was talking about this earlier but i think a lot of people don’t get that taxian-jun’s life revolves around chu wanning. his love for wanning is really all he has & its what defines him and sets the tone for everything that happens in both the 0.5 timeline and when he comes back

as a fierce corpse in the 2.0 timeline (spoilers) when he loses his mom, he does find a family with the xues at sisheng peak. but unlike with 1.0 and 2.0, that sense of true belonging wasn’t there. disciple!txj was more insecure in his place & didn’t bond with xue meng

the way mo ran 2.0 eventually did. we know that his love for shi mei was mostly blind transference & idealization. for both txj and mo ran 1.0, “loving shi mei” was just a projection of his feelings for chu wanning, but because he came to hate wanning, he never realized it.

and anyway that love was false because of what hua binan, aka shi mei 0.5, ends up doing to both him and chu wanning. consider that txj was also the same disciple who wanted to save earthworms & who fell for his shizun and boldly declares that he would be his disciple.

that’s where their story started. consider that it was taxian-jun, so enamored with his shizun, who plucked a flower to give to wanning, and who was whipped for it (which is what began the true blackening of his heart). i also think the symbolism here is so rife with

foreshadowing for the actual flower of hatred. txj chooses to take upon the flower, sacrificing himself for wanning. and after that, of course he loses himself, becomes violent and murderous and apathetic and horrible. he betrays his sect, such that everyone in his life

begins to hate him (xzy, madam wang, xue meng). and when shizun tells him that he’s “deficient by nature, beyond remedy”, it’s really the final nail in his coffin. because if he doesn’t have shizun, then what does he have?

everything that he does thereafter he does because of the flower eating his heart, but even then, under its influence, he does horrible things to be seen by his shizun, to possess him, to claim him (which culminates in him marrying cwn and forcefully taking him as his concubine)

& of course he crushes shizun’s spiritual core and keeps him imprisoned because he wants to keep wanning by his side no matter the cost. bear in mind that he believes wanning hates him, which fuels him further because he believes that cwn will leave him if given the opportunity.

when wanning dies, taxian-jun commits suicide shortly after. he didn’t kill himself after his mom’s death, or shi mei’s death, or when the people he was previously close to cursed his name and looked at him with hatred in their eyes—he only killed himself when cwn died.

everything in txj’s life is about cwn. his love and hatred both are for cwn, but his hatred is really just a warped and twisted love even then. consider that mo-zongshi at least kept the love of xue zhengyong and madam wang before they died, he is truly close to xue meng,

and he ends up becoming friends with ye wangxi. but txj has no one, he didn’t even have himself or his own, untainted memories and heart. wanning IS his EVERYTHING. For txj, life is meaningless without cwn. there’s no flame in his life without cwn, a direct quote from the novel.

txj isn’t motivated by greed or power, he is motivated by his desperate love for cwn and his need to live for him and be seen and acknowledged and validated by him, to keep cwn by his side and away from prying eyes.

txj probably believes that he’s only good for fucking and killing and that he has no inherent worth. but cwn accepts him in his entirety. cwn doesn’t think his worth is reduced to his killing and sexual abilities or that he’s nothing but a mangy mutt. cwn is the only person

over the entire course of cwn’s life who has treated him with love and respect and dignity and tenderness. no one else has. and so txj is never going to care about anyone other than cwn. he has the capacity to relearn who he truly was before the flower, and he is healing,

but his heart is wanning, his life is wanning, and he’s not interested in anyone else or making positive relationships with other people. both mo ran personas only need wanning, but mo-zongshi is more personable and sociable and does have a few others he cares about. txj

doesn’t have that and he doesn’t want it. he died for wanning and he lives for wanning, all he wants at this point is wanning. txj’s ideal life is truly living with wanning in Nanping Mountain and sometimes going down the mountain to engage in shenanigans

and enjoy the simplicities of life that he didn’t as the emperor of the cultivation world. at the end of the day though, wanning defines his life’s purpose, and there’s no one else who can fit into his heart.