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Xiang Liu and Xiao Yao’s Story and Romance

liddi

@AH

But anyway, in that scene in the drama, XL says "You only have one head. You can only die once." Which totally does imply that his heads would be related to his lives. But XL doesn't say that line in the novel. I don't know why they would add it in the drama since it seems totally misleading.  

Actually, the revised version does include that line:

Sprawled on Xiang Liu's shoulder, Xiao Liu coughed violently, gasping for air, his nose and eyes filled with water.

After some time, Xiao Liu panted out in a hoarse voice, "If you want to kill me, just do it quickly."

"You only have one head. You can only die once. Dying just once is too easy for you."

Xiang Liu fell backwards and laid on the surface of the water. Xiao Liu's whole body was still in pain and could not move, so he could only lie on top of him.

Xiang Liu pulled Xiao Liu's arm. "Does it hurt?"

"He will be in great pain."


While it does not indicate that each of his 9 heads is linked to a life, I guess it could be possible that in his true form, if he were to lose any of the heads, it would also be equivalent to losing a life. However, just because he did not lose any of his physical heads, it does not indicate that his lives were still intact, as his lives could also be lost by sacrificing them in different ways...

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AH
 liddi:
Actually, the revised version does include that line:

So Tong Hua added that line specifically as part of her corrections? That surprises me.

The original (I'm copying the version from Koala's translation below for my own ease of reference in the future) seems fine and less confusing.

Xiao Liu sprawled on Xiang Liu’s shoulder and violently coughed and took loud deep breaths. His nose and eyes were all filled with water. After some time, Xiao Liu finally asked “If you want to kill me, do it faster.”

Xiang Liu’s body fell backward and he laid down on the water’s surface. Xiao Liu’s entire body was still aching so he couldn’t move and could only lay on top of him. 

Xiang Liu pulled Xiao Liu’s arm “Does it hurt?”

“He will hurt a lot.”

 liddi:
While it does not indicate that each of his 9 heads is linked to a life, I guess it could be possible that in his true form, if he were to lose any of the heads, it would also be equivalent to losing a life. However, just because he did not lose any of his physical heads, it does not indicate that his lives were still intact, as his lives could also be lost by sacrificing them in different ways...

I mean, for XY the added line is correct...

 "You only have one head." True.

 "You can only die once." Also true.

The implication that removing her one head will cause her to lose her one life... Also true. 

And it's also true that XY could die without losing her one head... and one could extrapolate all of that and apply it to XL's nine heads and nine lives and understand that XL can lose a life without losing one of his heads.

But even given all of that, it still seems like this wording would be likely to confuse some readers / viewers and make them think, like Noush did, that XL would be removing one of his heads every time he used up a life...

If something had to be added, why not go with something clearer, like:

"You only have one life. You can only die once. Killing you quickly would be too easy for you."

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liddi

@AH

Here are my translations:

Ep12  (no equivalent scene in the novel):

"Legend has it there are male-female poisonous bugs which are very difficult to cultivate. One is male, the other is female, with equal power. The one who raises them cannot control the poisonous bug. Mostly women raise it for their lovers, hoping for wholly devoted, loyal love. Once it is planted, the couple's hearts and lives are joined, living and dying together. As such, it is also called love poisonous bug."

"If there is no love between the couple, would it be possible to plant the bug?"

"No, no, no. However, the art of poisonous bugs is mysterious and unpredictable. Perhaps it is possible. Even so, forcibly planting it will lead to endless troubles. Not only are they unable to join their hearts and lives together, but the poisonous bugs will attack them and harm their lives."

"How can they be removed?"

"Its planting relies on 情意 love, as does its removal. If it has not been planted for long, it is possible to transfer it to another person while its foundation has not yet stabilised. However, the other person must have love in his heart. The love poisonous bug demands not only your life but your heart. You have nine lives, but only one heart. Once your heart is given, you can never take it back."


The term 情意 does mean affection, but also refers to love between a man and a woman. So for me, I would have translated it as love.


