#please just envision JGY and XY trying to carry him in there

[poorlittleyaoyao]

THIS MORNING’S QUANDARY IS:

Okay, so in CQL officially there are no fierce corpses, just “puppets,” right? Which means that prior to Xue Yang decapitating him, Nie Mingjue was alive, albeit feral.

So when Xue Yang, holding the half-restored Yin Tiger Tally, informs Jin Guangyao “I can’t control him” and asks what to do next, that implies that killing Nie Mingjue… was not the original goal? Or maybe it was, but when the qi deviation didn’t kill him outright, they pivoted to something else? That involved? Controlling him in the way Xue Yang would eventually control Song Lan?

And I am DESPERATE to know what the plan was gonna be if Xue Yang had been able to control him with the Tiger Tally. What tactical advantages does having a clearly unwell Nie Mingjue shambling around possibly bring to anyone involved? Were they gonna have him do something awful to destroy his legacy, since his public qi deviation doesn’t seem to have come with a body count like in the novel? Were they gonna have him voice support for whatever political actions Jin Guangshan found convenient and hope that nobody noticed the fact that he’s now grey, sporting black veins in his neck, and speaks in exclusively in incoherent growls? WHAT?

I guess maybe there wasn’t a tactical advantage, and Jin Guangyao just wanted to use him as a demonic cultivation research subject for malice’s sake, but that doesn’t square with how subdued and uncomfortable he appears in the flashback. Lanling’s demonic cultivation research apparatus isn’t super developed in the show, and there are so so many logistical questions for how they would smuggle an instantly-recognizable 6’4” sect leader into Jin Guangyao’s home unnoticed following said sect leader’s very public medical crisis. There is no reasonable way for any of this to go down if zombies aren’t real and therefore all possible explanations are very funny.