Kinda a continuation of my points from the Nezha 2025 Analysis post, written separately as its own thing.
On first glance, it may seem like the Chan Sect as antagonists in modern adaptations is a classic case of "Modern people making the traditionally 'good' side into the 'bad' side because values dissonance makes most of their behaviors pretty questionable by modern standards", but it's not just modern folks who are annoyed by novel Chan Sect.
The Ming annotator of FSYY novel, despite believing in Fate, still goes "Can these immortals shut up about Fate for like, one damn second, instead of acting like stuffy scholars over it?" at times, and the Chapter 84 End Commentary sums up both his view towards the Chan-Jie Conflict and mine:
"Both sides are assholes."
He basically thinks that 1) despite being an ass, Shen Gongbao doesn't deserve to be stuffed into the North Sea, considering all the "contribution" he made to the Investiture Project (namely, persuading ppl to join the war and die), and 2) the Chan Sect is way too obsessed with Fate, while the Jie Sect just wants to brute-force their way past Fate, and "Neither are righteous".
And he's equally harsh towards Yuanshi, Lao Tzu, and Tongtian——the first is overprotective of his own while ruthless towards the Jie, the second acts like some kind of arrogant official towards Tongtian during the Immortal Killing Formation Arc, and the third is a giant sore loser who literally wanted to "re-establish the world order" just because his sect lost too badly at the 10K Immortal Formation.
As this margin commentary puts it: "A new world order created by a Patriarch like this would've been worse."
The annotator is very much coming from a Confucian standpoint: in the last sentences of the aforementioned Chapter 84 commentary, he's like "Y'all suck, the Confucian Middle Path rules", before going "Some people may say that you can't judge immortals and their Perils by mortal standards, well, if you can't even attain the Human Way, how can you ever walk the Path of the Immortals?"
Having read through all the annotations…though the Ming annotator had some pretty wild takes, his judgment of the Chan & Jie Sect was honestly more nuanced than most modern pop culture perception.
Like, the response to "Chan Sect Bad" should be more than "But they are the good guys in the novel, it's not novel-accurate!", because, as the Ming annotator has shown, 17th century literati was very much capable of calling them out for their fuck-ups.
And frankly, "the Good Side is actually Bad and the Bad Side is just victims of prejudice" never appeals to me personally as a trope. It's still functioning under a moral binary where multiple things can't be true about both sides at once.
The Chan Sect is way too obsessed with Fate, acts like elitist pricks, is prejudiced against yaoguais, and quite a few of the Chan 12 are fascinatingly terrible mentors——hella overprotective of their own, but still suck on so, so many levels.
They have no problem with aiding Ancient China's Bloodiest Bureaucracy Recruitment Program, likely because Yuanshi Tianzun didn't want his 12 disciples to work for the Heavenly Emperor.
They are also supporting a vassal state's rebellion against the tyrannical Shang empire, whose king brutally tortured his officials and wife to death, abused his subjects, forced King Wen to eat his son's flesh, and was directly responsible for the death of Huang Feihu's wife and sister.
As much as the execution falters, as morally grey as the Chan-Jie conflict might be, whether you can blame King Zhou's bullshit entirely on Daji or not (the author-compiler thinks so, I don't), the Zhou is justified to topple the Shang.
(I'd love to see an adaptation that links the human dynastic transition more closely together with the Shenmo battles, by showing that the Chan Sect at least marginally cares about the welfare of mortals and collateral damage, in contrast to the complete disinterest and disregard shown by most Jie immortals.)
(Also, though the historical King Zhou/Di Xin's negative reputation is definitely exaggerated because later history texts want to make him into an example of "How Not to Rulership", the historical Shang dynasty isn't necessarily better.)
(They are a massive, diverse, and brutally militaristic kingdom with a culture of human sacrifice; by Di Xin's time, the scale was greatly reduced, but it was still happening.)
Like, why can't they be both a bunch of elitist pricks who look down on yaoguais AND a tiny group working with the human rebels to topple a brutal empire and their supernatural allies?
They are arguably fighting for the right cause, but also just as morally grey as any IRL rebel groups, and their status as a small, tightly-knitted religious community is a source of both camaraderie and nasty prejudice towards the out-group.
Speaking of camaraderie: though their rival sect has a greater reputation on that front, I'd argue that the Chan Sect can be just as intensely dedicated to their master-disciple relationship, which is a double-bladed sword.
A master is like a parental figure, regardless of their actual parenting skills, and it's even more interesting when you look at their overprotective behavior in juxaposition with their knowledge that some of their disciples would be Investiture'd.
It'll be easy to make them treat their disciples like a mere tool, but even in the novel, Chijing Zi genuinely grieved for Yin Hong's death despite his betrayal, Ju Liusun is way too enabling of TXS despite TXS being a piece of shit, and Taiyi is this strange mixture between spoiling Nezha and giving extremely WTF advices.
There's a lot of potential in exploring their inner conflicts, where they genuinely care for their disciples yet understand that they may be doomed from the very beginning, and ultimately, Fate always triumphs over their personal feelings.
Despite emerging from the war with significantly lesser sect members on the Investiture, deification still destroys their extremely personal master-disciple bond, and I won't be surprised if some never take another disciple again.
