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Rong Jiu Apologia

Looking at Rong Jiu’s motivations you have to keep in mind his power and trauma.

When we meet Rong Jiu he is enslaved. He later gives 16 as the age when he was sex trafficked, but we don’t know who sold him, whether it was his parents out of desperation, traffickers (he looks like two known beauty feasts so it’s entirely possible his family carried the recessive genes for it but didn’t receive the tears or the power, but that would put them at risk of people trying to check), or from another slaver where he had been in non-sexual slavery as a child.

None of these are good options and all of them would leave him emotionally scarred and unwilling to trust anyone too much.

His first client (who he did not choose, because, again this is trafficking not voluntary sex work), when he was only 16, was a 50 year old cultivator. He brings this up as a significant source of trauma.

That formative pain inflicted by someone in a job that everyone says is meant to protect common people would give him a deep dislike of people in said job, like Mo Ran and Chu Wanning. All Cultivators are Bastards in his mind after that.

He very clearly wants to buy his own freedom and does not want to end up in debt to anyone else. When offered freedom and security by Chang Da in exchange for murdering Mo Ran, Rong Jiu fights him on it.

We know this because, in the underworld, he says he regrets “not listening to Chang Da” but also because in 0.5verse Rong Jiu did manage to get the jump on Mo Ran and he stole his core rather than killing him.

Painful? Yes. But considering the fact that Taxian-jun was not the one who kiIIed him it’s likely that 0.5 Rong Jiu died as the sacrifice starting the heavenly rift too.

In both lifetimes he perished because he protected Mo Ran.

This is probably because he actually liked Mo Ran. Compared to who he usually thinks of as his clients, Mo Ran is young, kind, doting, and doesn’t actively try to humiliate him. He’s not stupid enough to be fooled by Mo Ran’s empty, doting, words.

He knows Mo Ran never loved him, but he shows a tendency to willfully ignore his better judgement in order to pretend his situation is better than it is.

For his trouble, risking himself by getting in between two powerful men and trying to convince them to settle for non-lethal options, Rong Jiu winds up in the situation we see in chapter 2.

He is sexually assaulted (the most generous interpretation of chapter 2 is that he consented to compensated sex and then was not paid, a violation of his consent), he wakes up bleeding from his face (impressing upon him just how vulnerable he always was with MR), and all the money he’d collected to buy his freedom is gone.

Now he is truly desperate, he can’t do anything to fix the assault, or the pain at being attacked by someone he’d told himself might like him, but if he doesn’t fight he will have to go through who knows how many more years of working before he can escape exploitation.

So instead of dealing with his fresh trauma he pushes it aside and calls on the one person he thinks will understand the Mo Ran situation, Chang Da.

Chang Da and Rong Jiu walk up the mountain fast enough that they beat Mo Ran there (Rong Jiu probably in physical pain from being abused and we know those stairs are hard if you don’t have cultivation).

Chang Da makes him feel supported and less alone, like he’s fighting for him, something Rong Jiu will only realize is hollow later.

They spend hours being sassed and disrespected by Xue Meng, and with Madam Wang clearly uncomfortable at the idea of a sex worker being in her presence. She won’t even acknowledge the full list of Rong Jiu’s allegations, much less try to get justice for them.

When Mo Ran arrives he lies even about knowing Rong Jiu, insults him for being feminine, insults him for being a sex worker, when just the night before he’d been whispering sweet nothings in Rong Jiu’s ears. Rong Jiu is openly hurt by this but no one cares.

Xue Meng is so annoyed by Rong Jiu crying that he sees what Mo Ran did and helps Mo Ran hide his guilt. Rong Jiu is perceptive and Xue Meng isn’t subtle, he wouldn’t have missed that.

So now we have institutional injustice done to him because people in power over him are siding together rather than holding each other accountable.

He goes back down to the brothel, thinking that he has two choices, risk his life running, or relive the trauma of his teen years, this time disheartened and unsure whether it will come to anything in the end.

Unsurprisingly he runs. Goes to Chang Da, the only person who’d believed him and fought for him, only to find a locked door. He gets dragged back, locked up, and “tormented”, still believing that Chang Da liked him. Chang Da was in fact making him even more desperate so that he would have no option but to depend on him. Eventually, Chang Da helps Rong Jiu escape his imprisonment, only to lead him to the altar to be sacrificed.

