#taisuiposting

[morethanwonderful]

I'm as much of a sucker for self-sacrificing hero complex protagonists as the next person, but there's something so evocative and crushing about seeing a protagonist introduced like "this is a self-obsessed douchebag who does whatever he wants forever and doesn't care about anything besides himself and his family," and then watching that guy slowly sacrifice himself for the greater good anyway.

[morethanwonderful]

I'm guessing a lot of y'all probably aren't that familiar with Xi Ping and Tai Sui, so if that's the case, please let me tell you about him!

Xi Ping is the most annoying man in the entire world (affectionate). I realize that label is something you could apply to several other Priest characters, but Shiyong takes it to another level.

Xi Ping is the protagonist of Tai Sui—the wealthy son of a minor noble who is dragged into a cultivation world he has absolutely no interest in joining. He is chaos incarnate. He is a menace. He is absolutely heartbreaking.

Tai Sui opens with Xi Ping playing the qin in bad drag because his "courtesan" friend needed a musician to perform with her, and when he gets caught at the brothel by his father, he just sprints out the door and away to hide out with his cousin across the city. He once tries to shield himself in a dangerous situation by turning himself into a chunk of decorative floor tile. He needs to sneak a specific type of tree into someone's yard without their notice to spy on them once, so he painstakingly cuts every new leaf on the tree into a different shape for years so that his enemies won't notice the tree's species. He spends more money than most people make in years on an elaborate homemade fireworks show to wish his teacher happy New Year when he thinks he might be sad. He cons his best friend into thinking he's decades older than he is and makes her call him uncle.

Xi Ping wakes up every day and decides that he is going to cause problems.

And the thing is, it's all narratively justified problem-causing! Xi Ping's whole thing is that he follows "the ungovernable way." Even his cultivation power comes from refusing to be tied down and follow any one code of conduct or worldview. He has the power of "I can do whatever I want forever." He is the element of chaos introduced to topple an oppressive system. He learns about the injustice inherent in his society over the course novel's early arcs and weaponizes his problem-causing to right those wrongs.

Furthermore, Xi Ping is constantly trying to fight with people unfathomably more powerful than him. He's going up against centuries-old demigods on the regular, and in several story arcs, he doesn't even have a body to fight them with physically. All he ever has are his wits, his friends, a qin, and his talent for fucking with people, and he makes use of those things beautifully.

I can't even get into the more emotional or serious aspects of his character without giving major spoilers for Tai Sui, which I'm not going to do. (You should all read Tai Sui and experience that for yourselves). But just from the sheer chaos alone, Xi Ping is one of the characters of all time. He's annoying he's loving he's calculating he's impulsive he's losing his humanity and he's his murderous cousin's only anchor to the human world. He's the world's wisest dumbass. He's a mask of his own face. He's the love of my life. Read Tai Sui and he'll be the love of your life too.

Priest (Author) Character Upper Bracket

*Xi Ping fanart volunteered by @stellarish / used with permission

[“Anti-propaganda” is not allowed. Please only give reasons to vote FOR a character, and please be courteous in the notes.]

Han Yuan from Liu Yao

“Unlike us that had a vagrant life, domesticated kids are shy; I have to look after him in future.” - Han Yuan about Cheng Qian

Submission: Cringefail loser(most affectionate) dragon boi. Gone edgy but his family loves him anyway.

The “idiot” from the description - “A cultivation story about how a declining sect is restored by a narcissist, troublemaker, meanie, idiot, and wimpy kid.”

“our fav -1 braincell kiddo”

Xi Ping from Tai Sui

Submission:

He is literally everything to me. Pure chaos condensed into a single person. Everyone loves him, everyone hates him. He does his best, he doesn't try at all, he beats up monsters with a qin, he brought about the destruction of the entire cultivation world…

Han Muchun from Liu Yao

"Only I, your master, would not detest you, my dirty girl. If it were your first senior brother here, he would have stewed you." - Han Muchun to Shuikeng, Liu Yao: The Revitalization of Fuyao Sect, Chapter 29

[No propaganda submitted]

Took some disciples for his declining sect and unexpectedly became a father

(Sharing a picture with Tong Ru because zooming in any further makes it almost indistinguishable. Also, pain.)

