I wanted to do a step-by-step explanation of how Xie Lian made Hua Cheng so phenomenally lucky with the shackle around his ankle, using basically nothing but the text evidence. Cuz even though this is what so much of the plot revolves around, what makes Hua Cheng himself and what ties them together, very, very few fans seem to understand it.
Right off the bat, we have this explanation of Hua Cheng's fate, and how there's only being one way to fix it. And Xie Lian's solution is providing someone who's unlucky with another cup of luck, HIS cup of luck:
Much later, this concept comes up when Xie Lian shackles his luck. He explicitly wants his luck to flow to others:
Much later, MNQ talks about Hua Cheng's fate once more. It has not changed. Hua Cheng even acknowledges it as being scarily accurate, so we KNOW that luck did not change in his living life. MNQ takes one look at him and knows it's that fate, too:
And that's all when he's overflowing with luck. But that luck ceases. When does it cease? Well, we see it divined by his dice before they confront Jun Wu:
So leave that alone for now. As we continue with the story, MNQ talks about what happened to HC on Mt. Tonglu; how he didn't dissipate even when he should have, and was so lucky that even when gouging his eye out, he not only didn't dissipate, he ASCENDED:
And of course, we know how lucky Hua Cheng had consistently been since then. His entire character since that point is how fortune flows from his fingertips. Which is why rolling a one was so exceedingly odd and foreboding, enough that even HC halted.
And what happens in the cave?
Hua Cheng breaks Xie Lian's shackles. Both the one locking his spiritual power and the one locking his fortune.
This is exceedingly great! Why would Hua Cheng have divined such terrible fate for himself? Well... What happened just after this shackle breaking?
He nearly dissipated.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Hua Cheng and Xie Lian share a single fate. A single cup, just as a married couple drinks from the same cup on their wedding.
That's also why, even though Xie Lian isn't unlucky anymore, he keeps running into misfortune in the extras. It's Hua Cheng's Star of Solitude. But they have filled their lives with enough other fortune to overcome it. If that confuses you, I go more in-depth about that concept here.
No, you're not wrong, Hua Cheng did get Xie Lian's luck from that ankle shackle.
I made some ramble yesterday but figured I'd make a proper post about it. Every time I look up Hua Cheng for an art reference, one of the top google results is someone insisting that Hua Cheng became lucky not because of Xie Lian's luck, but because Xie Lian saving him 'nullified' the Solitary Star/Star of Solitude.
That's just incorrect, and every time I see it I get annoyed.
So I'm going to go over the facts of the story, I'm going to go over explaining what those facts mean in terms of how it clearly points to Hua Cheng taking Xie Lian's luck, as well as the facts of Bai Zi and the actual Solitary Star in that astrological fortune telling, then I'm going to go over the subtext of what it means, and finally I'll explain why the nullification theory is just patently false.
In the story, Hua Cheng himself isn't really unlucky; it's more that misfortune follows him like a cloud, dragging everyone around him into unluckiness, especially his parents. This is his actual fortune:
'He is destined to bring destruction to all save for himself' - He isn't unlucky, rather, he makes everyone else unlucky and this causes him to be isolated and treated as a curse by everyone around him. When Xie Lian asks about how to prevent it, this scene plays out, talking about a cup:
Directly after discussing Hua Cheng's fate and how to reverse it, Xie Lian has a discussion with the State Preceptor where he insists he would certainly give someone his own cup/fortune if they needed it.
Much later on, when everything is said and done, and the ghost Wuming is assumed dead, Xie Lian shackles his luck with the intention of making true on that statement. He wants his luck and fortune to spill over into others; to share his cup:
It is from that point on that Wuming's life takes a turn. Rather than be annihilated, he somehow survives. He not only survives, he against all odds creates a powerful spiritual weapon from his own eye and shortly after becomes a god. He is so lucky that even when jumping from the heavens, he is not shackled by Jun Wu. He sees immense wealth and incredible luck to the point where winning a gamble against him is impossible and he seems to control luck itself. He has so much luck to the point it seems to rub off on others just like Xie Lian's unluckiness does - he can even make Xie Lian not have such terrible luck for a short period of time.
And this is all despite his fate itself not changing, as observed by the State Preceptor:
But even with this supposedly horrible, still occurring fate, we only see him rolling sixes until one single point that catches even Hua Cheng off guard:
He dismisses it, saying he's able to make his own luck and decide whether something is a bad situation or not.
But what happens shortly after this dice roll?
