hello good morning good afternoon good evening good night...:D Im reading the posts...
Before I write on Shiqi&Jing let me write a little more Hou. Yep I agree with Peng Peng that is Hou ever loved Jing like Jing loved him , he wont do what he did.
I have said that I I wish there was a little more him. Because MS TH had me thinking Hou might have been good too because he used cared about TSJ and then does not show how and why clearly. Because we need to assume what may make Hou the person he became. I am saying this because his character is interesting but then again I personally feel something was a little lacking there. Again I need rereading.
But so far what I get from Hou is that he was super jealous of Tushan Jing. He wanted to destroy everything TSJ is but not actually killing at once but to suffer mentally as well. The scars on TSJ 's body was quite descriptive.
in chapter 1
Xiao Liu realized he probably reacted this way to the torture as well, the person being shamed having more dignity than the person shaming. The person torturing him would have been filled with even more rage and therefore increased the torture.
It showed TSH's rage was from his feelings of being inferiority too. And like Symbolika1 said he had this feeling of being the beast (in how he dealed with getting fish ruby and also courting XY) and his being born as the eldest must had made him had this ambitions and always thought he'd ought to be the leader. (This remind me of Demon Slayer manga I read, there are two sons of Samurai where the elder was being ambitious not strong or good at fighting the younger one and elder bro spent his whole life trying to kill young bro . but that story was very written . sorry for off topic).
But Hou become a total screwed up and coward. Even in near end of his life he's telling Jing that the fight would be fair when he already know Jing was not physically strong. But yep like AH had said that scene showed Hou used of his physical strength and Jing use of his strategy in escaping by choosing the fight place near river.
What i totally get from this character is that his jealousy and ambitions and vengeance nature never sent him to his victory . His physical strength in winning over Jing never actually give him happiness. Or at least he never felt like a winner because he could not let go things he should have let go of. Nevertheless his background story was not enough for me to feel any sympathy for him.