#clan lan

One of the best things of MDZS, which demonstrate really well the central themes of the novel, is that while the cultivators used false morality and hypocritical justice as a shield to justify practicing so much dehumanization and tyranny, Wei Wuxian was the only one who actually exercised that justice and followed the concept of what a cultivator should be for real.

It's funny because they accused Wei Wuxian of all sorts of things when he was literally just doing his job as a cultivator - protecting the innocent and fighting against evil – It’s quite the irony seeing Wei Wuxian being condemned for doing what already is, or should’ve been, the very ultimate goal of cultivation – apart from imortality – in the first place. To me, just the fact that the Clans did function based on an aristocratic system immediately points to the idea that the purpose of cultivation, in the MDZS universe, is a simple sham for nobles to maintain their privilege and monopolize the power.

“Those who oppress others and do evil while relying on the power of their Clan should be killed. Moreover, they should publically beheaded in front of tens of thousands of people so that nobody repeats their mistake – Wen Mao, founder of the Wen Clan”

By this, it’s clear that they strayed so drastically from their original intente to use power to help, to actively oppress. The Jiang who used to be a care free sect., turned to be a clan “you could never, in any way, offend”, the Lans, whose motto is “Be Righteous”, and have a whole wall of rules that says, “do not jugde others”, “be kind”, “do not bully the weak”, “do not make assumptions about other” etc, turned to be a sect where what matters the most is to “look rigtheous” and “prioritize not troubling the powerful”. 

MDZS universe is ruled by a fundamentally corrupt society, where the sect leaders congratulate each other on maintaining this facade of civilization and morality, which consist of purposefully ignoring the rot that takes place out of sight and is sometimes even publicly acknowledged, but fully accepted. Because no one cares about injustice, corruption, tyranny, as long as it doesn't affect them directly or their peers ( not even of the smaller clans, only the great sects) and most importantly, it can be easily excused and brushed off if it is caused by a clan leader, an heir or descendant of the main line.

For example, the complete extermination of the Tingshan He Clan, which had no objection. The fact that no one did anything when LanlingJin refused to execute Xue Yang after Nie Mingjue's death, even though he was responsible for the annihilation of an entire clan and was recreating the Yin Tiger Tally, a weapon of mass destruction. Or the matter of Jiang Cheng torturing and killing "demonic cultivators" being something know even by disciples of Gusu Lan and this is never treated seriously because these people were not importante enough to make a fuss, and let's not even talk about the Nie cultivation method, because it's a bottomless pit of hypocrisy.

It’s clear that, for the cultivation world, the only objectionable thing is the voice that differs from this dirty dishonesty, who identifies the farce for what it is and refuses to be part of the "brainwashing", or rather, the legitimate alienation. It is only reprehensible those who do not accept the veiled injustice that the Clans propagate in the name of unfounded reasons and who, in order to blame this system, goes against the meticulous facade of “honor and morals” created by the cultivation world, the facade that normalized, for the sake of 'good diplomacy’, the act of turning a blind eye to the cruelty, classism, oppression and authoritarianism of the Clans.

Logically, to be able to keep this arbitrary system working, it was necessary the fabrication of a new villain, “ The Great Evil" in common, hated by all and capable of taking the blame for everything and be used to justify all sorts of brutal and inhuman behavior. It was essential to use the villain's performative defeat to create a false, but allowable, sense of collective peace, sustained by innocent lives, that permit them to keep the face of righteous in the social circle of 'important people', while not forcing them to actually do something against the real problem, because all the bad things that happened were the ‘scapegoat's fault’. And this was not something fated to happen only with Wei Wuxian or the Wen Remnants, it was an an act bound to always happen in an infinite cycle, because inevitably one of the Clans would do some shit that would need someone to be criminalized and used as a guinea pig in order to hide their own corruption.

Basically, it's an entire society that hides behind "justice" in a reality where the very concept of that justice in question can only be judged by the Clans, predominantly from their own personal interests and not for what is really right or wrong. That is, justice is only right when it is theirs, outside of that, it becomes arrogance, madness, heregy. The real truth is unimportant in this scenario, much less innocence.

[...] “Don’t you understand? When you're standing on their side, you're the bizarre genius, the miraculous hero, the force of the rebellion, the flower that blooms alone. But the second your voice differs from theirs, you’ve lost your mind, you’ve ignored morality, you’ve walked the crooked path” [...]

For the ones at the top of the social hierarchy, nothing they do is criminal as long as it does not oppose the tyranny and the ‘absolute truth’ of the Clans. But anyone who doesn't have a noble lineage is worth absolutely nothing and has no right even to their own life, the people deemed as "below them" only serve as an tool to the powerful to use, to shut up when faced with offenses and to bow their heads in obedience, and that’s why Wei Wuxian died, he was a servant that did not know his place and tried to rise above his station.