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lunanoc · 11 months ago

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who exactly are the hei feizi in sand sea part IV?

i refuse to be the only one responsible for this being posted publicly so i’m co-blaming @tiesanjiaoshenanigans (✨)

disclaimer as always i’ve only read things in their entirety up through and including Sand Sea as far as the main installments of the story are concerned, so if anything in later canon pops up to debunk this you never saw anything 🏃‍♀️

that being said let's get into it

this isn’t really meta because it’s more me questioning my reading comprehension after getting through part IV of Sand Sea than anything else. i’ve seen the hei feizi or 黑飞子 (lit. “flying black thing”) mentioned from time to time, and every single time it’s been to refer to the specific phenomenon of people whose body is taken possession of by the black-haired sunbeam snakes (or cat snakes) that play a key role in the story of Sand Sea. the dmbj wiki, sparse as it is, also has an article dedicated to the hei feizi that explicitly states that those snake parasitized people are what hei feizi are

i realize this is going to be a very bold take considering all of that and you’re starting to see why i’m questioning my basic reading comprehension skills at this point, but fresh off of finishing Sand Sea, i’m left deeply confused because that isn’t at all the takeaway i got from part IV of what the hei feizi are. so, for the sake of Figuring Shit Out, and because we love sources, let’s take a look at all the times hei feizi are mentioned in Sand Sea Part IV, and let me try and suggest that hei feizi doesn’t refer to black-haired snake parasitized people at all

we start off with these very first mentions in chapter 201 (merebear’s edition) of Sand Sea and onward wherein che zong, one of the men wu xie hires to come with him to investigate what turns out to be a snake mine in the wilderness of ningxia, and who also happens to be one of the last people wu laogou taught dog training to, calls a hei feizi by name

(side note, i’m aware all the quotes say his name is che zhong, but the characters are 车总, the last one pronounced zong, so unless the chinese text has a repeated typo or there’s an alternate pronunciation of the character i’m not aware of, the translation is the one with the typo. since his name is consistent in the original i’ll be calling him che zong)

che zong reacts like this to a figure he and wu xie see in the dark as they make their way towards a neighboring village to seek medical help for their wounds sustained during their ill-fated trip in the mine and against the longzhi. xiaomange, the dog che zong trained according to wu laogou’s wishes in order to give him to wu xie, also reacts aggressively to the figure and barks at it even as it disappears into the trees. so far, nothing conclusive besides the fact that che zong is deeply terrified by whatever this hei feizi is, so much so that wu xie is a little concerned given he didn’t react nearly this strongly to a creature that was supposed to be almost unkillable

when pressed, che zong states that hei feizi “isn’t a thing, it’s a person”, which while it does cast potential doubt on it being a monster, doesn’t technically contradict the idea that he’s referring to snake-parasitized people specifically, especially given both how terrified he is and that arguably that’s exactly what they’re being chased by

wu xie then recalls the story wu laogou told him of the hei feizi under a different name, and how they were some sort of oppressive and elusive legend among tomb robbers who felt watched. you do get the impression wu xie seems to be talking about some kind of tomb creature, and all it really tells us is that hei feizi are elusive and kind of creepy, which bao sa (the man who’s dead and zombified by the black-haired snake) arguably is at this point

here he is being a creepy Very Dead zombie man

so far so good

however this is where in my opinion the “hei feizi are snake-parasitized people” interpretation starts getting derailed. we’ve skipped ahead here to when wu xie and che zong, who to be fair seem really sus to the local villagers (who unfortunately get to witness a horror movie in real time), get dragged to their village hall by force in the middle of the night, and are faced with a dead bao sa controlled by black-haired snakes who really want into wu xie’s body because apparently he’s snake catnip. when wu xie refers to bao sa as a hei feizi (note he uses 它 ta which really is "it", the third person pronoun for non-human things, in the original text), che zong corrects him and tells him that bao sa isn’t a hei feizi, or more specifically that he was but no longer is one technically. the exact sentence in chinese is as follows:

这不是黑飞子，不，这是黑飞子，不，现在已经不是黑飞子了

note that che zong never uses 它 ta or “it”, and what he says more exactly translate to:

this isn't a hei feizi, no, this is a hei feizi, no, now it’s already no longer a hei feizi

to put it simply, this sentence implies that bao sa was formerly a hei feizi, but in his present state is no longer one. in other words, that as a snake-parasitized dead thing, bao sa isn’t really a hei feizi proper, just a dead one

this is reinforced here when he says this a bit further, also implying that a live hei feizi is more dangerous than dead one taken over by snakes

we then get a second more in-depth explanation of what a hei feizi is meant to be, and che zong explains that because no one could actually catch sight of them properly in ancient or more distant times, the hei feizi were relegated to the category of elusive myth as humanoid monsters or ghosts. he also says that wu laogou, because he used dogs who had a superior sense of smell to rob tombs, was the first person in recent memory to seriously consider the idea that hei feizi were not in fact monsters, but rather were "human beings" or "very mysterious people"