[taisuiartgallery]

Guidepost

General Tags:

Art

Digital Art

Traditional Art

Fic

Video

Animatic

Memes

Comics

Crossover

Spoilers

Full list of more specific tags under the cut:

Character Tags:

Because there are So Many Characters, I've taken a page from E. Danglar's book and sorted them by region.

Southern Wan (Jinping)

Xi Ping

Zhou Ying

Wei Chengxiang

Bai Ling

Xi Yue

Pang Jian

Old Madam Xi

Xi Zhengde

Cui Jinjin

Xi Ziyi

Emperor Taiming

Zhao Yu

The Karma Beast

Chen Baishao (Jiangli)

Southern Wan (Xuanyin)

Zhi Xiu

Lin Chi

Wen Fei

Luo Qingshi

Zhang Jue

Lin Zongyi

Yao Qi

Chang Jun

Princess Duanrui

Su Zhun

Zhao Yin

Li Fengshan

Southern Wan (The Southern Mines)

Lü Chengyi

Liang Chen

Southern Wan (Other)

Zhao Qindan

Xu Rucheng

The Heart Demon

Western Chu

Qiu Sha

Hui Xiangjun

Yu Chang

Xuanwu

Zhuoming

Xiang Rong

Tao-er-nainai

Southern Shu

Wangge Luobao

Northern Li

Xie Chu

Kunlun's Third Elder

Wu Lingxiao

Accompanying Plant Tags:

Reincarnation Wood

Snow Shuffler

Late Autumn Red

Eternal Spring Brocade

Heartless Lotus

Item/Weapon Tags:

Tai Sui Qin

Zhaoting

The Law Breaker

The Unbound Furnace

Discard the False and Keep the True

Ship Tags:

Xi Ping/Zhi Xiu

Xi Ping/Zhou Ying

Zhi Xiu/Xi Ping/Zhou Ying

Wei Chengxiang/Zhao Qindan

Xi Ping/Yu Chang

Lin Chi/Hui Xiangjun

Qiu Sha/Hui Xiangjun

Qiu Sha/Hui Xiangjun/Lin Chi

Lin Chi/Wen Fei

Miscellaneous Tags:

Zhou Ying's Cat

The Sea of Stars

The Dragon Vein

Scenery

Fic Tags:

Gen Fic

Story Arc Tags:

(Any drawing/comic of a specific scene will have the relevant arc tagged. Tags for early arcs aren't necessarily spoiler-free.)

Midnight Song

The Dragon Bites Its Tail

Fragrant Jade Miasma

Demon Country

The Mountain Falls

Indignant Cicadas

Traveler Abroad

Unbound Knife

Eternal Flame

The Storm Begins

Flower in the Mirror

Tomb of the Sage

A Life of Regret

Conclusion

The Extras (Overall)

Antiquity Extra

New Capital Extra

Western Chu Extra

Frost and Snow Extra

Jinping Extra

Bonus Secret Info

For those of y'all that scroll all the way to the bottom of this tag list, here's an extra fun fact: this blog is run by ya girl Andromeda Grassbreads. You can find me TaiSuiposting over on my meta blog @morethanwonderful.

[morethanwonderful]

"Guy who's sad because the woman he loved died" has been done to death a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but god in my heart it's never been done quite like Lin Chi. Even in the same novel, Wen Fei has a similar backstory, and he can't even begin to compare. The sections about Lin Chi and Hui Xiangjun fuck me up so bad.

It's "guy mourning his unrequited(?) crush," but it's also "incredibly lonely guy mourning his only friend," and it's also "creative mourning the master craftswoman he was was endlessly inspired by," and it's also "guy with incredibly low self esteem mourning the one person who truly understood and encouraged him."

The way the passages about them are written are just. christ.

[morethanwonderful]

One of my favorite little clever details in Tai Sui is how the state of Jinping at the very beginning of the story mirrors what's revealed to us much later about the state of the whole world.

