THANK YOU! This! Ok, so look. I was trained as an archaeologist.
That means I look at ruins. A lot of ancient ruins, in all sorts of places. One of the MOST common reasons a place becomes a ruin? War. In war, there is pillaging. It is part of the whole, "utter destruction of our enemy" thing. Now, many times, those places and communities do not survive or rebuild. But! Some of them do! And the ones that do have some things in common. They have a charismatic leader, who is smart, savvy about money, trade, and making connections, and who the people LIKE. Because if the people HATE you, you don't stay in power. Nobles revolt, peasants revolt, crops fail, etc. Point is, a bad leader dies. One way or another. Sometimes, even if they are a GOOD leader, they still die (see Cleopatra. By all accounts, she was a darn good leader. She was just up against Rome, and a Roman leader who HATED her. It was a bad situation.).
Now, let's translate this to a completely fictional story, which really isn't completely fleshed out. It's mostly told through hearsay, conjecture, and pretty terrible observation. So, what can we gather from this mess? Well, Lotus Pier is crushed by the Wen. Now, what that actually means sort of varies depending on what version of the story you are looking at, be it live action, donghua, or web novel. One has the whole sect burned down, needing to be completely rebuilt, buildings and disciples, books, treasury, all of it. One, from what I can tell, has the buildings standing with damage, but everything most probably looted, all the people and disciples killed, and the area probably defiled. And one, also from what I can tell, has everything pretty much ok, with just the need for new disciples. Y'all can please correct me if this is wrong!! So, from the get go, we can say the sect is financially broke. The Wen probably looted and took all the money, gold, precious things, and everything not nailed down and either melted it down, carried it off to Nightless City, sold it, or destroyed it. If JC got anything back, he would have had to probably steal it back or go through the halls and treasury of Nightless City and do some looting of his own during the Sunshot Campaign. Which is, quite honestly, what I would have done. Just grabbed as many disciples as I could and told them to take everything they could. Strip it bare. Doors, wood, precious stone, metal, books, weapons, herbs, medicine, fabric, food, horses, chickens, load it up, haul it back to Yunmeng. Look, do you REALLY think the Wen stopped at looting Lotus Pier? I don't. They looted all of Yunmeng. You conquer a land, you do so COMPLETELY.
JC had to be smart. In three months, he gathers enough people to train, to make a small fighting force. A small, TRAINED, fighting force. While ON THE RUN. Do you have any idea how hard that is? How much discipline that takes? Take that whole Mulan I'll Make a Man Out of You training montage and speed it up times like 3 or so. Now do it on the run. Yeah. That. His disciples are probably the desperate and the last ones standing. The ones left of whatever sects or villages the Wen rolled over. The ones who want nothing more than revenge. JC speaks their language. But, he has to KEEP speaking it. He has to keep offering them something to keep them interested, to keep them with him.
This is why he CAN'T protect WWX when he steals the Wen from the Jin camp. His whole sect is made up of people who were destroyed by the Wen. And it's just rebuilding. He has very little political capitol. Yes, his parents had lots of political capitol. They are VERY DEAD. The powerful sect they commanded? Destroyed. The monetary capitol they had? Gone. He is literally starting from less than NOTHING. He has a MEMORY. He is leveraging that up the wazoo. He is bluffing his ass off. And he has a sister to protect that is effectively held in another sect. Yes, she has the protection of the sect's matriarch. And the heir, for what that's worth (not much). But the sect leader is a crocodile. Not a snake. He is a PREDATOR. And JC KNOWS it. He knows that whole sect is DANGEROUS to his sister. That they can destroy his little sad sect. Moreover, they can incite OTHER sects to destroy his sect without ever getting their swords dirty.
Yunmeng is a trading hub. Look, it is on a confluence of rivers flowing into a lake system. That is probably the reason the Wen wanted it. It is the fastest, easiest way to get goods anywhere. Water is the lifeblood of civilization. Always has been. You control the waterways, you control trade, you control the money and the people. This is HOW JC builds his sect back up in 13 years. Trade. What, you thought it was LUCK? Nah, bro. Like I said, a good leader has to be SMART.
But here's the thing. We see MDZS through WWX's perspective. His, and everyone who supports his viewpoint. So what serves to prove his points. Which needs to cast someone in a bad light. JC becomes that foil. LWJ, who really has no clue what it takes to run a sect, to protect people politically, to deal with people who want to tear you down, who only sees things in black and white, and who has always had a prejudice against not only JC, but Yunmeng Jiang itself since the Cloud Recesses Study Arc, serves to support that. The entire Lan clan, in fact, serves to do that. They also serve to show the hypocrisy of the entire cultivation world. 4,000 rules, and they only follow them when it suits them? And punish only those who they really want to? Yeah. But that's a WHOLE nother rant. The point is, that all the nasty rumors? Some of them were probably very useful for JC.
What do I mean by that? Ok. So you have a very fragile sect. Lots of newbies. Not a lot of financial, political, or social capitol. If a stronger sect wants to squash you, all you really have to stop them is the memory of when your sect was powerful. And that is being RAPIDLY eroded by your 1st disciple running around acting INSANE. You are constantly having to apologize for him, because you have NO FUCKING CLUE what the HELL he is doing. Why? BECAUSE HE WON'T TALK TO YOU!! HE'S ALWAYS DRUNK! He's never there! Where is he? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!? NOT YOU! You look incompetent! You go to your sister, the only person who your crazed 1st disciple brother will listen to. She says to just give him time. Won't ask him what's going on. Won't help. Won't come back to your sect, because she is working on getting married, and you are doing your best to support that (while your brother hates it). So, you are fucked. And the other three major sects are allied, and allied AGAINST you. Are you losing disciples? That is never actually said. What about rebuilding Lotus Pier? Rebuilding Yunmeng? Is there famine? How's trade? Are people moving back? Are crops getting into the ground? Honestly, how JC didn't drop dead of a heart attack, or stress ulcer I don't know. But somehow, he rustled up enough to get his sister married, and managed to somehow start to grow his sect. And then the whole world blew up in his face. And he lost the rest of his family, except for one little baby. And you have to wonder, how much did the Jin make him pay to stay in Jin Ling's life? And is this where the terrifying reputation begins? Because somehow Yunmeng Jiang gets the unfuckwithable reputation. If there is any sect leader you don't offend, it's Sandu Shengshou, and if there is any sect you don't offend, it's Yunmeng Jiang. That is one hell of a reputation.
So, to recap. JC is not a horrible sect leader. He's a smart, savvy, successful sect leader. I would hazard to say he's a much better sect leader than his father ever hoped to be. But no one wants to admit that. Because the story is from the point of view of WWX, and we all know how that goes. Not that I don't like WWX. But, the story is written from one point of view. Looking at other povs is interesting. And fun. 😀
