AH

The way the scene was adapted on screen, it seems like XL is quite obviously in pain in that moment. https://youtu.be/bL-ouseEPYk?si=fY2hXvAjM1-nI7xV&t=2513

For my follow-up theory to SoTreeD's theory, I don't think XL would necessarily be in constant pain. More likely the pain would only arise in those moments of heartbreak that I described and then XL would have to use his power to repress the bugs once again.

Like I was saying to blabla100, in this theory the bugs haven't lost their efficacy. The bug connection can still be used and the bugs have not yet become Heartbreak Bugs. They are backfiring and on the verge of becoming Heartbreak Bugs at times, but XL uses his power to stop it from happening.

Again, just speculation. I don't think we have enough evidence from the drama yet to know if the theory works or not.

The details included in the page that Kokuto linked to are... alot. If the link isn't working for you, Liu Shui's suggestion was right. You can find the thread by going to the MDL page for S1. It's included among the discussion threads there.

Happy to answer any specific questions here or in that thread, but it's a bit too much to reproduce everything here.

Two reasons.

The main one is that she lived on Jade Mountain for 70 years and consumed Jade Mountain peaches and bone essence throughout that time. This is clearer in the novel, but in the drama XY does still mention that when she escaped from Jade Mountain (as a child) demons searched for her and wanted to eat her because they knew her blood / body would significantly enhance their strength. XY's mother also lived on Jade Mountain for a long time when she was younger (60 years, if I remember correctly) and her blood also had healing properties and she also used Jade Mountain peaches to help heal sick mortals in Jiuli.

The second reason is more speculative. When the nine-tailed fox captured XY as a child after she ran away from Jade Mountain and kept her captive for 30 years, he also wanted to eat her to restore his lost power (as Chi Chen had cut off one of his nine tails in a previous encounter involving XY, and a nine-tailed fox stores their power in their tails). So he fed XY horrible concoctions that caused her spiritual power to seep into her blood where it would be most potent when he ate her. That is why XY had high spiritual power as a child when she ran away from Jade Mountain and low spiritual power after the nine-tailed fox captured her. Most of her spiritual power now resides in her blood where she cannot access it, and that locked-away spiritual power might add to her blood's healing properties.

If I remember correctly, since XY doesn't actually give herself a lethal dose of poison (it becomes part of CX's dream sequence), XL doesn't need to use the bug connection to save her life again in the drama. He only needs to sever the connection before he dies on the battlefield.

But in the theory I was speculating about, the bugs have not actually become Heartbreak Bugs. They backfire when XL feels intense heartbreak over letting XY go and they are at risk of becoming Heartbreak Bugs as a result, but XL uses his spiritual power to successfully repress them so that they don't cause XY pain (except in that one instance in QS town when he intentionally lets her feel the pain) and they don't cause him or XY to die.

Just a theory for now. We'll see how things go in the remaining episodes.

It seemed to me that they also added XY jumping up in anticipation when she saw the snow out at sea to make it clearer to the audience that she was specifically waiting for XL.

Some fans have discussed this topic (the source of XL's pain that he caused XY to feel through the bug connection in chapter 32) before in one of the S1 discussion threads (only with respect to the scene in the novel, as the drama episode hadn't aired yet).

Your theory is an interesting one and I think the drama has added several scenes that are not in the novel that support it. Like the instances where the bug in XL's heart glows, visibly causes him pain, and needs to be suppressed by him.

My follow-up theory would be that they've added those details to emphasize that every time XL acts harshly towards XY to push her away from himself / to push her towards TSJ and he succeeds (e.g., when he left XY in the middle of the ocean to swim back to shore and meet up with TSJ, who was waiting for her, as the bugs first seemed to react when XL observed the two of them together on shore in that scene in S1 Ep19), the bugs react to the heartbreak he feels... adding the physical pain of a backfiring poisonous bug (which we know from TSJ's grandmother's backfiring poisonous bug is an excruciating pain) to the emotional pain he is already enduring to make drama!XL come across as all the more tragic. That feels like it would be in line with the general vibe they've gone for with XL in the drama so far.

