#they amassed the wen’s power to absolutely no opposition

[mxtxfanatic]

Anyways, the Jin sect were able to become the powerhouse sect amongst the great sects purely because the other sects did not care to oppose them, and I can imagine that this is the very reason that the Wen were also a powerhouse sect. (Disclaimed: I’m coming at this purely from the angle of what the book tells us, not outside historical context. For one, I do not know said context, but two, as important as I think that context is to flesh out some elements of the story, I think it’s just as important to not brush off what the novel literally shows us even if it doesn’t perfectly fit said historical context, as this is not a historical novel.)

When we get to the pre-sunshot campaign flashbacks, everyone already knows about all the evils of Wen Ruohan. It’s openly known that he killed the Nie sect leader out of jealousy and that this is why Nie Mingjue hates him. Lan Xichen immediately pinpoints the blame for the waterborne abyss onto the Wen, to absolutely no one’s surprise. It’s even noted that the Wen have been attacking and subsuming smaller cultivation clans around it to bolster its power, which is why like half of all the cultivation clans are affiliated with the Wen. Not to mention, Wen Ruohan disrespects the great sect leaders to their faces, and they all just take it. The Wen demand that all sect heirs and 20 extra disciples be “taught” by them? Everybody sends their children. The second son of the Wen clan almost kills all of those heirs after weeks of mistreatment? Well, they didn’t actually die, so it’s all good. The Wen burn a great sect’s most prized possession, kill its sect leader, kidnap the second son, and have the heir on the run? Well, it didn’t happen to us, so no need for concern. War only breaks out because the one sect leader who actively hated the Wen was attacked, and even then, only 3 of the 4 remaining great sects fully participate.

Now, how do the Jin rise to power? They host a lot of banquets, they subsume the smaller clans that were formerly affiliated with the Wen, they disrespect other great sect leaders to their faces while cultivators cheer them on. And everyone allows them to because they simply do not care to fight back against the Jin; this is their status quo. The only fight they can muster is to massacre the remaining Wen clan members and the man protecting them, and then it’s back to petty bickering while ignoring the genocidal elephant in the room. The first real sign of discontent with the Jin’s power comes from the Xue Yang incident, which showed that 1) a great sect leader could successfully oppose the Jin if they so chose, 2) the Jin were not infallible because they did have to appease Nie Mingjue on the issue, something the Wen never had to do, and 3) that’s why Nie Mingjue had to be killed as the only one willing to oppose the Jin (in certain circumstances). What gets me, especially, is when all these crimes come to light in Lotus Pier and Guanyin Temple, Lan Xichen and the rest of the nameless cultivators’ biggest issues seem, again, to linger on Jin Guangyao’s personal culpability to his personal relationships but not the Jin sect whose overall greed for power necessitated these actions. (Like really, fuck the sex workers and the minor clans used for experiments, I guess. Fuck the entirety of Yi City, I guess.) There’s a reason Wei Wuxian is so uncomfortable by the way the conversation in Lotus Pier against Jin Guangyao goes to personal slander while everyone ignores the more far-reaching issues with the reveal (and even how the reveals came to them).

So yeah, the Jin rise to power comes out of the same place that the Wen rise to power did: passivity and status qo maintenance.