#his whole existence really died with xxc

[deathbyoctopi]

“My greatest fear is to waste away the rest of my life in endless regrets”

“I still hope that a flicker of light will appear in my heart”

“I am waiting for karma to liberate spirits, liberate souls and liberate me -even though I am already too determinate to let go”

“If I get rid of these inner demons, would you forgive me?”

“Gaining freedom from destiny, starting all over again”

HOLLY FUCKING SHIT MAN

[danhoemei]

Which do you think is more tragic, Yi City arc or BeefLeaf arc?

You really walked up to me and punched me in the face without any warning bro lmao I appreciate

I've given it some thought and ultimately I'd say yi city, mostly because of the scope of anguish and people affected.

[mdzs and tgcf spoilers]

If we were to include everything that lead to beefleaf's arc, i.e. shi wudu swapping he xuan's and shi qingxuan's fates, the people who suffered are he xuan with his closest family and the shi brothers at the end. For he xuan and his family their whole lives were destroyed and filled with misery until their death, after which he xuan continued his existence as calamity focused on revenge (he did make a few friends and his calamity life seemed not that bad tho). For shi brothers they lived quite a cushy life until they were captured and tortured physically - but mostly mentally - by he xuan. And we've seen karma knocking on the villain’s (shi wudu’s in this case) door, so what is it that makes this arc especially tragic? Well, it's beefleaf. If he xuan left sqx out of it and only took revenge on shi wudu then this arc would be pretty typical and probably many people would feel satisfaction. But sqx couldn’t stay out of it, it was his brother after all, so he xuan felt betrayed and basically said “well then, you asked for it”. So because sqx was so greatly tormented along his brother, even more so dare I say, this whole situation feels not so easy to swallow. After all, sqx didn't ask for his fate to be swapped, he didn't even know anything about this and was crushed and willing to repay the debt when he learnt about it. Moreover, the relationship between him and hx was really good, so the revenge on him felt even more like a heart-wrenching punch in the gut. Ultimately though, all of this tragedy is contained in these few people and their personal grudges or harm inflicted on one another.

In yi city's case, however, that's so much more vast. Xue yang manipulates xiao xingchen to kill tens of innocent lives, and even his soulmate. He drives him into such torment that xxc shreds his own soul into pieces to never be reborn again. Shi wudu died with a smile on his face, yelling that no matter that it ends now, they had a great life. Xxc had a good and promising life until xy started breaking it apart bit by bit, firstly by killing song lan's entire clan and blinding him just to spite xxc, after which xxc gave up his own sight and ran away to wander alone instead of pursuing his happy goal of creating a clan with song lan. They had good moments during three years of living in yi city, but it was still a charade leaving a trail of corpses, and forcing a-qing to be constantly on alert. Then xxc died, a-qing was brutally killed as well, song lan continued to be a puppet in xy's hands for many more years, and xy just lost it completely. After beefleaf's arc ended sqx pulled himself impressively up and things seemed to slowly move towards getting better, mostly thanks to him being the sweetheart he is, because he could’ve pursued revenge on he xuan and continued the vicious circle but no, he chose better. After yi city arc ended, however, the whole damn city became dead and haunted, a-qing's soul was destroyed by xy (who died without any fulfillment), and we were left with a sliver of hope that maybe her and xxc's souls will mend after a long time, during which song lan will wander the world as a living corpse pretty much alone. How tragic is that, on literally any possible angle.

Yeah, as much as I love beefleaf and weep at their arc, yi city still haunts me to this day and is probably my most painful arc in all of mxtx's works xd