Vol 3 Ch 4   (Chapter 37 )

The shaman king coughed and solemnly said, "The lover's bug, as the name suggests, has a pair of male and female bugs. The man and woman who has planted the bug will have their lives and hearts intertwined. If one is hurt, the other will also feel the pain. If one is injured, the other will also be injured.“
:
”It enables two lovers to be connected in their hearts and lives. However, the lover's bug is also like a lover in love with each other. It is temperamental and difficult to control, will easily retaliate. Once that happens, both of them will die. That is why the lover's bug has another name, called the heartbreak bug."
:
The shaman king's face paled in horror. "Did you not plant the bug in this young master?"

"No."
:
He frowned and murmured, "It is indeed the lover's bug! But how is it possible? 'Lovers raise the lover's bug. Broken-hearted people produce the heartbreak bug.' Lover's bug differs from other bugs. It requires the couple to be willing in order to successfully plant it. If he is not your lover, how did you manage to plant the lover's bug in him?"
:
The shaman king was extremely puzzled but Xiao Yao's lover was obviously the young man next to her so there were some things he could not verbalise. As such, he responded perfunctorily, "You are right. The poisonous bug in your body is different from other bugs. It is likely there is something unique about you and the other man."
:
Jing eagerly asked, "How can the bug be removed?"

The shaman king's face wrinkled up. "They either live together, or die apart. Once the lover's bug is planted, it cannot be removed...."
:
Jing was stunned, and after a long while, he slowly asked, "If one person with the lover's bug dies, what will happen to the other person?"

The shaman king sighed. "Our Jiu Li folk ballad sings, 'The sycamore trees on the ground will grow old intertwined, the jian birds in the sky will not fly alone, the mandarin ducks in the water will die together.'"


Vol 3 Ch 15  (Chapter 48)

Xiang Liu sat next to the peach blossom boat and stared at the sleeping Xiao Yao before softly saying, "'The sycamore trees on the ground will grow old intertwined, the jian birds in the sky will not fly alone, the mandarin ducks in the water will die together.‘ The lover's bug connects our hearts and lives, and is impossible to remove! Back then, I could remove the bug from Zhuan Xu only because he did not willingly accept it, so you never successfully planted it in him in the first place. However, I was wholeheartedly willing to let you plant it in me! You kept asking me to remove the bug and I kept telling you it was not possible. I know you didn't believe me, but I was not lying. I really cannot remove it!"
...
"I cannot remove the bug, but I can kill it."


The text in chapters 37 and 48 are quite similar in both versions. 

There is no equivalent scene for Ep19 in the novel.  I wonder whether the drama was trying to show that if one party is heartbroken over the other person, the lover's bug will retaliate, irrespective of whether the other person had or had not fallen out of love?  To be honest, we never saw how Xiang Liu coped with the heartache he would definitely have felt throughout the years, yet he managed to shield Xiao Yao from the consequences of how he felt, particularly at the end of Chapter 43:

...He sighed silently and pulled out the arrow with a sudden force. As blood gushed out, he appeared exhausted and collapsed onto the water's surface, staring up at the sky, his smile slowly fading.

Dark clouds covered the full moon and what was reflected in Xiang Liu's eyes was a starless sky, boundless darkness, unending loneliness.

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seaisforcookies

Whenever I think of Xiang Liu and Xiao Yao's love for eachother, I always think of it as a 刻骨銘心 (kè gǔ míng xīn) kind of love. It's an idiom that iterally translates to "carved into the bones and engraved into the heart", figuratively means "etched in one's memory", "unforgettable".

I think it's because they both knew they could never truly be together and how utterly selfless Xiang Liu's chooses to love Xiao Yao, that their love is so heartbreaking and unforgettable. Compared to having loved and lost, not letting Xiao Yao know is the the cruelest “la douleur exquise”. The literal meaning for this French expression is “the exquisite pain”, refers to the feeling of wanting someone that you know you can never have, and knowing that you still want to be with them.

