

“Wang Qingshan: We've sacrificed so much of ourselves... just for this day... just for the Family Hierarch war… […] If I fail here miserably... having accomplished nothing... they might kill me when I get home… I have to do something, anything... to be a proud sister to my little siblings…”

“Shi Sijing: Father... Please forgive me... I should've done better than this…”

“Xue Baochai: But maybe they'll use a different treatment method on [Xue Pan] this time. Hopefully they'll edit him to be more obedient to mother's commands this time around~”

“Hong Lu: When a child is born, they aren’t celebrated—they are hidden, concealed for years in the dark, so that competition wouldn’t take notice of a new rival…”

Surprisingly, how collective morality can twist itself into the monstrosity that we see in the inhabitants of Daguanyuan. Every family readies itself to kill or be killed to achieve what they want, and impossible standards are put in children.

Certainly, most people would think our society—our ethics—can’t possibly be the same as Daguanyuan’s, but that’s a vile lie. The 2 systems are rooted in the same principles, on the threat that people do not deserve love if they don’t fulfill the standards and rules imposed upon them by others, that they are monsters that deserve to be insulted and gutted for daring to betray others’ expectations, no matter if they are kids or their parent, stranger or friends, or even the ideas we have of people

Truth to be told, it’s near impossible to escape such feelings and gut reactions, and as luck would have it, we are particularly good at pointing fingers, especially towards our parents and older relatives, those who raised us and were supposed to give us unconditional love. But things are always more complicated than that, aren’t they? We would love to always be the good guys, to receive love and care despite our flaws, yet when we have to do so with others…

Certainly, we can blame the Elders and Hierarch of Hongyuan for this. But at the same time, they were victims of that very same thing, weren’t they? Shi Miyin and the past Hierarchs were unconscious of that fact, they never understood what their search for immortality truly implied: just as the river goes down the mountain to the sea and the Sun rises and sets, so does the human life grow and withers away, acting as fertile soil for the next generation. Nature, after attaining the highest level of development, will forever descend into the dark embrace of the unknown, falling apart against the wishes of society and the collective.

“So for many people all too much unlived life remains over—sometimes potentialities which they could never have lived with the best of wills, so that they approach the threshold of old age with unsatisfied demands which inevitably turn their glances backward.” - Carl Jung, Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.

The wish for immortality is a manifestation of the fear of death, which in turn is a product of fearing life and its disappointments. That is, for the Elders, to die means to have failed their forefathers, their family, and everyone else, admitting that everything they have done was for naught—sacrificies, tears, murders, pain, hatred. The Distorted form of Jia Mu, acting as a mere palanquin for the Xianhuang Worm, a symbol of collective expectations, traditions, and thus fears, with some of the skills’ names and affinities show how little Jia Mu thinks of herself without the Elders—the collective and society—approving of and praising her. 

However, immortality is infinite time and duration, and within infinity everything happens and therefore fades into sameness, which runs contrary to what life is about! Immortality goes against nature, and by “achieving” it, the Xianren fully physicalized their own fear of death born from trying to fit with what society asked of them, foregoing their own essence in search of that little, most “worthless” thing called love, the essence of God and goal of nature.

Back in Canto V, Queequeg felt envious of how Abnormalities “know” what they wish, and Ishamel expressed a curious idea of how Whales may feel lonely and try to make more of them to alleviate it. Naturally, this is similar to how Bloodfiends themselves act, and in that context I have to point out how the Manchengan Bloodfiends described the Golden Bough’s light as warmer and gentler than even the one they thought they lost forever—the same light Abnormalities, the unconscious aspects of life, and even the Pallid Whale seem attracted to. And what does the Golden Bough do? It illuminates the mind and manifests it, bringing buried fantasies into the sphere of consciousness, into reality.

The above was just a very long way to say that nature itself wants to be realized. It wants to be lived and known, and the only way to do so is… simply living, experimenting the good and the evil, the successes and failures. Pitifully for us, conscious beings, we are alienated from what surrounds us from the moment we open our eyes, all the while something primal inside us wants to feel connected to it, which is something only achievable by love, the creator and end of all creation. We, thus, yearn for something that is a deeply unconscious part of us, making us seek it in the external world… The rest is history, isn’t it?

“When we were born, our natures were good. Though our natures were similar, our habits made us different.”

