#tgcf analysis

And Xie Lian loves E’ming no matter the rumors.

Hua Cheng smiled when qr said that Xie Lian has him on a leash

AND THIS IS THE FACE HE MADE

AFTER QR SAID THAT XIE LIAN WAS LICKING HIS BOOTS

THAT’S

And YES he CAN artificially ascend people and he DOES. I’m fr about to write up a whole essay on ascension this weekend istg.

The man literally says:

“Even fates can be swapped. Why not spiritual power?” Jun Wu said. “There are many things that are hardly as difficult as you assume. It is only a matter of a few words and a few brush strokes from a few great heavenly officials.”

Right after he sucks out one homies spiritual power and injects it into another.

And let’s be real.. Do y’all really think Jun Wu actually ascended a second time using his own power?

The dude who has the suffering souls of his first attempt at human sacrifice plastered on his own face and.. screaming?

Hell nah. This dude became the grandmaster of demonic cultivation. He experimented on fetus spirits like some mad scientist interested in unethical stem cell research. He probs invented the damn fate swapping ritual himself.

He has an entire fucking Burial Mound volcano where he vents his resentful energy. You think all that energy is accumulating just cus he’s mad? Or from just the three faces?

No way fam. This man is actively cultivating the dark arts and probs needs so many followers just to help balance the yang to his yin.

I mean.. c’mon. You fr think Feng Xin and Mu Qing ascended back to back naturally? And just after they left Xie Lian? There’s a whole damn arc about how unusual it is for two people so close to ascend so fast and so young

Jun Wu gifts Feng Xin a bow called Fengshen which is a homophone for the name of an entire Chinese myth about appointing mortals to godhood for political reasons.

Not to mention that HC loves XL for who he is, not solely because he saved him when he was a child. He loves XL for his kindness and his compassion (among other things). If XL "betrayed himself" and committed atrocities again, I think HC would most likely try to stop him while protecting him until he'd come back to himself, not encourage him in a path that would ultimately harm him (and others).

All of this is even heightened by the fact that in the extras, when Xie Lian goes back to the dormant Mt. Tonglu to request help with finding a birthday present for Hua Cheng. Mei Nianqing literally lives beside the mountain where his friends’ spirits live and where Jun Wu is sealed, even though he could live on his own elsewhere.

Hua Cheng: died when he was 17, his first wrath form being Wu Ming, who looked like a 17 year old soldier. Later he gains shape shifting somehow, so presumably shape-shifts into his present Tall!HC form with the eyepatch and red robes. But then-? He reveals that Tall!HC is his true form? So he aged visually, or at least his form did AFTER death somehow. Looks like he’s in his 20s, is 800+ years old.

Xie Lian: Xie Lian ascended at age 17, and it’s said that this is the youngest a god has ever ascended. Gods are stuck at the age which they ascended. However, XL stepped down from heaven to save Xian Le about a year after his first ascension, and presumably aged in his time as a mortal? But when he ascends and gets banished a second time (he’s about 25 at this point), Jun Wu explicitly locks Xie Lian’s physical age at 17 with the cursed shackle, so… he presumably didn’t age during his time as a mortal, and if Jun Wu’s shackle works, has looked 17 for 800+ years.

MQ & FX: Ascended at around the same time, we’re the same age as mortals as Xie Lian, and ascended shortly after Xie Lian’s second banishment, leaving them looking probably permanently ~25, depending if they aged during their time as officials of the middle court and if they aged in banishment (as XL appears to have not). 800+ years old. If they don’t age while Middle court officials, MQ likely looks a couple years younger than FX, as he rejoins the middle court soon after leaving FX and XL

Lan Qian Qiu: ??? He’s portrayed as this spritely young anime protag, shorter and younger than XL, but we know his permanent god form couldn’t have ascended at 17, because XL still holds the youngest ever record (and LQQ’s shown to still be mortal at his parents’ funeral, which takes place after his 17th birthday). We know LQQ kept his promise and became a good king to the Yong’An and Xianle people ushering in a time of peace, and that at a later point in time, Yong’An turned into the people of the plains who fought Banyue. The books later say that by present day, Yong’An has long since fallen. Because of the Gilded Banquet, we know that the entire extended Yong’An royal family was killed, (“Yong’An damn near lost a dynasty!”). This leaves three options I can see: 1) LQQ ascended at a young age, leaving his position as king of Yong’An, presumably with no heirs, and Yong’An fell into disrepair because of the loss of this dynasty, turning into the plains people. 2) LQQ appointed a person from a different family as his heir, starting a new dynasty before he ascended to godhood, and Yong’An fell later in time for different reasons. Or 3) LQQ lives to be old enough to have a kid before he ascends. Appearance age: described as mid 20s. Actual age: ~300 years

Conclusion:

Xie Lian, on top of being ridiculed for being the thrice-fallen broke-ass trash god, is the youngest appearing person that exists in heaven, (unless the other gods recruit middle court officials from teenage hood). Despite being middle aged for a god, he’s got squishy baby face. His own student who’s ~500 years younger than him looks 4-6 years older, and his closest childhood friends grew into adults without him. Next to San-Lang-formHC, Xie Lian doesn’t look like a refined Taoist with a youth assistant, he looks like a youth hanging out with his peer. THIS IS WHY XL IS SO SHORT, and perhaps a part of why he is so universally disregarded by the rest of heaven as naive. He literally never grew up into an adult, and Jun Wu stuck him that way, forbidding him from growing up until he got with the “hating the common people” program.

Conclusion 2: FX and MQ are super protective of XL not only because of their past roles, but because XL looks like an INFANT, And Conclusion 3: HC looks like an extra creepy stalker to them because HC looks like 5-8 years older than XL (when in reality their age gap is the reverse and also kind of irrelevant since they’re both ~800).

Would love to see a post-cannon fic where XL without his shackle spends a few years in self-banishment as a mortal (without cultivating immortality) so he can finally age past his larval form.

Perhaps he becomes taller than MQ and FX. Perhaps his physical brain ages past its final pruning stage and develops a more refined sense of judgement and XL starts looking smarter and less reckless to the other gods. Perhaps in exile he finally grows a killer beard.