ShortCircuit

I'm so tempted to send you the skit they did on Jin Ling's uncles right now and holding on by the tips of my fingers LOL

Did you SEE LWJ's face?!! He was MORTIFIED, doing superior math calculations to try and remember what he said or did!!

I imagine he was also calculating how fast can he run away until WWX would say something along the lines of - "you said you liked... ME!" :D

I love all his thunderstruck expressions.

There's AT LEAST one more marriage (incomplete, who cares, they can re-marry each and every time they walk out the door as far as I'm concerned).

WWX also will get shocked a few more times by the way LWJ acts now in this rebirth life of his. It didn't use to happen before, it's lovely to see it now :)

It was kind of his fault in a roundabout way, though. But it doesn't matter, since if they played the "what if" game, they'd go back to the beginning of time. Or at least back to the time Jiang FengMian took him home when he found his former shimei's son wandering lost among the beggars when he was a child.

Things happened. It can't be helped or changed.

As for JZX,.. That's a bit different from the novel and I won't spoil it, just in case. But the blame is not as clear-cut as it appears.

For context, *a-hem*, giving a family a rooster is a proposal for their family's maiden's hand in marriage. The asking of "is it good enough" is part of the marriage tradition.

So you see... he was actually proposing hahaha~ He even offered two, just in case one wasn't enough!! :D

Did you SEE WWX's face?! :D (If the girl said the rooster was good/fat enough, the proposal was considered accepted. And WWX said yes, it's good, the very best! - they're so married :D)

Someone else interfered. Are you through 33 now? Then you know they're already thinking about what happened on that road and at Nightless City. One of the best - THE VERY BEST IMHO - scenes that is upcoming will be focusing on exactly what that means. (You should know I'm trying really hard not to spoil it right now but I'm being pretty fangirly over it every time someone comes here to discuss the story :) )

@The Jianghu considering WWX's circumstances - LOL, not even Jiang Cheng knows about it. He didn't even tell LWJ. Only Wen Ning knows from the past. They - the rest of the "orthodox" cultivators - also didn't know - but even if they did, TBH I'm pretty sure they wouldn't care. WWX is - strangely - for once very aware of how obnoxious he was being when he was at the top, so they also hated him for being such a show-off. His generation didn't love him for it a lot (except for a select few, one of whom hasn't made a move yet, LOL, in the open), but the old people straight up resented him for being an upstart (not from a clan, nobody's child, unruly, full of ideas, leading others astray LOL, eventually turning into a demonic cultivator - he's the bad guy they'd tell kids stories about to frighten them into being good. )

They wouldn't care at all, and he knows it. And it's not like he doesn't care... *okay stopping it here, before any more slips through - good things ahead though!!*

LOL, you're looking at it from an outsider's POV. The thing is, WWX is not being blamed for being out of norms though he regularly is, but for being a demonic cultivator. That's the biggest NO-NO rule in Jianghu.

Even LWJ cautions him that anybody doing demonic cultivation is bound to pay, and pay a lot, for it, when it goes out of control. LWJ wasn't being an idiot, that IS what happens to everyone doing demonic cultivation. There can be no middle ground about it because it's been proven, all throughout history, that demonic cultivators eventually become out of control and to take them down will take a lot of work (and lives).

WWX sadly cannot use a sword anymore, so now all he does is use demonical/crafty tricks that he can still control. ChengQing is obviously a demonic spiritual weapon, and these - the rest of the cultivators - are going Night Hunting for monsters that WWX can control (and re-direct to use at will, which is the worst offense) the same monsters, to his own purposes. And his good intentions do not mean anything if the results are bad - look at the trap on that road where Jin ZiXuan died because an out-of-control Wen Ning attacked him.

That's why Lan QiRen, back in their school days, was so incensed with him proposing to use malicious energy to control uncontrollable ghosts and walking corpses and whatnot. There were people before WWX who did demonic cultivation and they're not fondly looked upon... It's just that he's smart and stubborn enough not to crack. Or he didn't have enough time to be subdued by it before his death (it takes both ChengQing AND the Yin Tiger Tally to work on him, by the time of his rebirth the amulet has been destroyed by his own hand so the danger of doing small tricks is a lot lower.)