Hopefully the drama will give us a bit more clarity about how the bugs work in the drama universe and we'll get a better sense of whether these theories are accurate or not.

Edit: Based on your comments above, it looks like we are thinking of some of the same scenes.

I agree that distinction hasn't been made in the drama yet and tbh I really don't know if it will end up getting included. They've made so many changes already.

I also agree that XY's feelings for XL are different than her feelings for TSJ. But, personally, I don't think I'd go so far as to say her feelings for XL in the drama are not romantic. Even though the drama has made a ton of changes from the novel, many of which take away moments or details that suggest (IMO) that XY did have romantic feelings for XL, they've also *added* some things that seem like they are intended to allude to XY having romantic feelings for XL. For example, changing the colour of XY's robes when she waited for XL on the shore of Five Gods Mountain from white to red (i.e., wedding attire colour).

Thank you for reminding me Kokuto. At some point I need to update that page to include all the new relevant references we’ve gotten in S2.

I think we got one more reference to XY’s mother being the Queen of Xiyan’s disciple, several instances of the former King of Xiyan assuring XY that she would always be his “recognized” granddaughter (which seems to be their way of emphasizing that she is not his biological granddaughter), and CX also referencing XY being the former King of Xiyan’s “recognized” granddaughter to his court.

We have to wait and see if the drama adapts this part of the novel or not (from chapter 48), but in the novel it is clarified that the poisonous bug that was planted in CX by XY was not “successfully” planted (because CX did not willingly accept the bug) so it only behaved like a regular poisonous bug and did not tie WXL and CX’s hearts and lives together. It only transferred WXL’s pain and sensations to CX as she expected it to. But when it was transferred to XL, he accepted it whole-heartedly so it was successfully planted / it became a Lovers Bug and did tie WXL and XL’s hearts and lives together, which enabled XL to use the bug connection to save XY’s life on more than one occasion.

It's possible that he would have gone to Jiuli / Baili to learn how to do the kind of blood magic that he used to save XY's life in chapter 22 and chapter 48 / to learn how to break the bug connection. Or he could have met a Jiuli / Baili person outside of Jiuli/Baili, just as XY met Se Mai Er in QQ. Or he might have learned about it another way.

In the novel, it's implied through XY's guessing that he might have known certain things about the poisonous bugs by virtue of being a demon, as demons were from the same world as creatures and monsters.

-----

Chapter 7:

Xiang Liu asked, “Since he’s so precious to you, why not remove the bug?”

Xiao Liu didn’t answer and thought for a long time. Since he was a demon, and demons and creatures and monsters were all in the same world, perhaps he might know something.

“It’s not that I don’t want to remove the bug, it’s that I can’t. Last time I was injured, you used all sorts of weird medicines on me. The bug had some type of transformation. He asked me to remove the bug and I lied that I’ll do it when he leaves. Recently I’ve been trying all sorts of ways to coax the bug out of him but nothing works.”

Xiang Liu thought about it. “If you don’t want to die, then don’t try calling it back. The only solution is to find a way to transfer the bug to another person.”

-----

For the drama, I don't necessarily take Lirong Ji urging XL to go to the Shaman King to remove the poisonous bug as meaning that XL himself did not already know how to break the connection. IMO, it only demonstrates that Lirong Ji didn't know how to do so. Unless I missed a detail in that scene. I haven't gone back to rewatch it yet.

I haven't gone back to the novel to confirm this for sure so I could be wrong, but off the top of my head I don't recall there being any scene in the novel where XY found out that CX was behind the rumours that spread about her true parentage.

True, our convo does have an update now that we've seen that scene in s2 and it does seem like Lirong Ji does not himself know how to remove the bugs, so he could not have passed that information on to XL in S1.

However, I'm not sure anyone would have been able to tell XL how to remove the Lovers Bugs. In the novel, the Shaman King told XY that he didn't think it was possible.

As Sir Bi observed in chapter 48, XL's method for breaking the bug connection was one that only he was capable of using, because he is unique in LYF. No one else has multiple lives to spare as a sacrifice to lure out poisonous bugs so they can be killed.

