One of the most under discussed and interesting things (to me) in MDZS is the first chapter. WWX is the narrator of our story and his opinions/knowledge/experience shade in all of it - we do not learn about things that WWX does not know (the 13 years he was dead especially). The first chapter introduces him like a folktale villain, though. And it tells the story of how he died like a folktale, too - exactly the death you’d expect for an arrogant evil man. Torn apart by the ghosts he could no longer control. But that death is never verified at any other point in the story. WWX never says it himself. No one asks because they already have the folktale, and he doesn’t bring it up himself or even really think about it. His final moments are all a blank. He doesn’t even remember most of what happened post-Nightless City. But there are implications that the folktale isn’t true: The destruction of half the Yin Tiger Seal after being horribly injured, something that is implied to be too difficult for him to have considered doing usually and that could have killed him (suicide) The fact that he was grievously wounded before the Siege (a slow death due to his lack of a Golden Core - LWJ couldn’t have healed him, not really, not for long) The way the Wens corpses were whole and in the Blood Pool - untouched by the same fierce ghosts that supposedly tore their protector apart (pointing to something other than a loss of control) The fact that no one had any pieces of him to use as trophies later, but Chenqing and Suiban could be stolen away in a way that strongly implies someone would’ve kept his bones (was his entire body really eaten? Or did they find it destroyed, or gone, and made their assumptions?) The way his soul eluded any Summoning until Mo Xuanyu (implying he didn’t want to be summoned, didn’t want revenge, didn’t want to reply, didn’t want to live. Everyone thought it was because his soul was torn apart, yet somehow here he is, hale and whole and at peace with what happened to him. One of the very few reasons the novel provides for a soul ignoring a summon is death by suicide) For a story that is all about mob mentality and how when a fable is repeated often enough it overtakes the truth, that intro is SO STRONG. Because we have no choice to believe it in the beginning - this is how WWX died, this is what his arrogance got him, demonic cultivation was his undoing. But as the story unfolds, we can’t help but have doubts, even as WWX himself does little to challenge that narrative. And though he has his happy ending, we never find out in the end how his death happened or why it happened - his first ending, the crescendo of a horrible tragedy, the thing that destroyed him so thoroughly, the thing that resulted in the death of everyone he tried to protect (he doesn’t even speak of them after. Doesn’t ask after the bodies. it’s been 13 years). Because it’s history. And history is written by the victors. The rest of us just move on. (And isn’t that all WWX does? Move on without speaking of the sacrifices of the past? Forgets, if only because he has to?) (He probably wasn’t torn apart by his ghosts) (But it doesn’t matter, does it? He still died)
