On 8/17/2021, Zhang Qiling has now returned to Wu Xie and Pang Zi for 6 years.
Because I can’t visit Chang Bai Shan or Hang Zhou or Xi Zang or anywhere tbh 😭 for my first ever 817, I’m visiting Tumblr instead to post my rare thoughts. I wanted to dedicate my 817 post to these pictures from Episode 16 of Ultimate Note.
Let me explain why *hem hem*. The first two pictures are when Zhang Qiling exited the yun yu in Xi Wang Mu's cave palace and lost his memory. Clearly, he's in a disastrous physical state or else someone as fit and martially skilled as him would never lay in such a vulnerable position or have to be carried.
In the third picture in the desert though, he's walking by himself. We know Wu Xie and Pang Zi would have carried him without any hesitation (I mean even Hei Yanjing and Xiao Hua carried (dragged) Tuoba out of the desert), so Xiao Ge must have been determined to walk by himself.
And we also know from the last two pictures that he wasn't walking because he was fully recovered. The moment they exit the desert and reach safety, Xiao Ge is in a feverish coma state again and stays that way until after spending many days in the hospital. So he really was walking by himself in the desert not because he felt that much physically better but because he didn't want to "burden" Wu Xie or Pang Zi and have them spend their energy on carrying him.
These scenes may just be a few minutes in a 36 episode long tv series or 10+ year fandom or thousands years long story, but they embody why Dao Mu Bi Ji and Tie San Jiao enchant me so much. I’ll never encounter zombies or raid a tomb or fight a powerful secret organization, but it’s so believable to me that the characters of dmbj exist somewhere. Somewhere there’s a Wu Xie stringing together the coin bracelet of a woman who wanted to kill him or setting out to rescue an uncle who has lied to him in every imaginable way. Somewhere there’s a Pang Zi holding the lifeless body of his beloved in his lap or making a nametag so his good bro can find his way home. Somewhere there’s a Zhang Qiling who’s willingly harsh to himself if it means his friends’ lives are a little easier.
Through the eyes of the live comment generator that is Wu Xie, I’ve been immersed into the spectacular world Nanpai Sanshu has created. Reading for pure fun is not something I do often, but the dmbj series made me want to read every single word with all my heart - if not for the plot, then just to make sure Wu Xie still has a tian zhen (innocent and naive) side, that Pang Zi is still lively at times, that Zhang Qiling returns from the too cold Chang Bai Shan, and to follow everyone else to the end of their written stories.
Ending with this line that perfectly describes the magical connection between a book and its readers: 两方世界山河共，一纸内外烟火同.
