Awesomeness

“Weapon:

Unnamed saber (ostensibly)

Crying (actually)”

Xue Yang says, “if you don’t know how this works works, then don’t enter it” (153). This sums up the criticism Xie Lian largely received when interfering in the Xianle/Yong’an war. He didn’t understand that you can’t walk away from a war with no casualties, and he didn’t understand how to effectively govern a kingdom. Furthermore, the Holy Temple in which he trained was literally on a mountain, much like Xiao Xingchen’s origins.

Xue Yang says, “save the world! What a joke, you can’t even save yourself!” and “you’ve accomplished nothing! Failed utterly! You only have yourself to blame! You reap what you sow!” (156). This is fairly self-explanatory in the context of Xie Lian’s first fall from grace and the period of struggle directly after.

The fact that Xiao Xingchen parallels two of the MXTX protagonists is interesting. I very vaguely remember hearing that the Xiao Xingchen story was something MXTX had come up with in high school. Then, it makes sense that his character is as such, and might point to somewhat formulaic (not that it’s bad) writing on the part of MXTX.