Xiang Liu's words make my heart ache so much!!

"Even if that strength hurts me, that person is not me, and I do not exist in that place, if you can experience this world well on my behalf, it is enough."  

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liddi

@sealisforcookies

I absolutely agree. 刻骨铭心 is definitely the most apt description for their love, especially on Xiang Liu's part. It is also a love that is selfless - with only her wishes and best interests at heart, regardless of what he has to sacrifice and endure silently, hidden behind a veneer of cold transactions, especially towards the end when he finally forces her to sever all ties with him. And she will never know the extent of his love for her, because he ensures that she will at least never have to suffer the pain of that knowledge.  

He asks for and leaves nothing for himself, so his 足矣  It is enough  just hurts immeasurably more.

@AH

I think "You only have one head. You can only die once. Dying just once is too easy for you." is just a figure of speech, since "heads" are always a source of banter between them particularly in those early days. I truly miss those times when they were just simple Wen Xiao Liu and the Nine-headed Demon, with nothing else coming between them. 

S2 please come soon so that I can finally obtain some form of closure, though we already know that even more heartache is in store.

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Xiang lu forever

When Xiang liu asked Xiao yao who she wants to spend her life with and didn't answer,other people thought it was CX.There was a time that XY was with XL  and thought,"If it was  possible,she wanted to live like that for the rest of her life.So for me, she really wanted to be with XL.T.T

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AH
 liddi:
Here are my translations:

These are amazing, thank you!

 liddi:
The term 情意 does mean affection, but also refers to love between a man and a woman. So for me, I would have translated it as love.

Noted. 

 liddi:
There is no equivalent scene for Ep19 in the novel.  I wonder whether the drama was trying to show that if one party is heartbroken over the other person, the lover's bug will retaliate, irrespective of whether the other person had or had not fallen out of love?

Yeah I'm not sure how to interpret that moment. It seems like the scene was trying to suggest that, in that moment, there wasn't love between them or that the love between them was shaken. As if XY's growing feeling for TSJ necessarily meant a decrease in her feelings for XL (which I disagree with) or as if the first time XL pushes XY away after her "you're not someone who should ever appear in a young girl's dream" comment it actually threatens the feelings between them and impacts the bug connection... 

XL feeling heartbreak on his own (and not from XY) should have nothing to do with the bugs. 

 liddi:
yet he managed to shield Xiao Yao from the consequences of how he felt

My understanding was that the natural state of the connection should cause XL to always be able to feel XY's pain and heartache (but not the other way around) and for both of them to be able to sense each other's presence, call each other through the connection, feel each other's emotions, and feel each other's heartbeats. But XL is powerful enough that he can stop XY from feeling the things she would normally feel through the connection whenever he wants, so most of the time she cannot sense his presence (but she can sometimes, like during the 37 years in the clam), most of the time she cannot feel his heartbeat (but on a few occasions she can when he slips or allows it, including during the 37 years in the clam), and they can always call each other and XY can never feel XL's emotions. And XL can make XY feel *his* pain if and when he wants to, which he makes clear at the end of chapter 32. 

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AH
 liddi:
@AH

I think "You only have one head. You can only die once. Dying just once is too easy for you." is just a figure of speech, since "heads" are always a source of banter between them particularly in those early days. I truly miss those times when they were just simple Wen Xiao Liu and the Nine-headed Demon, with nothing else coming between them. 

That's fair. 

 Xiang lu forever:
other people thought it was CX

XY opens her mouth to reply to XL but her mind refuses to let her say what her heart felt. Her mind refuses to even think about her answer. 

I don't see why XY would have that kind of internal dilemma if the answer that her heart felt was ZX. Quite the opposite. She would have a reason to feel conflicted if the person she wanted to spend her entire life with was someone at odds with ZX, meaning that spending her entire life with them would mean breaking her promise to never leave ZX.

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liddi
 AH :
My understanding was that the natural state of the connection should cause XL to always be able to feel XY's pain and heartache (but not the other way around) and for both of them to be able to sense each other's presence, call each other through the connection, feel each other's emotions, and feel each other's heartbeats.