It's the concept of zhījǐ - it can be translated as lifelong confidante but in Western languages the more fit word is "soulmate". It just doesn't immediately have the same romantic connotation that it would have, anywhere outside China. In xianxia/wuxia it describes someone who perfectly and without explanation understands their zhījǐ, platonically OR romantically (though, again, it doesn't necessarily include a romantic undertone. It doesn't dismiss it either though).

In the bold fan TLs I've seen, it's always translated as "I once took you for my soulmate", but in the NF TL that became the official one they made it "lifelong confidante" (which TBH sounds very clunky and twisted to fit, though it's not actually completely wrong. Still, who uses "confidante" usually? I very rarely come up across it, and mostly it would be a quote from TU, LOL).

PLUS, the range of emotions they displayed in that scene (that replaces the blindfold kiss, LOL) is definitely NOT about a platonic relationship.

Fans have been making memes about LWJ "detecting wifi" in that scene, LOL due to some homonyms in the words :D

Reddit provided a rendition of that, LOL -

无线热点 / wúxiànrèdiǎn / WiFi Hotspot

蓝牙 / lányá / Bluetooth (this is a bit more strained, but it seems to be MXTX (the author)'s nicknames for the charas :)

TBH I would look at him the same - were I a character in such a story but also myself, raised and having the same values system I do now.

He is a true hero, and not only in mind and due to the decisions he's making, but also in action, because he's able to actually DO something about what he decided to act on. There are very few people who can see the right path AND follow it, whatever the cost to themselves.

That's why I love this story so much. He can be a goof, he's oblivious to being loved by others, his decisions can be childlike at times - and yet, when push comes to shove, he's the first in line.

No, they all surrendered. It's because otherwise the clans would have come from them anyway, and it was pretty clear after Wen Ning and Wen Qing surrendered and it didn't matter enough to close off the whole affair, and so they needed to go out too. And TBH, it's a sacrifice made in the name of desperation too - what would their lives be? Their whole clan gone, they'd be forever trapped in the Burial Mounds, no future at all for them. They were granted a little more time and it needed WWX's whole life too to make it happen - they just decided to make a decision of their own. Their bodies are hanged in front of the city gates, where WWX goes berserk when he sees them.

It goes a bit differenly in the novel (and a lot more gory), but the result is still the same. Their fate is presented closer to the novel in the donghua, and their eventual revenge, too. In the drama, WWX takes revenge for them.

The internet is continuous, LOL, sleep well and things will wait for your time when you're able to give it :)

I always thought some of the BTS around language were hilarious - like that one where they were doing pre-scene reading and Xiao Zhan suddenly mispronounced something about cultivation so Wang YiBo was ROFL about it and cheekily saying he doesn't know where he'll cultivate later, maybe in the subway tunnel (or something, I don't remember the exact words, it was still funny though :D)

I know Meng ZiYi had a lot to bear those days, people got really crazy (proof - the ao3 thing) but due to the pandemics, it's like it happened in another time and universe. I'm glad they all are very successful now.

ETA I totally get you on the Cantonese, LOL, a lot of the scenes in Mobius (if not all) were filmed with characters using Cantonese, it was so scratchy-sounding yet still kind of familiarly Chinese at root (I don't speak the language but got used to how it sounds through so many dramas) that is was completely off-throwing, hahaha~ If someone were to speak it to non-Cantonese speakers, it would have become bedlam, LOL.

They might've just confused some moments of filming, IIRC, they didn't film it lineary at all, so they could be preparing for a new scene but talking about one that was already filmed or in process of being planned or something.

The blindfold (and only, until right up to the end) kiss is in the daytime, WWX is just being an a**hole as usual and playing his ChengQing to bait all the creatures on the mountain into the Jiang Clan traps LOL and doing it blindfolded because why not. So LWJ comes upon his unguarded self and kisses him then runs away (WWX doesn't even take off the blindfold and later says he thought it was some shy little lady and he didn't want to embarass her, LOL, to which LWJ responds with more "everyday" actions, haha - yes he's the extremely jealous type).

