#boy im trembling its 3am my skeleton is ready to hatch

[aibrechts]

MDZS predictions

and spoilers, bc im going dick deep in this meta

I’m pretty much just here to talk through where I believe the direction of the story is going to land us. Obviously some people actually Know how it ends, but I’m just out here waiting on translations so this is a thesis on why Jin GuangYao is the greatest villain i’ve encountered in ages???? or, why the subtle intricacies of GDC’s plot make it such an engaging and satisfying read, all the better with how it all seems to be tying together so neatly.

At a loose guess I’d predict the full novel will be around 100~ chapters, and sitting at 73 we have quite a lot of content and we seem to be staring the climax in the face. It’d be suitably dramatic to have LuanZang Hill as the final setting, and well. They’re already there. Nowhere to go now but to drop down that cliffhanger.

There’s a few holes in the story right now - mostly because, uh, the story hasn’t been translated yet LOL but I think we’re all pretty certain that Jin GuangYao is the actual villain of the whole series. One of those holes we have is Mo XuanYu.

What we know is that he was Jin GuangYao’s half-brother (?), that he went to the Jin sect to learn cultivation, and that he was cast out for ‘harassing’ Jin GuangYao. What we also know is that the ritual which Mo XuanYu used to summon Wei WuXian was found in Jin GuangYao’s hidden room - a ritual that was forbidden, reviled, supposedly lost to time.

Jin GuangYao was involved with Mo XuanYu, and none of us know exactly how. We also know he’s a vile, manipulative liar. How hard would it have been for him - him - to convince the Lanling Jin Sect that Mo XuanYu was approaching him, harassing him, repulsing him.

How easy would it have been for Jin GuangYao, whose track record is faultlessly winning over every single person he meets, to welcome Mo XuanYu with open arms, have Mo XuanYu trust him, to let him find the ritual, to spurn him, to break his heart, to throw him out, to ruin him - all while knowing he has everything he needs to do what Jin GuangYao needs of him. All the incentive Mo XuanYu needed to summon Wei WuXian into his body was to have his life unravel and turn to absolute shit.

Make him helpless, make him hopeless, give him no other directions to turn but that one single door Jin GuangYao is holding open for him.

Let’s not forget he was also the one responsible for driving Nie MingJue into Qi Deviation, having him killed, dismembered, and the pieces spread across the countryside. Oddly enough, though, everything points towards someone intentionally loosing the left arm on Mo Village - coincidentally at the same time as Mo XuanYu summoned Wei WuXian. Odd. Interesting.

It’s hard to say whether everything that happened afterwards was his intention - we have Xue Yang but we don’t have our gravedigger, and while we know that means Xue Yang and Jin GuangYao were involved (not even getting into the amulet yet), there’s no proof to imply that Jin GuangYao is the grave digger. There’s someone else involved, and if Jin GuangYao wanted his manipulation of Mo XuanYu and releasing Nie MingJue’s arm in the village to lead everyone to Golden Carp Tower, why was the gravedigger working so hard to keep them from finding the pieces of Nie MingJue’s body?

Unless of course, recalling what happened after Yi City, the gravedigger was only there as a will-o-wisp leading them to Xue Yang.

Did Jin GuangYao expect them to defeat Xue Yang? Did he WANT them to? It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. It seemed quite clear from Wei WuXian’s fluting that Xue Yang had the corpses in Yi City under the control of the Stygian Tiger Amulet. So... if Jin GuangYao had already gotten what he wanted from Xue Yang, and if Xue Yang had descended too far along this mad story of his regarding A-Qing and Xiao XingChen, was he of any use to Jin GuangYao, or just another loose end to have someone else tie up?

He wouldn’t believe that son-of-a-servant Mo XuanYu dragged himself out of his bottomless depression and ended up trekking across the countryside hunting down dismembered ghost appendages with Hanguang-Jun, so it would be natural for him to assume he performed the ritual. But now he has Wei WuXian trekking across the countryside hunting down dismembered ghost appendages with Hanguang-Jun. Did he see Lan WangJi coming? Was he part of the plan from the start? Whether he was or wasn’t, he wasn’t a hurdle Jin GuangYao couldn’t jump to get where he needed to go.

Lan WangJi’s support of Wei WuXian didn’t stop Jin GuangYao from having Wei WuXian find Nie MingJue’s head in his room and hiding it away before he could call every proficient cultivator in only to witness Jin GuangYao denounce and expose ‘Mo XuanYu’ as the YiLing Patriarch. Lan WangJi lost any sway his voice had in the cultivating world when he fled with Wei WuXian, but his brother - his brother wouldn’t be so easily swayed. And Jin GuangYao has been so certain of Lan XiChen’s loyalty to him for so long.

Lan WangJi might have been unexpected; he might just be the spanner in the works that grinds it all to a halt. He and Wei WuXian had already exposed to Lan XiChen the possibility of Jin GuangYao driving Nie MingJue to Qi Deviation. If that doubt is enough to weaken the foundation of his unquestioning trust in Jin GuangYao, it might be enough that his plan could fall apart.

So, he has to act quickly. Expose Wei WuXian. Work the people into a frenzy. Have the junior disciples kidnapped and the graves dug up. What for? I feel like it’s something bigger than simple fear mongering. Remember that Stygian Tiger Amulet he’d had Xue Yang perfect before throwing him to the dogs?

What happens next? I have no idea. It’s all coming to a head and I’m not sure how it’ll come together but I know it’s gonna be GOOD. The best part is that all these details only fell into place in these most recent chapters - but they were all there from the beginning. I see all the threads now, all the deviousness of Jin GuangYao’s influence, but I can’t see the whole picture. I don’t know what his endgame is. Lure all the world’s cultivators into one place and kill them with the amulet? He only needed Xue Yang and a big enough festival for that, why would he need to have Mo XuanYu summon Wei WuXian?

It’s going to be bigger - I know it is. I just don’t know how. And that - all of THIS - is what makes this story so compelling, so wonderful, so clever and enticing. The composition, the orchestration, the execution! Kisses m fingers!!!! Wow!!!!

Also idk where this fits because I wrote this in a storm of adrenaline and a race against my computer crashing into a circle of hell so deep even restarting it wouldn’t bring it back, but I’m also pretty certain Jin GuangYao somehow manipulated Wei WuXian into killing Jin ZiXuan and Jiang YanLi. Jin ZiXuan was Jin GuangShan’s first heir; of course he wanted him out of the way. So, um. Who’s gonna break the news to Jin Ling that the man responsible for the murder of his parents isn’t the reviled YiLing Patriarch at all, but his own precious uncle?