I am admittedly biased about Shi Wudu despite the atrocity of his actions but I had a lil thought that I has to share about his personality as the water tyrant. In the english translation he comes across as very aware of his own reputation especially when he uses it to try and placate Shi Qingxuan into killing him. It’s kind of like an: I may be your brother but I’m also objectively a blight to existence and deserve to die.
At least that is how my biased ass interpreted it. Anyway, to me, it almost feels like for all the arrogance Shi Wudu has, he is not necessarily proud of how horrendous he is and this led me to a little thought about how he could have become like that.
We know he is so fearless he deterred the revenant of empty words so that’s kind of like a trait since birth. But fearlessness doesn’t equal tyranny…
I’d like to propose it came from sacrifices. Since black water arc foils the main story line, I’d propose that Shi Wudu’s cynicism and ruthlessness is parallel to Xie Lian’s unbending optimism.
We know his family went from wealth to struggling (kike Xie Lian’s) and in the midst of fighting he took his brother away and raised him and protected him as best he could (similae to how Xie Lian tried to look after his parents) and failed to protect his brother when the revenant found him again (once again reminding me of how xie lian discovered his parents)
He ascended to heaven desperate for a solution and couldn’t even protect his brother by appointing him to the middle court. It did not deter the revenant of empty words.
I propose that like how Xie Lian was on the verge of becoming a calamity, Shi Wudu was on the verge of doing something unthinkable to protect his brother. Yet unlike Xie Lian, he did not get or find a reason to hope for a different alternative.
The line ‘there is no such thing as remorse’ is so bitterly cynical. Madness whether as an act or genuine in literature can be used to disguise hard to digest truths and I feel this is a core belief that shi wudu holds. He does not believe that remorse is genuine and has shaped his personality and identity in many ways around this.
Watching his brother’s misfortune go ignored and return ruthlessly
Witnessing his family slowly become destitute and again seeing him and his brother be neglected in favour of wealth and inheritance. (All speculated based on what limited stuff we know) And then the final nail in the coffin: to have to choose to be remorseless to save his brother. Lives for a life.
The water tyrant became the water tyrant the day he chose to align himself with a twisted, distorted version of reality. Where the remorselessness he would have to have in order to save his brother and remain sane becomes a defining part of him.
After all, if he can go so far across the line to destroy a family solely for his brother’s life then making enemies and letting ships that don’t pray to him drown, encouraging them to sink, hardly seems that bad.
I wonder if that is why he is friends with Ling Wen, who also makes an impossible choice for power. Giving up love although it might have been sincere, branding herself as cruel and ascetic to distance herself from the disdain of womanhood.
I can imagine him contemplating in ashen distress what he has just done, second guessing why he has just done it and Ling Wen being something of a mentor in the ways of picking which subjective evil we would prefer to be defined by. Will it drive him to madness to kill a stranger or his brother?
I don’t think Shi Wudu died insane, but I do think he built something of a cynical delusion of the world and its values around himself to stay sane.
And He Xuan, desperate to know his death meant something, that he did not die merely as a biproduct… He xuan who cannot rebuke the action he will take himself for his own justice (destroying an innocent’s life), cannot accept remorselessness as an answer.
I’m very convinced that if Shi Wudu had shown uncoerced regret and apology, if Shi Qingxuan had not been a factor to explain away Shi Wudu’s caution and trigger his protective self-destructiveness then things may have gone differently.
I guess I just refuse to believe that someone who I interpret to be willing to destroy any morals he may have for his brother as completely remorseless and cruel. I do not know how much of hid persona is a facade, but I also feel like the only genuine sincerity we get from him is when he pleads with Shi Qingxuan to kill him and has to desperately back peddle when Sqx has a breakdown about it. And then he is absolutely remorseful: stuck with yet another impossible choice to destroy his brother’s fate or his brother’s sanity.
In the end, I think the no remorse line is a double entendre. I feel like HX and SWD almost have a separate conversation between the lines of what we read. No remorse reflects his actions toward he xuan but also begs he xuan to show remorse towards his brother: prove me wrong, make a third option that is kinder to Shi Qingxuan.
By unveiling this flawed view of the world, he gives He Xuan a way to almost justify only killing the water master. If he shows remorse, gives this single drop of mercy by not forcing Shi Qingxuan’s hand in this way, he can undermine everything the water master has built his ideologies on and therefore sparing Sqx becomes essential.
These two are very kindred in many ways and I do not think two so meticulous people could both be driven so far to madness to completely give up on things they have valued so highly for centuries. Shi qingxuan’s quality of life in shi wudu’s case and revenge in he xuan’s.
It seems too coincedental, like an impass was made an reached… i suppose though that if anyone could drive them to madness it would be eachother.