Tai Sui's world is enclosed. Through the power of the immortals, at first for mortals' own benefit, their continent was severed from reality and encased by the axioms of the spiritual mountains. One of the main ways this is emphasized is through the fact that Zhou Ying knows he has never seen the true sky. The sky is blotted out by the constructed world that is supposed to grant them immortality and "prosperity."

Similarly, in the very first opening paragraphs of the novel, Jinping is described as a city of prosperity. Moon Plated Gold, a gift from the immortals of the spiritual mountains, has granted the city endless new mechanical power and economic growth. As a result of this, the steam generated by their prosperity has blocked out the sky.

One of my favorite lines is in that very first section: "The fog above Jinping couldn’t be called fog. It had to be called auspicious clouds."

This has to be a blessing, says the popular opinion! This fog has brought us wealth and power and prosperity, so who cares if we can no longer see the sky? It's written with a cheerful, insistent denial of the clear dark side to their prosperity. The fog "has" to be called something auspicious; there's no other option. The narration tells us to see this repressive smog as a gift, rather than a curse, as it came from the immortals and brings "prosperity," so there simply cannot be another interpretation.

And the same applies to the way the spiritual mountains block out the truth of the sky. The enclosed world Tai Sui's people inhabit is protective and auspicious and immortal. Who cares if their sky is false? Who cares if immortality is the loss of the self? The spiritual mountains and the chance to become an immortal are gifts given to the people! You can't possibly call them anything otherwise!

But you know, on some level, that eternal fog hiding the sky over the "prosperous" capital cannot be a wholly good thing, and the same applies to the axioms blocking the sky that are revealed much later on. No matter what the narration tells us, and no matter what the residents of Jinping try to tell themselves, we know it's not right to never get to see the true sun.

The whole introductory section of chapter 1 takes this sort of tongue in cheek tone that I think expands to the rest of the story extremely well. We hear of the obvious problems of choking smog, poverty, and rapid economic/environmental change, and then the narration tells us that this is all wonderful, actually. We're told migrant workers flooding into Jinping can't afford to live within the city walls, but there's so many they've built up nearly a proper town among the factories. We're told this is the picture of prosperity. Then the novel spends its entire first half (and beyond) hammering both the rich boy protagonist and the readers over the head with the horrific injustices of poverty and the widespread mistreatment of the poor by those in power.

Jinping on a whole, with its intense social stratification, rapid changes, and hidden sky, is a sort of microcosm of Tai Sui's world. The insistent, cheerful denial of the opening narration in describing it sets the tone for how the novel as a whole will go. Denial is everywhere in Tai Sui, and some of that denial (like the ignorance of true ways of the heart) will literally kill you if you let it go. And yet, Tai Sui is a novel about tearing down that denial anyway and looking right at the ugly truth of the world that nobody can bear to see, because confronting that truth is the only way you can ever hope to change it for the better.

Before you can hope to see the sun, you have to admit that maybe, just maybe, the "auspicious clouds" granted to you by immortal inventions aren't quite so auspicious after all, and the novel's opening paragraphs use their playful tone to gesture toward that all-important fact.

[morethanwonderful]

Thank you @ririnpopo for gifting us the all time most correct cover image for the Tai Sui tag

[morethanwonderful]

I think every Tai Sui fan should take a moment to listen to At The End of the Earth by The Dear Hunter and get really sad about Xi Ping and Zhou Ying.

For Enrichment.

[morethanwonderful]

I've spent this whole week filled with emotions too big to articulate about Xi Ping and the regenerative powers of the reincarnation wood.

Guy who gets unmade and remade over and over and over again. Guy who is crushed and struck by lightning that hates him and attacked by the swords of unfathomably powerful cultivators and comes back stronger than he ever was. Guy whose cultivation has a mind of its own and wants him to get hurt. Guy whose pain tolerance is stretched to extremes until he can cut off his whole damn arm and act like it's no big deal because look! He's already grown a new one moments later. Guy whose body is alien and strange even to other near-unkillable immortals.

So much of Xi Ping's cultivation falls upon him by accident and happenstance. He never sought out the hidden bones' power, but it falls to him anyway. He never wanted to be immortal, but he outlives the rest of the world's cultivators by hundreds of years.