Xie Lian's shackles are broken, and Hua Cheng nearly annihilates for something as simple as giving too much spiritual energy. Even when he seemed fine moments before, as observed by Feng Xin and Mu Qing:
It takes Hua Cheng over a year to return. But he does. And that's how the story ends.
So what does this mean?
Hua Cheng was born with a very terrible fate. The exact breakdown of his fate(ie the entire star chart) isn't stated beyond being born under the Star of Solitude, or Solitary Star. This is not a TGCF invention. This is a star from Ba Zi, Chinese astrological divination.
The solitary star is exactly as the name suggests. It implies solitude, either by choice or by outside forces. It is one of the unluckiest stars, and can cause misfortune for your family - especially parents. Think of Hua Cheng's mother, who died when he was very young.
Hua Cheng is an introverted person by nature; even those that like him he pushes away. He only likes Xie Lian. And he kept his distance from even Xie Lian for a long time and frequently ran off at the drop of a hat during the Xianle days.
When he no longer wished to keep his distance, he was forced apart by outside circumstances until 800 years had passed - and 8 is a very lucky number in Chinese, and 800 years is also spoken into being by those Land of Tender fruits in the cave scene when they insisted he wouldn't get a taste of Xie Lian "even if he dreamt about it for 800 years."
Hua Cheng lives out this life of solitude even past Xie Lian meeting him. In fact, rather than Hua Cheng's luck/fortune getting any better, Xie Lian's luck takes a turn for the worse. It is when they meet and their fates become connected, when Xie Lian is certain to be his spouse one day and thus a family member, that everything goes wrong for the kingdom of Xianle.
It is true that this misfortune is because of Jun Wu; Hua Cheng is stated to have such a misfortunate fate because the Kiln disperses misfortune across the land, and Hua Cheng by the State Preceptor's thoughts is likely to have received that upon his already inauspicious birth hour - ie he was born with a terrible fortune already, and Jun Wu's way of handling the Kiln's resentment caused this misfortunate to increase thousandfold.
But this thousandfold-worse misfortune rubbing off on Xie Lian upon their meeting, and the subsequent tying of fates is what caused Jun Wu to notice Xie Lian in the first place - it wasn't until after this that Xie Lian fought a ghost of Jun Wu's making, caught his eye for essentially recreating the Xianle myth of the God-Pleasing Martial Warrior, and became known as the God-Pleasing Crown Prince.
This horrible fortune continues. Just as what was predicted by the State Preceptor, he died before reaching the age of 19, after he'd already taken an entire kingdom down with him. We know it has to be the star that caused this - if his fortune had truly been nullified, he wouldn't have died by 19.
And even post death, the misfortunate fate caused by the Solitary Star only stops when Xie Lian shackles his luck. It is at that point where Hua Cheng instead becomes the pinnacle of luck itself.
When Xie Lian shackles his luck, it flows into the most misfortunate cup of the person closest to him, the one who was always following in his footsteps, always so close but just too far away - It goes to Hua Cheng. But because he was never actually unlucky himself, this doesn't result in him just having Xie Lian's level of relative luckiness. Instead, his cup overflows. He is so brimming with luck from having both his own and Xie Lian's that he becomes exceedingly wealthy and successful and powerful.
This comes to a halt once that luck is no longer being redirected. It is upon redirection that Hua Cheng nearly dies, very similarly to how he was barely hanging onto life as Wuming; it is described that when Wuming appeared on Mt Tonglu, nearly dispersed, that he was essentially transparent. He becomes transparent again upon the shackle breaking.
But he doesn't disperse, not fully. Why doesn't he?
Because according to Taoist belief, your luck is only one part the circumstances of your birth. The three cosmic factors of your luck are your Heaven luck, your Earth luck, and your Human luck.
Heaven luck is the luck you are born with. But with those other two lucks, you can overcome the circumstances of your birth. Earth luck is about the environment you are in. This is where the concept of Feng Shui comes from; it's setting up your environment to bring prosperity and luck. Human luck is the luck you make for yourself; the decisions you make to cultivate a better future.
Hua Cheng by the point of the shackle breaking has been cultivating for 800 years by devoting himself to his one true god, Xie Lian. He has built a solid foundation for himself, amassed great wealth, and set himself into such confidence he can comfortably look danger in the face and decide that he makes his own fate, he decides if something is dangerous or not, and he decides whether he will come or go, even as he's at the point where he should die:
After 800 years of that overflowing fortune, he was able to build up that Earth luck and Human luck to a point where he could negate the Heaven luck by himself, so when it came to bite him in the ass, he still came back after a little over a year and married his newly-no-longer-misfortunate beloved.
