"'Drink slowly.' 'There's more than enough; no one will fight with you for it.'"

Let's talk about one of the most significant themes in Mo Ran's arc: poverty.

From the moment he was born, Mo Ran, like many other bastard children born in the cultivation world, is thrown aside and unacknowledged (because the very fact of his existence is considered a blight). His working-class mother is similarly thrown to the side.

To acknowledge Mo ran and his mother as legitimate human beings would tarnish his father's reputation; in a world in which reputation is tied to your standing in your community and your wealth and power, no one is willing to risk it.

Mo Ran is raised by his mother and his mother alone, a woman who is forced to dance on knives until her body is scarred and bloody, with no doctor willing to take her in or give her medicine without money.

From a young age, Mo Ran has experienced and witnessed horrific traumas — witnessing how his mother is rejected, objectified, and dehumanized, how she starves herself just to feed him, how he himself is starving, unsafe, vulnerable, with no stable home.

(Spoilers ahead going forward).

Of course, when his mother dies, Mo Ran is left untethered in the world, on his own, reliant upon whatever "kindness" other people are willing to extend him. And let's remember that this is a dog eat dog world; kindness is a commodity.

Really the turning point in Mo Ran's trauma is when he is falsely accused of rape, beaten, and imprisoned, put on the chopping block, for a crime he didn't commit.

He's forced to learn in that moment that in this ruthless world, he has to take his fate into his own hands. Most people aren't going to look out for him, and he has to protect himself.

This is when his black and white way of looking at the world is solidified. He is dumb; he is simplistic, but his simplistic mentality emerged as a coping mechanism, and more importantly, as a method of survival.

Mo Ran is actually someone who is inherently kind. He wants to save the earth worms and live up to his mother's expectations for him. Until he was imprisoned and slated to be executed for a crime he didn't commit, he was always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately for Mo Ran, he's not living in a world in which his kindness will be honed and cultivated into strength, because no one is guiding him, no one is caring for him, no one is telling him that kindness is a source of strength.

What Mo Ran is taught in that moment is kindness is weakness (which is false; kindness is not weakness). And so of course an already simple boy becomes harmfully simplistic in his thinking. Extending the benefit of the doubt and wanting to take on the other person's perspective

has never once helped him in this life. Consider that until Mo Ran met Chu Wanning, no one ever saw him as someone worthy of empathizing with. No one stepped into Mo Ran's shoes, no one sought to understand his perspective.

This is because he is a bastard, he was born poor and raised by his impoverished mother, and because the violence of poverty is that he is dehumanized daily and has to learn to survive in an inherently dehumanizing framework.

It's easy for people who grow up in comfortable and safe environments to have a more gray, open-minded mindset, to not halve the world into "my allies" versus "my enemies", but Mo Ran cannot do that anymore because to be open-minded rather than simplistic spells death.

Mo Ran has only learned that to survive, he will love those who give him a bowl of soup and a pat on the head, and hate those who hurt him or the ones he cares about. Nothing more and nothing less, because anything outside of this will hurt him.

This is why wontons are so significant for Mo Ran. His whole life he's had to fight for even a scrap of food or some medicine or even a bed to sleep in. He's had his life taken away from him, so naturally he becomes suspicious of everyone and has this underlying darkness.

It's a slow curling rage in his belly. It doesn't slumber. It guides him and makes him protect himself. It's borne out of trauma.

This is why it's so easy for the flower of hatred to exacerbate his negative feelings. This is a boy who is traumatized and really hasn't known a moment of peace or happiness beyond scattered moments.

It's also why his feelings toward CWN change so easily in the 0.5 timeline — though he fell in love with CWN, his thoughtful gift only earned him a brutal whipping. Of course he didn't stop to consider CWN's perspective, of course he didn't care that CWN might've felt remorseful.

In that moment, if CWN had come to him and claimed ownership of the bowl of wontons, Mo Ran's rage would've easily subsided and I'm sure he would've easily forgiven the whipping.

That it's Shi Mei who comes instead is why Mo Ran transfers his love and idolization to Shi Mei. CWN unwittingly made a choice and drew a line in that moment, tragic as it is, and so Mo Ran, the dumb, simple, narrow-minded child that he was, so easily changed his affections.

Because remember: the last time Mo Ran expected things out of people, the last time he gave the benefit of the doubt, he was thrown to the dogs. And he won't let that happen again.

I don't want to blame CWN here, by the way; but consider Mo Ran's perspective as a 15 year old, a child and a disciple. The person he so loved and idolized let him down in that moment, and he reverts back to that terrified mindset he had when he was accused of rape.

Mo Ran's later crimes are borne out of his unwillingness to listen to CWN, to confront the fact that CWN is the only person who taught him to write, to fight, who built up his golden core, who gave him a home and love and light.

So don't take this thread as me excusing Mo Ran's actions. His biggest flaw is this coping mechanism of his that facilitates his later crimes and injustices. 0.5 Mo Ran was in the wrong BECAUSE he wanted the whole world to burn for his trauma.