I think so much about the scene from the last of the original extras when Xi Ping returns home after finding the sword Xiuluo for Xi Yue. He's badly hurt, sitting hunched over in the dark breathing painfully, and the narration casually tells us that the one thing he misses about the power of the hidden bones is his ability to heal quickly. He's grown used to being able to shrug off pain and injury that would kill anyone else. It's inconvenient to no longer be able to ignore harm to his body.

I don't really have a concluding thought. I just. man. Sometimes "healing" powers loop back around to fridge horror. Sometimes resilience is a tragedy.

[morethanwonderful]

Every time I reread Traveler Abroad I'm always re-overwhelmed by how good it is. There are so many passages from that arc that I end up rereading over and over every time I revisit them.

Zhou Ying's pleading one-sided conversation with Xi Ping's empty corpse. Xi Ping's struggle to find the right "mask" to wear when he speaks to Zhou Ying. The "have you been mistreated" passage. Xi Ping's "I don't hate you, I know you" speech. Xi Ping's final conversation with his grandmother. Zhou Ying's return home. It's all so fucking good.

The arc starts with Zhou Ying being driven to his all-time most monstrous act for the sake of his love for Xi Ping. He wants to tear open the Impassible Sea and throw the world into horror and chaos to retrieve the dead body of his beloved murdered cousin. And the arc ends with Zhou Ying collapsing to his all-time most vulnerable and human state for the sake of his love for his grandmother. He's reduced to a miserable wreck because he can't be there for the last moments of the figure in his life who most deeply understood and accepted him. His need to avenge the death of one loved one brings about the death of another. He regains a cousin and loses his grandmother.

This is the arc about how nobody is ever truly beyond human fallibility. A great clan of immortals can be brought down by common Kaiming cultivators. One man's insidious meddling can drive a shed skin master to his death. Petty emotional squabbles can split apart a sect in the immortal mountains. A half-demon can struggle on a wrecked mountain road with the mortal masses. And the Demon of the East Sea can be rendered a drenched, bloody, travel-weary shell of himself by the desperate force of his love for his family.

Xi Ping doesn't actually do all that much during Traveler Abroad, at least not compared to other arcs. He convinces Zhou Ying not to wreck the demon seal, and he helps Lin Chi calm things down a bit at Xuanyin, but he spends most of the arc forced to just watch from the background and pass messages for others.

But even there, that's because the point of Traveler Abroad for Xi Ping is showcasing all the ways that he's already changed. That's the magic of all those heart-wrenching passages I listed out above. Xi Ping already knows he's not some perfect enlightened being. He's already matured from the spoiled, sheltered rich kid he once was. Xi Ping has already been brought down to the mortal dirt by his five years in Tao County. He doesn't need a reminder of the pain of a mortal life or the fact that he can once again be reduced to it. Instead he gets to play the voice of reason and maturity across from Zhou Ying, the cousin that's usually so much more composed.

Xi Ping decides to steal the Unbound Furnace during Traveler Abroad, and the first chapter after Traveler Abroad, Unbound Knife 1, ends with Xi Ping directly announcing for the first time that he's going to tear down the Bell of Tribulation. Traveler Abroad's core theme, this emphasis on the ultimate human fallibility of even the loftiest immortal mountains, is key for any of this to be believable. It establishes that, for all the incredible might of the Way of Heaven, its agents are not undefeatable. The immortal mountains themselves can be turned upside-down by the meddling of ants.

Zhou Ying causes the spiritual energy shutdown in Traveler Abroad that prevents him from making it home to see his grandmother when she's on her deathbed, just like he "bites his tail" by screwing over Xi Ping with his political meddling in the second arc. His attempts to be heartless and cunning lead inevitably to pain for him and his loved ones. This is his fallibility, and the drama of the Zhaos reveals the fallibility of the powerful and the wealthy, of the lofty immortals, all of which is key for everything that comes next.

And in the midst of all that, the infinitely fallible Xi Ping sits with his grandmother at her death, just as he's done for countless people in Tao County and just as he'll one day do for everyone else he's ever known and loved.

