#can't believe i'm having emotions about yet another tsundere pretty boy

[aeipathic]

oh reading book 4 has me feeling a whole heap of things about mu qing

like. okay. we all know that mu qing is the one who fucked up, right — the one who left xie lian first, the one who stood with others instead of xie lian when the 33 martial gods confronted him because he prioritized his own reputation. and i’m not saying those weren’t bad things, especially the latter. later, he’d regret ever leaving xie lian. xie lian was vulnerable — even if mu qing couldn’t know how vulnerable he was, at that cultivation spot, the fact that he knew he’d resorted to robbery meant he could at least guess that it was bad — and mu qing’s betrayal was part of what tipped him over the edge, right into the perfect spot for bai wuxiang to truly fuck him up. what mu qing did was wrong and had some real bad ripple effects for xie lian. (and, in all honesty, it would be fair if xie lian never quite forgave him for that — or, at the very least, never quite trusted him not to leave again, even if he claimed he never would.)

that said.

i think what gets forgotten is how much mu qing really tried to put things right. he fucked up, and no amount of apologies or good intentions after the fact could negate that, yes, and nor would they guarantee that the next time he found himself in such a spot that he wouldn’t make the selfish decision. but he really did try, y’all. he comes to find xie lian afterwards to help him up. and when xie lian isn’t willing to talk to him, he goes to his parents instead, and brings food, and promises to find medicine, and apologizes repeatedly. and like, i realize apologizing is the least that he could do, but it’s explicitly stated that xie lian and feng xin have never heard mu qing apologize in the years they’ve known him, and we know what his pride is like.

he bows his head and says “i’m sorry.” he says, “yes! i was wrong, i admit it, and i apologize!” (and in that moment he isn’t apologizing only for the incident with the 33 gods, but for leaving in the first place.) if xie lian had given him the chance, i think he would have made good on his promise to find ways to provide for them — because that is, in large part, the reason he left.

it’s true that mu qing left to provide for his own mother and not just xie lian’s family, and it’s true that he left because he wanted to think of himself as well. but he was getting very frustrated with xie lian and feng xin’s inability to see the larger picture and make choices that would help their situation. out of the three of them, he did the most work; they all took grueling jobs during the day, but mu qing was the personal attendant for the entire royal family as well — he cooked, he cleaned, he washed their clothes, he took care of them all on top of their daily work. and he was the one who carried the money. he was the one who was excruciatingly aware not only of what it took to fend for themselves (something none of the others, even feng xin, could be said to understand, growing up privileged as they had), but also of how exactly how little they had. he had to deal with a prince who refused perfectly good bread because it wasn’t the fare he was used to, and who then came near to fainting from not eating enough. he kept trying to suggest ways for them to make more money, to find more stable jobs, and kept getting shot down by the other two who would refuse the indignity of mu qing’s suggestions without offering any solutions of their own. he was the one who had to hold feng xin and xie lian back during fights — out of all of them, in a strange turn, he became the peacemaker. and it never did any good, and it never made anything better.

(feng xin grows angry at him for asking them to consider money when xie lian has just suffered a humiliation. mu qing says that he’ll have to get used to if it he doesn’t want to die. “get used to what?” feng xin retorts. “being humiliated by others? get used to mortals stepping on his face? why does he have to get used to something like that?” and i can only imagine that mu qing is looking at these two, who before the war had all the respect they could ask for, and thinking, get used to being humiliated by others? why not? i did. my whole life, i did. is it so unbearable for you? that, right there, is the moment he solidifies his decision to leave.)

so, yes, he leaves. he leaves because the three of them together is nothing more than the three of them suffering. he leaves because he isn’t being listened to, but, he thinks, he can do better than this. “your parents and my mother, the three of us, who knows how long we’d have to struggle in the mud! if i went back first, maybe there’d still be a chance...” was it a selfish choice, yes, maybe, but mu qing thinks in the big picture. if one of them had wealth — if one of them had resources — isn’t that better than none of them having anything? it’s very true to point out that he didn’t make use of those resources to help until after he’d already fucked up with xie lian — that he could, perhaps, have returned sooner — but i do genuinely think that his plan was to gain a foothold in the heavens, because xie lian couldn’t but he could, and find a way to make things better from there.

because — and this, finally, is the part that really made me want to write all this — i think that a large reason mu qing left to re-secure his position in the heavens is not just his desire for recognition and acceptance (though of course that was part of it), but because of his desire to be the one with the resources to help, for once. xie lian has been helping him for years. xie lian, who had everything, found it of no consequence to forgive an ignorant servant an accidental theft of a piece of gold foil and help cover it up, or to intervene so that that servant could bring a scant basketful of berries to his poor mother. it was easy for him, thoughtless, and yes, mu qing was grateful for it — he had to be — he thanked xie lian for it — but oh, he was so resentful. he resented needing charity. he resented being on that side of the relationship. he recognized xie lian’s goodness, but hated that he had to be on the receiving end, and that he could never stand as his equal. 

and now: here was a chance, maybe, to turn things around. now he was the one who could gain wealth, influence, resources, if he played his cards right, if he got in with the right people, and he could do that. finally, it would be him with the privilege to reach out a hand, to provide, to bring medicine, resources, whatever was needed. he could even things out. he could return the favor. he could be the charitable, and not the pitiful. and i think he wanted that chance. he wanted to know what it could be, to be the one with the means to provide.

(but of course even when he was the one with privilege, even when he did have that chance to be the better person — he wasn’t. xie lian, faced with the judgment of his equals, had never hesitated to stretch out his arms to protect the poor and the hated. he’d done it for that grubby little hong-er. he’d done it for mu qing. but when the chance came for mu qing to do it for him, he was too afraid of losing the respect of his peers — of going right back to being ridiculed and humiliated and shunted out, again — and so he didn’t. and that proved that he was a worse person than xie lian. that it wasn’t about wealth or privilege after all. xie lian was simply a better person than he was. that was the thing about the incident with the 33 cultivators that would haunt him the most, for hundreds of years afterwards.)