Hey… has anyone considered Gongyi Xiao, and his relationship with the palace master prior to LBH’s arrival to Huan Hua?
Has anyone considered how it’s said he looks like Luo Binghe, and how we all know Luo Binghe was groomed by the palace master — how from the palace master’s point of view, it was Luo Binghe who looked like Gongyi Xiao, and how before Luo Binghe was head disciple, Gongyi Xiao was? Has anyone considered how Gongyi Xiao might have seen what LBH was doing to SQQ, and thought that it felt strangely familiar?
Imagine this: the palace master meticulously grooms Su Xiyan, head disciple of Huan Hua, seeking to shape her and use her. Then she dies after betraying the sect and falling in love with a demon, and all his work is gone — vanished in an instant. And then the palace master finds this young boy, Gongyi Xiao, who looks just like Su Xiyan, and he thinks — now wouldn’t he make a fine replacement? And Gongyi Xiao spends years and years under the careful care and tutelage of the palace master, under his watchful attention, and as the years go by, he feels something change, slowly, more and more. And this goes on until the palace master finds Luo Binghe, and wouldn’t you know it, Luo Binghe looks even more like Su Xiyan. And suddenly Gongyi Xiao is slowly increasingly neglected in favor of this new disciple. Then he’s killed by the nephew of the lover of the girl he was brought on to replace; what’s more, he’s killed because he looks like LBH, because Zhuzhi-lang mistook him for LBH and followed him. His entire life, and his death, were all dictated by this — that he looks like Su Xiyan, that he looks like Luo Binghe. The one thing he ever had to himself, that he ever truly chose, as Gongyi Xiao the person and not Gongyi Xiao the Huan Hua head disciple, was his decision to help SQQ.
Consider, also, the following: GYX was younger than LBH when he was brought into Huan Hua palace.
Now imagine this: Imagine being 8 and the palace master selects YOU to be his ace the apple of his eye, and you are so, so happy, because you think your skills are finally being acknowledged, that you’re talented, that you’re worth something. But he’s always talking about this old disciple he used to have that looked *just* like you, and he always pulls you away from your fellow disciples to talk with you alone, and when you try to show him your sword forms he only looks at your face, and the older you get the more he physically touches you as he’s talking. And then you get replaced. And you find yourself strangely relieved, and guilty that you’re relieved, when the palace master has been nothing but kind to you. Then you see this other disciple, the star disciple, the one who dethroned you, the one who looks like you, the one who the palace master now dotes on and touches and smiles at instead of you; you see this disciple treat his former master in ways that are overtly far far worse, but strangely, feel very similar to the palace master’s behavior. And you can’t stand by — you help this master escape, even against direct orders. And you don’t know why, but as you help him leave, you feel scared, and you feel like crying. And maybe after you help that master escape, you start to think that if the palace master approved what the favored disciple was doing, and if what that disciple is doing feels like what the palace master was doing to his disciples… is it even worth it to stay? If the two most powerful figures in the sect will keep someone like SQQ tied down in a prison and hurt and torture him for days on end — what does that say about the place you grew up in, the place you were once so proud of? And you begin to think something is deeply sick in Huan Hua palace. And then you are killed.
Anyway that being said i think we should think more about what exactly happened to Gongyi Xiao in PIDW
