#tcfg

Anyone else feel like they're losing their mind a little thinking about Hua Cheng spending a decade fervently molding sculptures and drawing murals of the man he wishes to protect in between committing mass slaughter to get the power he actually needs to protect him. Thousands of reminders of what he's going through this nightmare for, lovingly created by hands that would be busy spilling blood whenever they're not busy recreating his beloved's image over and over again. With his final masterwork at the very core of the furnace that reforged him into the ghost king capable of offering his beloved unfaltering protection. A testament to both his love and his strength, a thing of beauty left to linger in the very pit of hell.

Black Water Xuan & Hua Cheng such a funny and underutilized dynamic. They set Black Water up as the only ghost who may rival Hua Cheng in power and who Hua Cheng has to watch himself around, only for it to turn out Hua Cheng has Xuan at his beck and call same as anyone else. Like Xuan "owes him money" and turns out that means Hua Cheng is allowed to stage the world-changing epic final battle to upend the heavens in his front yard all because his front yard bites. And Xuan just has to fucking take it. Same way he later has to accept going on an errand run for a guy he hates so much he turned into a ghost over it.

I already made a post about Xie Lian being like a capybara to me but I need to take it further. Xie Lian being the human embodiment or a capybara is a thought that visited my mind when reading book 1 because his heavenly peers perceive him with about the same mix of bemusement and astonishment that the internet has directed at the capybara in the recent years. His companions are consistently baffled at his nonchalant acceptance of Hua Cheng's company the same way people are baffled by images of capybaras just chilling with extremely dangerous predators. Yet somehow it works. I guess that helpless rodent and that crocodile are buddies now. What is this world.