So perhaps XL had to figure out his method for breaking the connection on his own. If that were the case, who knows when he would have figured it out? Before the bug was transferred? Or after? And how confident was he that his method would work?

In the novel, XL says to XY (when she was unconscious / when he was breaking the connection by killing the bugs) that he didn't tell her that he was able to break the bug connection by killing the bugs because she didn't ask the right question. To me, that means that every time she asked about removing the bug he knew how to break the bug connection and chose not to tell her (as opposed to him simply not knowing how to break the connection until the 11th hour).

Yes. I haven't gone back and looked at the leaked script in a long time, but if I remember correctly, they make major changes to XL's secret efforts and sacrifices.

XY doesn't poison herself in real life (only in CX's dream), so XL doesn't have to save her life again. TSJ "dies" / disappears, but XL is not involved in saving him. XL still has XY make a pill from her own blood, but he uses it on her instead of TSJ (I don't recall why it was needed). XL sacrifices two lives, instead of one life, to break the bug connection between himself and XY.

I quite liked FFYY's epiphany at the end and the fact that she was the one who finally killed TSH. Making him reap what he sowed with her.

TSH didn't deserve a poetic death, but I still enjoyed the fact that the ending between the three of them was poetic. It made it more satisfying for me.

Exactly. From the one image of TSJ in the water that they showed in the trailer, I was shocked by the extent of his injuries all over him - more than just having 7 of his tails cut off.

Yes, good point! I remember thinking that it looked like they had changed the dynamics of the fight so that TSJ would be fighting TSH way more directly compared to how the fight went in the novel with TSJ pretty much just trying to evade TSH.

I agree that there are significant differences in key details between the novel and the drama that play into some of the character dynamics / relationship analysis.

As one example, the way Lirong Ji describes the bugs and how they work to XL in the drama is more ambiguous, IMO, than how the bugs are described by the Shaman King to XY in the novel.

As another, I know some fans interpret the bug glowing in XL's heart in the drama (e.g., in S1 Ep19) as indicating that the bug is backfiring or verging on turning into a Heartbreak Bug, and that only XL exerting his powers to control the bug prevents that from happening. Whereas, in the novel, we are never given any indication that the bugs might be backfiring or turning into Heartbreak Bugs (the bugs are never shown to be glowing or backfiring and the Shaman King is pretty clear: if the bugs are hosted by not-lovers or if the bugs backfire, then the bugs will turn into Heartbreak Bugs and both hosts will die) and on multiple occasions in the text it is noted that the Lovers Bugs remained in XL and XY with no problems for a very long amount of time (e.g., 70 years, 80 years, etc.).

As one more, the drama makes it seem like XY didn't come to the conclusion that the last poison creation she made for XL should be special until her maid mentioned it, and made it seem like XY created the ice crystal ball in a very short amount of time after formalizing her engagement with Feng Long and telling XL that she would not make any more poisons for him after she was married. Whereas, in the novel, she started making the ice crystal ball immediately after CX took the throne, it took 4 years to make, and she definitely didn't need her maid to give her the idea to make it special. When the Grand Emperor (the King of Haoling) wrote to XY and told her that he and Feng Long's grandfather had confirmed a wedding date that would take place in two months, XY wrote back and said that she had one task to complete (finalizing the ice crystal ball and sending it to XL with a message telling him that she would be marrying in two months) before she went to Gao Xing (Haoling) to prepare for the wedding. And the amount of time and effort that XY put into preparing this symbolic gift for XL paralleled the amount of time and effort that XY's mother put into preparing a symbolic gift for XY's father, Chi You (Chi Chen) in the prequel. In Once Promised, Ah Heng raised silk worms from cocoons, harvested their silk, and spent years making Chi You's iconic red robe for him, and that robe later played an important symbolic role in their romance.

You're welcome!

I don't remember how the leaked script handled it exactly, but I do vaguely remember that TSJ still "dies" but that it is Xing Yue, rather than CX, that enables TSH's plot. So I think at least he must still feature for that, and maybe FFYY will too?

Ah, okay. You're welcome then. ^^"