Though it is worth noting, it is somewhat implied by the extras that this Star of Solitude still continues to screw with Xie Lian's life:
1. When he wants to give Hua Cheng a birthday present, it ends up with a terrible day of misfortune and heartache that ends in the present needing to be crushed to ash.
2. When he visits the Temple of Ten Thousand Gods, an embarrassing event happens where his near-naked statue is running around the heavens and he has to basically strangle Mu Qing away from his rock garden to ensure he doesn't witness his statue getting dicked down in there.
3. And when Hua Cheng goes too far in bed, Xie Lian runs off without his spiritual energy being refilled, and in his weakened state ends up getting bit by a monster that eats his memories and causes him a few days of misfortune.
But these are overcome by Hua Cheng being there to help him, and by Xie Lian loving him too deeply to care.
Now subtextually, what does this all mean? What's the relevance of it?
Number one, there is the obvious relevance that Xie Lian takes the opposite path to which Hua Cheng was born.
Hua Cheng was born against his will with a fate that makes him the eye of an unlucky hurricane; that makes people around him incredibly unlucky, including Xie Lian himself.
Meanwhile, Xie Lian, in an act of atonement and possibly because he feels he hasn't done enough cultivation work to be worth ascending to godhood, shackles his luck so that everyone around him becomes luckier.
An unwilling circumstance of birth versus a confident and willful choice. It ties them together in that way, and their fates effect each other.
And at the end of it, Xie Lian's act of selflessness is exactly what comes back to bring him happiness. It is purely because of that act of shackling that Hua Cheng became who he did and was able to embrace Xie Lian as an equal. They have walked in each other's shoes and felt each other's hardships and seen each other's rock bottoms and came out the other end as equals who understand each other as completely as only a lovingly married couple could.
Number two, the use of the cup metaphor - it's another example of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng being so clearly laid out as fated spouses that it's barely even subtext. In Chinese, 'hejin,' or to 'drink from the same cup,' means to be married. This comes from a wedding tradition of the same name, also called jiaobeijiu, where the bride and groom drink from the same cup to symbolize that their lives have become one.
Xie Lian takes in Hua Cheng's luck and gives Hua Cheng his own luck in return, which Hua Cheng gives right back. In essence, if their lucks are symbolized by cups, they're doing the same thing as the wedding tradition.
It is no mistake that MXTX compares luck to cups. This was clearly very intentional.
And finally, why does the 'nullified' theory just not make sense?
Because Hua Cheng continues to follow in the footsteps of the fortune the State Preceptor described specifically until that shackle is placed on Xie Lian's ankle.
He is beaten to shit almost every time he is seen alive in Xie Lian's backstory, even the times he goes unnamed. When he is not beaten to shit, he's not living any sort of particularly happy life. He always appears to be alone. He is often fighting other people. He dies before the age of 19, is captured and shoved into a lantern as a confused newborn ghost spirit, follows Xie Lian aimlessly to see tragedy befall him again and again, and then nearly annihilates - and only does not dissipate because of that shackle that spread Xie Lian's fortune to him.
As shown before in this post with the example of the State Preceptor's outburst, even when he is Crimson Rain Sought Flower, the person who was once Honghong-er still shows all the signs of being born under the Star of Solitude. As I pointed out before, even after their marriage, Xie Lian seems to run into misfortune quite often, though not the same basic unluckiness he used to before his shackle was broken.
All of this suggests pretty clearly that no true nullification happened, and what nullification did occur was from the Three Cosmic Factors of Luck; Hua Cheng's own cultivation practices and work that was only made possible by Xie Lian filling his cup to overflow with luck.
This also puts a new meaning onto that poem that Hua Cheng loves so deeply:
It's not just about separation and love. Just like the Taoist poet that wrote it said half his fate is in the devotion to Taoism and half his fate is his wife, half of Hua Cheng's life was Xie Lian, the other was the cultivation, the devotion, the work he put in to become who he did; the cultivation he did to nullify that Star of Solitude himself, to no longer be that abused little boy he hated so deeply.
art will save you, being unreasonably passionate about something niche will save you, letting past sources of joy show you the way back to yourself will save you, earnestness over composure will save you, the natural world will save you, caring for something bigger than yourself will save you, daring to be seen will save you, kindness not as a whim but a principle will save you, appreciation as a practice will save you, daring to try something new will save you, grounding will save you, love will save you, one good nights sleep will save you
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