I am not sure that is the case. The shaman king specifically said that if one was hurt, the other would feel it too. As such, it should work both ways. If that were true, then the only reason Xiao Yao couldn't feel anything was because Xiang Liu blocked it. Remember how his powers were able to block people from hearing what was said, or just allow one person to do so (e.g. when he allowed Jing to eavesdrop on their conversation about the lover's bug on the ship;  transmitting his voice solely to Zhuan Xu when he crashed the barrier to get to Shen Nong mountain). As such, I am inclined to think that he uses the same ability to shield Xiao Yao from being aware of him and how he feels. He had no problems doing so as Fangfeng Bei when she tested the bug multiple times, yet during those times when he loses control, she was able to sense it. 


 AH :
Yeah I'm not sure how to interpret that moment. It seems like the scene was trying to suggest that, in that moment, there wasn't love between them or that the love between them was shaken. As if XY's growing feeling for TSJ necessarily meant a decrease in her feelings for XL (which I disagree with) or as if the first time XL pushes XY away after her "you're not someone who should ever appear in a young girl's dream" comment it actually threatens the feelings between them and impacts the bug connection...

XL feeling heartbreak on his own (and not from XY) should have nothing to do with the bugs. 

Which is why I feel that assuming the script did not lose its own plot as far as how the lover's bug works, then it is possible that any heartbreak on their part would cause retaliation, perhaps not as fatal because the other person did not fall out of love with him. And no, I don't believe her increasing love for Jing indicates her diminishing love for Xiang Liu. If Xiao Yao is good at anything, it is in compartmentalising. We can see it during those times when Jing let her down with his inability to break off his engagement. Yet it does not affect how she loved the company of Fangfeng Bei, and wish those stolen moments with Xiang Liu could last.


 Xiang lu forever:
When Xiang liu asked Xiao yao who she wants to spend her life with and didn't answer,other people thought it was CX.

Agreed. Zhuan Xu would not have elicited such a vehement response - only the one whom she was afraid would enter her dreams  yet she subconsciously still dreamed of, the one she dared not entertain a future with because she knows they have no future together.

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blabla100

Oh, CX?  That seems very far fetched, honestly. I know some people try to minimize that scene, because they don't really have a good explanation for it, but I think it's a very important scene especially considering the circumstances of that scene. She was vulnerabile, thus the only time maybe when she  truly almost went to a place deep buried în her heart. Everyone îs talking about which guy did XY pick, but in the end, I belive he was XL's choice, not hers.  He knew she could and would eventually fall for him deeply, but he didn't want that burden for her, he knew from day 1 that he is meant to die în battle, so he helped her  în having the "right man" to rely on next to her. 

I think that îs what Sir Bi was saying when he told XL that even though tanji îs dead, he still feels relieved that XY picked him. She could have eventually learn to live again without tanji, but losing XL would have been much worse. I think that is a refference to her parents story/ending. 

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AH
 liddi:
I am not sure that is the case. The shaman king specifically said that if one was hurt, the other would feel it too. As such, it should work both ways. If that were true, then the only reason Xiao Yao couldn't feel anything was because Xiang Liu blocked it. Remember how his powers were able to block people from hearing what was said, or just allow one person to do so (e.g. when he allowed Jing to eavesdrop on their conversation about the lover's bug on the ship;  transmitting his voice solely to Zhuan Xu when he crashed the barrier to get to Shen Nong mountain). As such, I am inclined to think that he uses the same ability to shield Xiao Yao from being aware of him and how he feels. He had no problems doing so as Fangfeng Bei when she tested the bug multiple times, yet during those times when he loses control, she was able to sense it. 