But anyway, it would happen AFTER they came back from the Sunshot Campaign, quite a bit later, actually, because it took some months until the Floral Banquet was prepared. So no chance for that red underclothing to be a red dress for anyone to get kissed in, LOL. UNLESS it was a kiss (presuming they actually filmed such a kiss) with Wen Qing. There was a huge fuss raised by fans because some pictures were leaked and it looked like there was going to be a woman as a love interest for WWX, which obviously, even if you censor it... you don't do with an adaptation of a danmei. So IF they did film, it ended up scrapped because of the outrage.

I've seen some proposed pictures from that leak (I am not certain if it's true) but it seemed they were pics from the scene where WWX leaves the clans and their banquet and wanders around the city, meeting Wen Qing who's looking for someone to help her find Wen Ning. (I love that scene, and the music, the framing, those sad looks - everything's perfect. It's not in my top 10 of TU scenes, but very close to those top 10, LOL). It's in the novel, but maybe if those were the leaks, the fans might've thought she would be a love interest and exploded, LOL.

TBH, the way LWJ comes into the room and plays to WWX in his red underclothes thing LOL is kind of disturbing a bit - Xiao Zhan was soooo thin in that scene, and he's such a tall guy (he said they were going for a certain esthetics and they had him on a short diet, but he was also filming for Joy of Life at the time, and he was always short on rest, food and actual sleep... it must've been gruesome). You could see how thin he was in the BTS around the first WangXian scene, when they show he was actually in his undies because it was so hot and he had to wear black too.

And now with this talk of reading lips, I am wondering - do they really all talk in Mandarin on set? They were going to dub them anyway, so they said their lines in Mandarin to fit the words, but if they were relaxed and all, wouldn't they use their own dialects?...

If the TL is right and there is a red dress, it could be anything. Red was the Wen colour though, so WQ would be the most possible candidate. But as @Salwa Nice says underneath, it could be in reference to WWX's underclothes when LWJ was playing for him.

But in that case, it would definitely not match the setting, because the blindfold kiss came a lot later, in the forest indeed when they had that heart-to-heart talk about what they mean to each other and WWX told LWJ he was his zhiji, and LWJ said "I still am" (LOL, mini-love declarations hidden through the whole drama). There's only that, and one-sided, til almost the end. So EVEN IF they'd defy censors and film that, it would make no sense if they were trying to follow the original story.

That's why I think that IF (an that's a big if) there was a filmed kiss, the other person would probably be Wen Qing.

Or maybe it's just hype-raising from someone who wants things to happen when they sadly didn't...

The whole thing might be fake, who knows (I sure don't know enough/any Chinese to tell anything they've written is actually what was being said.)

But I seriously doubt such a scene was actually filmed with both MLs - I wouldn't doubt there might be a kissing scene between one of them and a female. And considering the mention of a red dress, I'd think it could be that they had indeed planned a straight romance between WWX and WQ and later dropped it after the backlash from fans guessing they'd turn it into that (I mean this is THE best known danmei out there).

I would take basically everything coming out in the AI era as maybe not what it seems, from the start point, though.

You're almost there, soon it turns back to the present and everything's going to be okay. Hang on :)

Lan JingYi is the king of sass, LOL. Jin Ling is just a lil' miss (but he's entitled, poor kid).

They're all just awesome little ducklings and could never resist the cause of all disasters-waiting-to-happen WWX :D Kids love chaos anyway.

It's because he needs to ride that.

... I'll see myself out.

Everybody likes him, LOL. Wen Qing likes him, Wen Ning likes him, Wen Yuan likes him, everybody in Lotus Pier likes him, most of the people in Cloud Recesses like him (not the uncle, LOL), all the juniors like him - he's an easy person to like. We'll allow her, hahaha~

But he's LWJ's baby and that's settled :)

Well, from time to time LWJ also carries the guqin on his back, LOL. Like when he visits WWX after the Sunshot Campaign to play for him, he had it packed on his back. I don't remember that there's an explanation on why he sometimes carries it physically and sometimes not in the novel. Maybe the drama team decided to try more looks and the scenes came out well so they kept it like that, don't know.

Oh and LOL, the flying on swords thing also is a trope. But TU was produced as a web drama, in a time where cdramas weren't all that popular YET (there were some who were hugely popular world-wide before, but after TU, it all kind of exploded). So they didn't have the budget to actually get great special effects for sword-flying and monsters or whatnot (or maybe they got a bad CGI team, LOL). All the times you're seeing characters who seem to jump down from somewhere upon arriving at some place, they're ~jumping off their swords~ LOL.

