I never understood why jun wu got so angry by xie lian's heart in abyss, body in paradise sentence. It's crazy that the priest said that that apparently what was started everything.
Thanks for the question, anon!
So I think an important thing to remember here is that it’s not really Xie Lian’s line that started everything; it was the destruction of Wuyong, and the Wuyong prince’s fall and subsequent torture over the centuries.
Let’s talk about the Yi Nian ghost:
According to the legends, on the south side of the Yellow River existed a bridge called the Yi Nian Bridge, where a famous ghost wandered for many years.
This ghost was utterly terrifying—dressed in ruined armor with flames from hell following its footsteps. Its whole body was also covered in blood and pierced by numerous blades and arrows. Every step he took left behind the traces of both blood and fire. (Ch.1, Sakhyulations)
Knowing what we know about Jun Wu, this ghost certainly represents his state shortly after the fall of Wuyong, when his bridge had fallen, and when the people burned his temples and stabbed his heart into mush. This ghost, in turn, is the result of Jun Wu purging all that suffering; the ghost itself is in a state of confusion, and has made its way to another bridge, one whose name means ‘One Thought/Memory/Yearning’. This name further reflects the mental state of both ‘Jun Wu’ and that ghost:
Having been utterly destroyed by suffering, both beings have constructed themselves around that single kernel of torture.
That one memory lies at the core of both their beings (where by ‘Jun Wu’, I mean the shell of that identity; he, of course, has more beyond that, but it is too painful for him to access beyond the ‘one memory’).
And in that memory is also a yearning:
It would wander about at the foot of the bridge and stop travelers to ask them three questions:
If one did not answer correctly, they would be completely swallowed up by the ghost in one bite.
This ghost is a crown prince who has lost all his bearings: he doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know who he is, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do. But he craves for all of those things: a home, an identity, and a path. When he swallows people up, it’s not necessarily because they’ve answered wrong; perhaps it is just that they have answers to those questions, and the ghost wants what they have.
The golden boy of Xian Le, how smug must his face have seemed when he told that ghost that he was not in the abyss, but the human realm. And afterwards, not only did he defeat this ghost which Jun Wu had used to purge his suffering, not only did he destroy this part of him, not only did he successfully defend a bridge–
(and ah, how that must have stung, with how comparatively easy it was to protect the Yi Nian bridge, as though that could amount to anything next to the heaven-crossing bridge)
–but Xie Lian even had the bare-faced audacity to say those words:
“Body in the abyss, but heart in paradise.”
As though he knew! As though he knew anything about suffering! Anything that could happen to a heart!
Well, Jun Wu would make sure he’d know; he’d make sure Xian Le would understand that there were abysses impossible for a heart to escape, even with a body in paradise.
(Who knew that, as he attempted to do with the ghost, Xie Lian would indeed help the Wuyong prince back from his abyss, back to his own humanity. “This is the human realm,” indeed…)
@thisworldgodonlyknows also wrote some analysis on this prompt, if you’d like to read more about what those arc words mean to Xie Lian.
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