The Jie Sect is incredibly diverse, thanks to Patriarch Tongtian's indiscriminate admission policies, and they have multiple high-ranking yaoguai and female disciples.
And frankly, if your friend, family, or sectmate just got killed on the battlefield and the best justification the opponents could give was "Fate Says So", you are gonna be pretty pissed too.
But they are far from faultless victims.
Even if you disregard their giant numbers advantage (like, even if you think the Chan Sect has more than 50 people, the Jie still outnumbers them by a huge margin, which makes their whole 'How dare you bully us!' outrage kinda hilarious when it's like, 3000+ people vs. less than a hundred), they are way too eager to pick fights just because they felt their sect was being slighted, unleash treasures and AOE spells of mass destruction on entire cities, and fight on behalf of a terrible king because "My friend/sectmate/Shen Gongbao tells me to".
If the Chan Sect, at their worst, is driven by this absolute belief in their own righteousness and Fate's design, the Jie Sect is about fighting for your group and yours alone, no matter what they did.
And sure, such a mentality might be understandable if you interpret them as a giant group of outcasts who are extra sensitive about perceived slights because of the prejudice they faced.
But even disregarding the fact that some of the Jie immortals are probably outcasts for good reasons (horrible plague magic, eating people), I don't think "We've been wronged before and therefore justified to strike back at everyone who look at us wrong" is a great mindset to have.
Especially when, by all means, the Jie immortals joins the war out of their own accord, and they should maybe know better than to listen to Shen Gongbao after the first dozen deaths.
(This inability to fact-check and keep a cool head extends to Patriarch Tongtian too.)
Like, their motivation is more relatable to modern readers than "Fate Says So", but a serious reimagining really shouldn't ignore how they ultimately doomed themselves by fueling this cycle of revenge long past the point where it's sensible, in what's likely the worst case of Sunken Cost Fallacy.
Also, even though deification is inferior to immortal-hood that doesn't require you to die first, Jie immortals make up the majority of post-WOI celestial officials. If you include all the 10k Formation filler NPCs, over 50% of the new celestial bureaucracy would be Jie Sect members.
As much as I think that realistically, the post-WOI Celestial Realm is gonna be quite the toxic working environment where very few people like their jobs, the sect who's least interested in mortal affairs still hold a significant degree of administrative power over those very mortals.
In my opinion, that's actually a good explanation for the popular trope of celestial cruelty, and also a damning proof——a future where the Jie Sect triumphs and the Shang dynasty does not meet its fated doom is gonna be worse.
TL;DR: The alternative to "Chan Sect Bad" shouldn't be "Chan Sect Good", but "Chan & Jie are both assholes in their own unique ways, even if one is arguably fighting for a good cause."
I always feel like the Jie Sect is folk religion-coded——their indiscriminate admission standards, large number of yaoguai members, the multiple "Holy Mothers" whose titles are reminiscent of Ming sectarian cults like Luoism, etc.
And I wonder if believers of the "Jie as tragic rebels getting fucked over by their elitist Chan rivals" narrative will actually accept that folk religion side of them, the side that's mostly seen as "feudal superstitions" in the modern era.
Or how the most infamous of the sectarian cults grow out of the same folk soil too——the White Lotus Societies and Boxers (fyk, the latter actually called upon JTTW and FSYY characters in battle).
Not everything folk and marginal is good, and pointing out the failings and harmful parts of traditional folk beliefs doesn't make them any less fascinating to me.
If Jie is folk religion, Chan is organized (somewhat) Daoism, the kind that doesn't usually get called "Illicit Cults" by local officials. More temple/sacred mountain-centric, more likely to have state patronage, less approving of the "If it works, it gets worshipped" mentality of folk religion.
Generally speaking, the more organized Daoism liked to try and distinguish itself from folk religion, in their attempt to gain legitimacy as the better, more professional service provider…
That's why deification, though inferior to immortal-hood, is still granted to all the dead Jie immortals regardless of their allegiance and conduct. Why Hongjun, a FSYY original character, shows up to scold Tongtian and drag him back to his palace, but also uses the Deux Ex Machina Pills to forbid him, Yuanshi, and Lao Tzu from ever fighting among themselves again.
You cannot destroy folk religion, and the organized Daoists don't want to, either.
Their go-to option is absorbing folk practices and deities into their own system, as subordinates and guardians. Of course, you can still see it as forced submission to the official and the orthodox, something done purely for survival.
But more often than not, it's a mutual exchange of benefits, or seen as an honor by the folk side, who eagerly welcomed the legitimacy granted by the state a/o famous temples.
This is how Daoism, as a religion, survives and thrives: by constantly absorbing things from folk religion, Buddhism, and Confucian thoughts.
You can't wipe out the folk religion practices as evil, superstitious cults, any more than you can wipe out the organized Daoists without losing the alchemy theories, ritual texts, and pantheon-building projects that serve as major inspiration for the folk side of things. Especially when the line between them is such a blurry one.
If the scammy, cultish, and ignorant side of folk religion isn't its entirety, then neither are the stagnancy, compliance and arrogance of institutional Daoists.