There are two main reasons I believe the natural state of the pain-feeling aspect of the connection is one-way. First, that's the one thing that XY was taught about this type of poisonous bug: that it would cause the recipient to feel the pain of the person who planted it, but not the other way around. Second, XY never feels ZX's pain, even when he was shot with an arrow. But ZX was definitely able to feel her pain, and she was able to feel when he was approaching. Those two things are true in both the novel and the drama. And in the drama, XL describes the bug as causing only the recipient to feel the pain of the person who planted the bug, and the old man recognizes the bug based on that description. 

The Voodoo King also says that if one host is injured, the other host will be injured. But we know that is not the case. Only pain is transferred between the person who planted the bug and the recipient unless one of the hosts dies, in which case the other host will also die. 

 liddi:
Which is why I feel that assuming the script did not lose its own plot as far as how the lover's bug works, then it is possible that any heartbreak on their part would cause retaliation, perhaps not as fatal because the other person did not fall out of love with him.

Definitely possible. 

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nathsketch VIP
 seaisforcookies:
Whenever I think of Xiang Liu and Xiao Yao's love for eachother, I always think of it as a 刻骨銘心 (kè gǔ míng xīn) kind of love. It's an idiom that iterally translates to "carved into the bones and engraved into the heart", figuratively means "etched in one's memory", "unforgettable".

I love this so much

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Kokuto
 seaisforcookies:

Whenever I think of Xiang Liu and Xiao Yao's love for eachother, I always think of it as a 刻骨銘心 (kè gǔ míng xīn) kind of love. It's an idiom that iterally translates to "carved into the bones and engraved into the heart", figuratively means "etched in one's memory", "unforgettable".

I 

This idiom is in XL's song!  I see it translated differently in various videos, but in the Tencent youtube version, it is literally subtitled "carved into the bones and engraved into the heart."  I always thought it was gorgeous.

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blimarch

This thread is such a delight to read! Thank you everyone <3 (I know it looks weird to say "thank you" like this but all your inputs, analyzes and reactions makes me think, laugh and cry... and they really help me feeling less heartbreaked and aggrieved by the novel ending)

I have 2 questions that remains unsolved for me and it really bothers me. Don't know if anyone have the answer…Here is my first question:

How come Xiang Liu never suspected that Xiao Liu was the long lost Haoling great princess? If we get back to the cues : Xiang Liu already knew that Xiao Liu was a woman. He already knew that she had an exceptional and tragic past and that she had been wandering the world for many years before finding a refuge in the not so-neutrally connoted zone of Qing Shui Town. He also already knew that she had spend her childhood in Haoling. He very likely knew the story of the 2 orphans like everybody else in Dahuang. From the moment when Xiao Liu saved Cang Xuan, it was really an obvious hypothesis that Xiao Liu = Xiao Yao. And an even more obvious hypothesis if we take the drama in consideration because Xiao Liu said "Gege" with a relieved smile, just after saving Cang Xuan.

In the drama, despite all the cues pointing to this revelation since episode 9, Xiang Liu only learn the truth at episode 18...

In the novel, if I remember well, it's not clear cut. We know that Xiang Liu want to teach a lesson to Xiao Yao at chapter 13. But on chapter 8, when Xiang Liu tries to help Xiao Liu escape from Cang Xuan, it doesn't seems that he already knew (although it could lead to more "If": Xiang Liu knew Xiao Yao was the princess and wanted to stop her from going back being a princess in order to stay with her forever (which would be contradicted by some elements seen on the drama later on like the boat ride through the fireworks).

So: how come, Xiang Liu being that smart still couldn’t have connected the dots and guessed that Xiao Liu was the great princess of Haoling sooner? Was he misdirected because Xiao Liu didn't revealed herself to Cang Xuan and even tried to escape from him ? Or was he so blinded by love that his nine brains of his couldn’t function properly haha?

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Kokuto

@blimarch 

I love and appreciate the informative posts here, also.  Some great discussions!

XY did insist that she had nothing to do with either Xiyan or Haolin, which is part of the reason why XL didn't kill her as a spy.

Also.  Why would a princess of Haolin be hiding as a powerless man in Qing Shi town?   If she was a princess, she'd make sure to claim her status and power.

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