There are lies we tell which do little to no harm.
And lies we tell that hide secrets. Secrets that are never meant to see the light of day. Enduring lies, after all, aren't built around happy events; they're there to erase the evil we want, or need...
MXTX left us with a very basic story between the rogue cultivator Madame Lan (no names given) and QingHeng-Jun (again, no names given). We know she killed a Lan teacher in some fight. We know they married to keep her alive. We know she was imprisoned. We know he was in seclusion until the day he died. And we know they had 2 children together.
From that we also know: he didn't stay in seclusion.
We infer that she died from disease or suicide. Or maybe heartbreak.
So a while back I started thinking about why such a proper cultivator as QingHeng-Jun was supposed to be would marry a no-name murderess. And what exactly would cause a rogue cultivator to murder a Lan teacher in the first place. And why, if they loved each other as was the claim, would they live separately?
The answer I came up with was not a pretty one.
TW: off screen rape, attempted suicide. Neither are glamorized or included for shock value.
If these upset you, or make you uncomfortable, for any reason at all, please hit the back button right now. I understand that these are sensitive topics.
- Aitch
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Peng Fei was twelve when she left home. The fifth of seven sisters (the eighth child was finally a boy to inherit their father's cobbler's business), she had seen her two eldest sisters married off as third and fourth wives to men much older. So when Mu Chiang and his band of roving cultivators suggested that she might be able to form a core, she willingly followed.
Even if she was never able to form a core, being a servant to the handsome Mu Chiang was a better prospect than marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather and who most likely already had multiple wives.
Learning to cultivate while traveling from province to province was challenging. It was nearly impossible to meditate while walking. And there was not nearly enough time to practice martial arts and core strengthening exercises in the evenings after they set up camp and prepared meals. But it was a happy life, and she slowly grew as a cultivator.
She had been living and studying under Mu Chiang for nearly five years when he decided she was finally capable of using a spiritual sword. She immediately felt guilty upon receiving her sword as ChiangGe used money he was saving to buy a plot of land to purchase it.
For land was the primary difference between respectability and not. Land was the difference between rogues and a sect. Land would make them a clan. Being a clan would mean invitations to cultivation conferences. Land meant having a place to call home, a place to gather disciples and properly train.
Land was expensive. And the right piece of land was hard to come by. They needed enough space to expand as new disciples came. And it needed to be far enough away from other sects and clans to avoid night hunting issues and proprietary claims; more than one minor sect had been gobbled up by a larger sect or simply destroyed for having the audacity to encroach upon the other's territory.