che zong also seems to be saying that normally no one could detect a hei feizi was tracking them, or at the very least lay eyes on them, but on the rare occasion a hei feizi would mess up and reveal itself, whoever they were tracking would have to be eliminated because by having seen them, whoever they were tracking had already seen too much. and once again, wu laogou was the only person of his generation, and maybe even altogether, who because his dogs saved his life (likely helping him escape or outright killing the hei feizi) saw a hei feizi and survived

from there the evidence keeps pointing at the hei feizi being something not so much Other, but more something in some ways more sinister and dangerous. che zong says here that wu laogou, the only person in recent memory who’s seen a hei feizi, told him that “hei feizi are actually the same as us”, which doesn’t scream to me as meaning they’re supposed to be people taken over by snakes, but rather that he’s saying “hei feizi aren’t monsters, they’re people”. the fact they apparently have a “special smell” has implications that need a whole other post to get into but it definitely has Implications

we continue on and learn that wu laogou tentatively trained xiaomange to find hei feizi, an important trump card to have given that modern times and technology forced the hei feizi to change surveillance tactics, moving on from simply “monitoring people” in tombs to “entering tomb robbing circle”, that is to say essentially switching from lurking in the shadows to organized espionage and infiltration in broad daylight. which then culminates in a statement wu xie gives that’s so explicit it just makes me even more confused about how the “hei feizi are snake-parasitized people” conclusion happened:

"they must be part of the family opposing menyouping's family"

which besides being an explicit reference to the wang family, also ties this conclusion to bao sa, the man whose body the snakes took over, who even before he died and became the black-haired snakes’ puppet was strongly implied to be a wang who infiltrated wu xie’s team and tried to kill him

what i’m saying is that all this is slowly guiding the reader towards the realization that hei feizi are members of the wang family, not bodies taken over by snakes

adding to that this information here, it’s a conclusion that makes infinitely more sense given the context of Sand Sea Part IV in general, but more specifically how it re-situates what we learn of wu laogou’s apparent involvement in the wang family plot, since prior to this point, there’s no indication that wu laogou was ever involved with the wang family before the greatest joint tomb robbery in siguniang mountain. it neatly ties into the idea that becomes more and more apparent that wu laogou was actually involved with the wang family and had been on their shit list long before that event ever took place, before getting roped into jiuye's plan, and before wu sanxing and xie lianhuan's own inextricable involvement. this means that the wu family has had personal stakes in this conflict for far longer than wu xie had imagined, and both explains why wu laogou wanted his family out of the business so desperately, and why wu xie insists upon the fact that three generations of his family have been plagued by the wang family in Sand Sea Part II

hei feizi just being an alternate name for “It”/the wang family the older generations used also makes more sense considering these hei feizi never come up in Sand Sea elsewhere or in the story in general that i can tell, and if wu laogou knew that wu xie would have to inevitably confront the wang family given how entrenched the wu family is in this conflict, having a dog like xiaomange who could warn him of their presence and protect him is a trump card he would want his grandson to have

therefore if you understand that hei feizi actually refers to the wang family, then this last part here also makes more sense, as it infers that che zong is telling wu xie that he’s managed thus far to avoid pinging under the wang family’s radar, but that now they’ve clued into the fact he exists and is assisting wu xie, and in general seem to be trying to close in on wu xie

which taking all of this towards the end of Sand Sea Part IV into account, and considering how that part of Sand Sea ends, all culminates into turning this into the story of the very first time the wang family come out of the shadows and confront wu xie and his party directly instead of covertly watching his every move and guiding him in certain key directions from a distance

so the tldr; of this is that all of this in my opinion strongly points towards the hei feizi simply being another name for members of the wang family, or at least a certain subcategory of them, that the older generations used because they had no other name for what they perceived as a mysterious phenomena, but was actually just a group of people (who by the way are consistently presented throughout Sand Sea as having been trained in much the same ways and have much the same skills as the zhang family) who were extremely skilled at hiding in the shadows, and so i genuinely don’t understand why the apparent consensus that i can tell is that hei feizi is the name for people whose body gets taken over by black-haired snakes. that seems to be more an unfortunate by-product of bao sa dying and being easy prey for snakes who like to incubate their eggs in human flesh than anything

(if you wanted another argument, the wangs are also consistently described by li cu as being “black-clad”, and wu xie compares how xiaoge moves fast to a bat several times, and the wangs are also just as consistently paralleled with skills and abnormal competence that xiaoge and other zhangs have. if they’re skilled enough to end up looking like a “black flying” shadow to their targets then it’s not a weird name choice)

#dmbj #meta #dmbj meta #dmbj novels #hei feizi #sand sea #sha hai #considering even the wiki says the opposite of this i'm still half-convinced i just can't read #but it's also bugging me bc it seems obvious to me it's not that #and yet #i have hard time believing this wouldn't have come out before now?#so i'm just #putting this out there #the void can have it #at least this one's shorter than the other one thank fck

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