LOL, that closeness between WWX and Wen Qing almost drowned the drama - the fans got an inside photo that they took to mean there were plot changes into making WWX a hetero guy and the drama a straight romance one (even if tragic, nobody cared) so they raised up a huge fuss. Tencent went and said they never intended for that to happen, bla bla bla, and in the end there was no straight romance to muddle the waters. Or just they changed the straight romance's love interest from WWX to JC, or it might be they were actually telling the truth LOL.

Now that I think about it, maybe that's part of what pushed the censors to relent a little, and so we got so much eye-love making between our definitely not really straight main charas, LOL.

Anyway - spoiler (or maybe motivation to read the story :D): A LOT of cultivators (some who wanted to be there and some who definitely did not) were at a certain place (not going to tell more because it'll happen mostly the same in the drama). For certain reasons, WWX was separated from LWJ, went investigating and got caught (remember he will be in Mo XuanYu's body, and even with his thesaurus level of demonic magic, he doesn't have the stamina his own body used to have. So he's a bit weaker now since he didn't have time to cultivate more.)

An important character (main villain) asks where's LWJ and WWX is wondering why would they all assume LWJ will be around him at all times (YES still that oblivious). At which Lan XiChen just tries to understand that there's no problem between WWX and LWJ and he says they spent their night in separate rooms - and the public unanimously GASPS LOL. When LXC establishes Cpt. Oblivious still didn't get a lightbulb moment he retreats politely, but main villainTM implies that poor LWJ still hasn't got his heart's desire. And then WWX FINALLY sees the light. So he forgets he's actually a prisoner and decides to dash to LWJ and tell him it's reciprocal, this sudden fire between them, but he doesn't get anywhere because obviously LWJ came there too.

And then main villainTM wants to move everybody somewhere else but WWX NEEDS TO CONFESS so MVTM says if he has anything to say he could say it right there.

So obviously WWX DOES EXACTLY THAT. In front of everyone present and LWJ's own older brother and numerous people he doesn't know, he loudly and unapologetically declares directly to LWJ that he likes, loves, admires him, he is the one, there won't ever be another, there's only him and they'll live together forever from now on and he'll let LWJ do *that* to him EVERYDAY, and a lot of things along these lines, LOL. Even the MVTM is struck mute (he usually doesn't get shocked).

And LWJ memorizes it all by heart, so that later, when he comes out a bit from the shock, he repeats WWX's promises one by one. (Still in public, still in the middle of danger, but who cares, he's entranced).

I tell you this is EPIC :D

The drama doesn't include any of the confession, but the circumstances around it are there, and even some little bit of implication to the truth (like MVTM tells LXC that LWJ won't refuse anything he orders him to do because he's threatening WWX's life.)

And only later WWX's words catch up with him and he realizes he over-promised and tries to finagle out of it and LWJ tells him that well, "everyday means everyday" LOL.

Also if you can believe it, later on, this shameless WWX only uses this knowledge to tease poor LWJ even more, LOL. I love this character.

Well, you asked. But seriously, it's so worth it. (And if you don't want to read the novel or have the time for it, there's an audio drama and they do sounds effects and it includes the confession. It might still be up on youtube somewhere :D)

Those are ships that people launch, not canon. Jiang Cheng is the king of eyerolls on anything over the limits of bromance (and he disapproves of that too LOL), there's zero chance he'd ever consider it.

But shippers are going to ship whomever they want.

LXC is not interested in anyone (in the novel) BUT he does have a person he considered a soulmate (zhiji / 知己, ~someone who knows me better than I know myself~, the concept doesn't necessarily imply anything romantic.) The drama pushed it a little bit over the edge of bromance just because they loved setting up contrasts (you probably noticed that already).

There are more than one pairing of brothers, more than one pairing of soulmates, more than one way to solve a certain situation, more than one reasoning to get to a truth, and so on, and so forth, and the book (and drama) subtly used counterpoints to show how it would all had gone down if the characters chose the other path.

OMG NO, LWJ confessing? It's such a beautiful mess, that confession, LOL. Want spoilers? What if you decide to read the novel though? :D