It's just such an incredibly human and heart-wrenching part of the story, not to mention a well-crafted thematic beat within the wider narrative.

[morethanwonderful]

One thing I've really been chewing on from the new Tai Sui extra is the final few paragraphs and the parallel they strike between Wei Chengxiang and Xi Ping.

One of my favorite things about the original extras has always been Xi Ping using the name "Peony" as an old man. He's using Jiangli's name (Baishao, meaning white peony) as his own, literally living on in her name. Aside from being a nod to the debt of life he owes her and a generally nice gesture toward her importance, this also has the effect of subtly upholding her memory to the public hundreds of years after her death. None of the people in the present day at the end of Tai Sui know the story of Chen Baishao; she was an ant. However, people all over have the name Peony on their lips and a white peony in their eyes whenever they encounter the famous Xi Ping, which means some part of Jiangli is preserved as long as "Mr. Peony" exists in public.

The act of using Chen Baishao's name is an act of tribute.

And now that we know the fire god "Chunying" Wei Chengxiang invented has been given Wei Chengxiang's face by the public, everything I said above about Xi PIng and Chen Baishao applies to Wei Chengxiang and Chunying as well. Wei Chengxiang's face has been preserved in the public consciousness for hundreds of years after her death in the form of the fire god, and that memory of her carries the name Chunying. Wei Chengxiang has ensured that, even though none of the public know the story of the ant who died in a fire several hundred years prior, her name is on their lips, and thus some part of her memory lives on.

The deaths of Chen Baishao and Chunying are what set Xi Ping and Wei Chengxiang off on their respective journeys to cultivation. Both Xi PIng and Wei Chengxiang owe their respective lost loved ones a debt they can never repay, and both of them try to repay some small portion of that debt by seeking revenge for their deaths in the south. Their stories have always been in parallel, and the new detail of Chunying the Fire God receiving Wei Chengxiang's face only furthers that connection.

That's why Xi Ping can say with confidence that Wei Chengxiang would be happy to answer to Chunying's name if she were still alive. Why he knows she would be happy to hear that that name is now tied to her face. It's not just that he understands her in general, though he does. It's that he's living the exact same circumstance. He's chosen to answer to Chen Baishao's name as a way to uphold her memory in his old age. He's actively choosing to do the same thing that happened to Wei Chengxiang by happenstance.

Xi Ping carries on Chen Baishao's name because he owes her everything, so he knows that Wei Chengxiang would be equally happy to carry on the name of the person she owes her own everything to in turn.

[morethanwonderful]

God, Xi Ping and Zhi Xiu have such fantastic chemistry as characters. From the moment they meet, their every interaction is a delight.

Xi Ping drives Zhi Xiu fucking insane (like he does everyone), but Zhi Xiu also clearly gets a kick out of him from jump. He adds him to the selection list just for a laugh after seeing his list of "crimes," and he's openly entertained by his audacity when he talks to Pang Jian and Su Zhun. Zhi Xiu scolds Xi Ping not to be rude out of obligation, but he never actually stops him from back-talking Shed Skins and such later in the novel.

Xi Ping is a fucking menace, but he's his menace. Big, emotional, Way of the Heart-shifting impacts aside, Xi Ping is Zhi Xiu's pet funny little guy. He's the problem that he knows he should be scolding, yet can't help but enjoy. He's like a rascally cat.

And on a serious note, I can't help but think that there's a reason Zhi "do not be a god" Xiu immediately gets along so well with the mortal boy who dares to drink from an immortal's wine pot. Frustrating as Xi Ping is, Zhi Xiu doesn't want to be revered, so of course he gets a kick out of the guy audacious enough to treat him like just another man.