No one had ever been genuinely good to him. He had forced himself to believe he was receiving kindness because ultimately he and Taxian-Jun are the same. Both will chase any scrap of kindness given to them or that they can wring out of people.

The difference being that Mo Ran actually receives some, his mother definitely loved him, his uncle treats him well, he has a martial brother who is gentle with him. Rong Jiu has none of that. He doesn’t even believe he CAN have any of that because he is in such a bad situation.

By the time he gets to the underworld he is changed. He is kicking himself for trusting Chang Da, kicking himself for choosing Mo Ran’s life over his own, and determined that this time things will be different. He’s got a plan but suddenly Mo Ran shows up and starts moralizing.

Mo Ran breaks through his walls with the very simple act of apologizing. They’re just words, but no one has ever said them to him before. In that moment Rong Jiu regrets not being more vulnerable with this man who had assaulted him. Rong Jiu blames himself for his own attack.

Note that he isn’t vengeful. He’s kinder than I would be if confronted by someone who had hurt me like that. He tells the guards about Mo Ran, but he just does it to try and look out for himself. He is done with taking care of men more powerful than him, he just wants out.

He meets up with Mo Ran again and the apologies are gone. Mo Ran threatens to gouge out his eyes and throw him in a well to rot for eight years. Clearly Mo Ran isn’t going to believe that Rong Jiu won’t tell on him again, he doesn’t actually have a choice but to follow.

Now Chu Wanning is an interesting case. Rong Jiu and Chu Wanning haven’t met before but Chu Wanning has wielded the power of life and death over him. And he has a chance to get Rong Jiu to take their side.

Rong Jiu demonstrates enough knowledge of the inner workings of Sisheng sect that he definitely knows about the Yuheng elder and his lasso of truth. He might even have heard about Mo Ran’s public whipping.

Essentially, Chu Wanning had the power to know what Mo Ran had done and to make him return what he stole, but he chose not to.

Now Rong Jiu can see in Chu Wanning’s eyes that the reason he hadn’t made his student return the money is that he was horny for him. A cultivator so lustful for a teenager that he forgets to think about the consequences of his actions? Well, that tracks with Rong Jiu’s experience of older cultivators.

All Cultivators Are Bastards. They either commit the abuses or allow the abuses to continue without doing the kinds of justice that the victims want done.

Rong Jiu never asked for Mo Ran to be punished, he just wanted his money back. In any case, Chu Wanning looks at him and says that he seems like “a fine person” and that tiny, unthinking, act of kindness breaks through Rong Jiu’s better judgement again.

Rong Jiu helps buy them a few hours in which Mo Ran and Chu Wanning don’t make any progress. Mo Ran is still hostile and Rong Jiu stands his ground with the only power he has, his words.

Once Chu Wanning finds out that Rong Jiu was a sex-worker his demeanour changes. He looks at Rong Jiu like he’s taking him apart. To Chu Wanning’s jealous eyes, Rong Jiu is no longer “a fine person” he is lips that Mo Ran had kissed and a body that Mo Ran had tangled with.

So the next thing Chu Wanning says to him is “which brothel did you work at when you were alive?” Reducing him to his highly stigmatized job.

Yes, Rong Jiu at that moment has an idea of how to use Mo Ran to his advantage, but Chu Wanning does not know that. He is being needlessly cruel.

When Rong Jiu says he wants to improve his next life, Chu Wanning says that “reincarnation does not change the nature of a soul” essentially saying that Rong Jiu’s next life cannot be better because of a defect in Rong Jiu’s nature.

That defect apparently being that he had been trafficked and that Mo Ran had wanted him.

Rong Jiu is easily influenced by kindness, but hardens when faced with contempt, disgust, and humiliation. This is a learned response. So he goes through with his plan to use the jealousy currently hurting him to his advantage.

His only weapons are words and his only currency is his body. He has learned better than to trust people in power. He is only safe as long as he has the power to manipulate them.

His only weapons are words and his only currency is his body. He has learned better than to trust people in power. He is only safe as long as he has the power to manipulate them.

He doesn’t get that in the end. His desperation to get to a place where he can stop licking boots to survive ends in him having to lick boots for eternity.

Rong Jiu’s story is what Taxian-jun’s could have been if not for the kindness of Xue Zhengyong, the power of his lineage, and the love of Chu Wanning.