But no matter how marred and deformed the body becomes, the repression of the yearning to live will never disappear, for it is our inalienable nature as living beings. Only in the most hopeless of situations is that drive truly lost. So, despite how aberrant they became, the Elders wished to experience all those possibilities they couldn’t live, those “foolhardy, young, witless, and flawed choices” that lead to “an adventure they would have never made,” which isn’t that far-off from how Bloodfiends work, right? A stale immortality that wishes to return to the natural flow of things more than anything, yet inherently tied to pleasure and blood.

Even when despair and stagnation hit rock bottom, the Elders refused to move from the comfortable stronghold they created, surrounded with artificial nature, content with merely watching the adventures, failures and bitterness their souls longed for. They watched and watched, but never dared to understand what they witnessed, because that would have meant they lived incorrectly and did everything wrong, that they are not worthy of the “love” and “respect” they desperately fought for.

With all of that said, then Hong Lu perfectly acts as the foil for the Elders and Shi Miyin: they are people who refused to follow what life—their own selves—had in store for them, merely witnessing from afar as everything that ends is ultimately meaningless. Only the eternal, such as Danguanyuan and its traditions, has any value, for it will never disappear and change, showing that they have done something worthy. To dream big and sacrifice oneself for the collective are the only correct ways to live, and Hong Lu soon learned that despite lacking such ambitions to begin with, seeing the way he lived as meaningless.

“Jia Qiu: Each heart has a different cause that moves them. How can one speak of the fathoms of a lake when all they have seen is the water’s surface?”

Kong Qiu, by contrast, is the antithesis of the Elders: he experienced the depths of despair the day the Kong family was eradicated, failing in every single way the standard by which Danguanyuan’s inhabitants judged the world. However, despite temporarily falling into a deep hatred for the world, he walked beyond the prison of Hongyuan, into the vast City filled with flaws, disappointment, and hope, and “by the age of 30” he firmly stood up against society and its delusion that there was only 1 way to be and act, as represented by his EGO, Érli. He essentially became what the Elder could have been if they had not been broken, the “perfect man” by which life becomes realized and known, accepting the walks of life and flows of people, but only as long as they follow what their soul and heart tell them.

Fundamentally speaking, then, Kong Qiu has an enormous wellspring of kindness he has managed to perfectly control and manage thanks to the worldly wisdom he has gained. In Kabbalistic terms, this can be understood as Geburah tempering Chesed, or the justice and might of God controlling his kindness to allow the continued existence of creation. Needless to say, his violent but necessary confrontation against Hong Lu shows it the best, as there’s no better guide for the “eternal child” than the adult that experienced the worst of life.

And so, we finally arrive at Hong Lu’s final realization.

“So what if we can race against the wheels of death? If we are always running, we can’t behold the sceneries.”

The Elders and Hong Lu shared the fear of the meaningless represented by death and temporality. They ran and ran to not be hurt more than what they already were. They closed themselves into their respective lands of illusions, warding off the violent and bitter waters of life that dictate the flow of time itself, as Hubert wisely stated. But at the end, after witnessing what the Sinners and Kong Qiu have done for him, Hong Lu decided and exposed himself to the risk of failure, for life is teleology par excellence—seeking its own descent and end as the culmination of its existence.

But more importantly… Hong Lu understood the Elders were no different than him and everyone else from his family. They were much of a child as he was, that even his beloved grandmother was a “little girl” before the eyes of collective tradition and morality. So, instead of killing them in a fit of anger guided by his disappointment, he shared his kindness and love with Elders one final time before closing the doors of their self-created, interminable hell isolated from the world and its refreshing waters.

“Hoping that through my finder you’ll find another answer.”

Love is the creator of nature, its conqueror, and humanity is alienated from nature since its birth. But if his older brother and friends fought for and won him, who is to say the Elders can’t be saved? It may be meaningless, they surely won’t change, but he wants to give them that last mercy.

It may acquire diverse shapes and forms depending on their circumstances and necessities, yes, but Hong Lu knows very well how important it is to feel loved, independent of what people do, for that is what everyone yearns inside their hearts.

Post-Commentary

There’s not much to say here, really. I think the post already speaks for itself. At most, I think the ideas may be somewhat clunky and dispersed? The topic is really dense, so trying to summarize it like this feels lacking. The Divine Comedy certainly describes the same idea, though with harsher lenses (akin to Kong Qiu’s).

Outside of that, the only thing I can rescue is that my appreciation about Shi Miyin can potentially apply to Jia Huan at some level, thanks to Qiu’s comparison. I don’t think his usage of the “Contempt, Awe” EGO is just as simple as him being a “professional hater,” as we know the Spiral is just as susceptible to having its own pride broken and hating itself.

So, with that said, until the next post!