[morethanwonderful]

Genuinely Zhou Ying from Tai Sui is one of the most insanity-inducing characters ever written, like

He's a prince. He's chronically ill. He eats almost nothing that isn't bland and medicinal. He hates his dad so much he wants to start a revolution to destroy him. He's born vaguely psychic and eventually becomes the closest thing his world has to omniscient. He starts his revolution by having two local politicians chopped into mincemeat, blended together, and poured out in the street. His favorite person in the world is his annoying little cousin that hides out at his house with him when he gets in trouble with his parents. He's probably a sociopath. He's murderous enough that all his servants and subordinates are scared of him. He has the same clothes made for himself every year. He founds and runs his universe's version of the CIA. He had his bones magically removed as a baby. He's a commentary on the way that psychotic and neurodivergent children are often villainized and mistreated by their caretakers. He has his bones un-removed over 20 years later. He's faking his chronic illness to cover up other, weirder chronic illness related to the bone removal and psychic thing. He loves his grandma. He purposely engineered his mother's miscarriage as a young child. He can turn himself into mist and break off chunks of his body while in mist form. He grew up with his consciousness halfway bound to a hell bubble full of demons. He has a personal assassin/assistant/general-purpose henchman that can turn into paper and ride around in his sleeve. He sometimes calls the henchman a cutesy nickname. He was partially raised by the living embodiment of emotional manipulation. He sometimes calls his annoying little cousin an even cutesier nickname. He tries to destroy the whole world in a fit of grief when he thinks his cousin's dead. He basically kills himself in order to plonk his soul into a magic mirror and see beyond the bounds of reality. He treats his own life and body as expendable assets because he was bred and raised to be a human sacrifice. He didn't speak for years as a child because the way he spoke scared his mother. His experience of the world is so alien and incomprehensible to others that a man with the power to play souls as music cannot understand his tune. He's a case study of the fact that sometimes you simply cannot save someone who doesn't want saving. He's thin and sickly from his illness but canonically beautiful. He has his father's eyes. He spoils his pet cat.

[morethanwonderful]

I've seen a couple versions of this going around for other fandoms, so:

Spin this wheel for a random Tai Sui character, then tell me whether you want to

Tell me in the tags who you got ���

[morethanwonderful]

[hand up] I'd like to know what Tai Su is! I've almost read all of MXTX's books and I see withdrawal looming on the horizon so I'd love to be sold on a new rec. What's the premise? Does it have an official translation?

Oh boy do I have an answer for you

The short version of this answer is that Tai Sui is a no-romance steampunk xianxia cultivation novel about a very silly rich boy who cons and fumbles his way into discovering all the ways that immortality is kinda fucked up, actually. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and has some of the wildest, most in-depth worldbuilding I've ever seen, as well as some of the most insanely deep and compelling platonic relationships. There's no official translation, but there's an extremely good fan translation by E. Danglars.

If you'd like to know more about the story and/or why I think it's so damn good, you can click that link up above and read my much longer rec post.

Tai Sui's pretty different from MXTX's stuff in some ways, especially since it's not a danmei, but it was also basically my own first foray into the word of non-MXTX web novels, so I know from experience that transition can work out well :).

[morethanwonderful]

Ultimately I think my biggest endorsement of Tai Sui as a series is the fact that it's genuinely really hard to talk about. This is something I feel, something mutuals who've read the series have told me, and something I've seen reflected in reviews by strangers. The emotions Tai Sui evokes in people are So Big that it's genuinely hard to express anything about it in words.

I'm a meta writer. Putting my thoughts on fiction into words is my entire thing. But Tai Sui fills up my chest with this huge, sweeping well of emotion that doesn't feel quite like anything else, and it's difficult to pluck out any one part of that sense of overwhelm to analyze.

Across the board, people who read Tai Sui are fucking floored by it in a way that I rarely see.

[morethanwonderful]

Chapter 174 of Tai Sui aka Flower in the Mirror (Final) should be legally classified as a drug.

The Turmoilers leading the charge of giving their consciousnesses to Xi Ping. Zhi Xiu shedding his skin by telling the will of 'heaven' itself to fucking "move." Lin Zongyi's final assertion of his humanity leading all of Xuanyin to unite under Xi Ping. Zhao Qindan using her words to bring the common people into the battle. Princess Duanrui's smile.

I've read all this before and I already know everything that happens, but there's still no upper bound on the elation that I feel right now after rereading.