More rambling, incoherent, spoiler-laced notes follow the read more tag. Not really intended for others' eyes, but not actually unsuitable for them, I suppose?
I don't recall if the book spent too much time on the walk to Mount Muxi, either, though this isn't really spending all that long on it, I suppose. (Though I do wonder where the heck it's located in this version. In the novel, the indoctrination camp is relatively centrally located, and Mount Muxi is specified as being closer to Lanling and Gusu than Yunmeng, so the camp is probably actually a bit to the east already, and then the mountain is further east than that. But here, the camp is actually at Qishan, and yet Mount Muxi is still said to be closer to Lanling and Gusu, despite that Gusu is the furthest away from Qishan of any of the clan's homes. Yet there's a line from Wei Wuxian to Wen Qing that indicates the thing with the giant dog was just the previous night. (In which case, his wounds sure healed up fast! Not to mention the holes in his clothes also healing...) Overall, this is just me spending too long on pondering logistics, really...) Anyway, when they stop for a rest at a river, Wei Wuxian goes to get Lan Wangji some water, and is carrying it over cupped in his hand (well, in a leaf cupped in his hand) but we don't get to see him actually drink the water, so it's like...is that highlighting the romance or not? I guess since we don't actually see anything, it doesn't really count...
What does count is that Wei Wuxian used his paperman trick to ask Wen Qing to give Lan Wangji a chance to rest his leg (apparently he can project his voice from one of his papermen) and that because Wei Wuxian bowed in thanks to her after they were at the river, Wen Chao figured out why she had ordered a rest, and he threatened to hurt her brother if she didn't stop showing favor to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.
I wonder what Wen Ning would actually do/say if he realized how much his sister was being pushed around because people were threatening him. I don't think he would be as passive about that as she undoubtedly thinks he would be. It puts me in mind of a great scene from Silverado, when Linda Hunt's character realizes that the villain is threatening her if Kevin Kline's character gets involved in the encroaching violence. Her reaction:
"So good people are being hurt because of me. That makes me mad. Some people think because they're stronger, or meaner, that they can push you around. I've seen a lot of that. But it's only true if you let it be. The world is what you make of it."
(Believe me, it has a lot of punch when she says it.) I feel like Wen Ning's reaction would be similar, though less confidently spoken. Like he'd rather have something happen to him than know that his sister is being forced into turning aside and allowing these terrible things to happen despite her conscience telling her she ought to intervene. (Though, admittedly, there's not a lot she could do to stop Wen Ruohan short of literally using poisoned acupuncture needles and hoping they'd finish him off before he could kill her.)
So only after Wang Lingjiao starts ordering them around do we get the official explanation of who she is. (Though why Jiang Cheng knows who she is and Wei Wuxian doesn't is a question in and of itself.) The scary part of that explanation, though? Jiang Cheng says that Wang Lingjiao started out as the handmaiden of Wen Chao's "principal wife." In other words, that in addition to having a wife he also has concubines.
This is appalling because Wen Chao is supposed to be about the same age as Wei Wuxian and company.
In other words, about eighteen. (Not that any of them can pass for that young, but that's neither here nor there.) The most he could be would be twenty, in the novel. (Because the archery contest at the Grand Symposium that he was so upset about was only for juniors under twenty, and that was about a year prior to the indoctrination camp, so even if he was at the maximum age at that time...) Admittedly, the show doesn't go into any details about the ages of the characters except a few lines referring to Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan as teenagers, and I'm pretty sure it never says anything about Wen Chao's age, but...I'm pretty sure that if you asked the production staff, they'd say that Wen Chao was the same age as the group from the Cloud Recesses study arc, because that's how old he was in the book. And since the timeline has been altered for the show, Wei Wuxian is roughly eighteen or nineteen at this point in the story.
What kind of messed up world gives an eighteen year old boy multiple wives?
I think in the novel Wen Chao only had the one wife. I think. I mean, either way it's horrible, and a sign of the type of people running the Wen Clan, but...ugh. Just ugh.
Even more ugh: Wang Lingjiao just called Wen Qing "useless" and "trash."
Wang Lingjiao is one of those characters who can never suffer enough. Thoroughly without redeeming characteristics. (She gets off way too lightly in the drama...)
Aw, as they set off walking to the cave, Wei Wuxian takes Lan Wangji's arm to help him walk. 💕 And he's not rebuffed!
The expressions on everyone's faces after Wen Chao shoves Wei Wuxian over the cliff are telling.
Jiang Cheng's expression doesn't screenshot well, but just look at it:
He's not even sure if he's horrified or crushed with grief (since Wei Wuxian had just pointedly said the cliff looked bottomless, after all) and can't do anything but stare. He wasn't even the one who called out Wei Wuxian's name: that was, of course, Lan Wangji.
Then there's Wen Qing, Jin Zixuan and Mianmian:
Wen Qing is more dismayed and fearful (her brother has already risked so much for Wei Wuxian's sake, after all!), but Jin Zixuan and Mianmian are both horrified. There's got to be some guilt in Jin Zixuan's reaction as well, a sort of "I never liked him, but I never wanted him to die like that!" along with a sense "that could have been me!" since he was just arguing with Wen Chao moments earlier.
Finally, after the initial reactions, then Lan Wangji turns this look on Wen Chao:
His eyes clearly promising that if Wei Ying was actually harmed, he will make Wen Chao suffer.
Despite his broken leg, Lan Wangji manages to be the first one to climb down the ropes and rush over to Wei Wuxian's side to help him up. 💕 And after some teasing between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, then Wei Wuxian notices Jin Zixuan at the front lines of the hostages who have come down the ropes and hurried over to him, and says that surely he wasn't worried that the monster had eaten Wei Wuxian, and Jin Zixuan actually looks away, like he really was worried and doesn't want to admit it. I feel like they could totally have become friends if things had gone differently after the indoctrination camp. (Heck, they could have eventually become friends even as things went, if only the Qiongqi Path Ambush hadn't happened...)
Though there's no dialog about her presence, the fact that Wen Qing also hurried down there with the hostages instead of staying at the top with the others from the Wen Clan is a wonderful detail. (Seeing as she wasn't there in the novel--in fact, she's not introduced until after the fall of Lotus Pier--it's obviously invented for the show, naturally.)
The confrontation to protect Mianmian goes so differently from in the novel! In the novel, she's running around in a panic, and eventually takes shelter behind the only two people who actually stand still instead of moving away when she comes near: Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan, who for whatever reason just happen to be standing near each other. In the drama, she's already standing by Jin Zixuan's side, as she is now his retainer and seems to be (self-appointed?) in charge of keeping him from saying anything to cause Wen Chao to get mad enough to actually kill him. When the guards start moving to grab her, causing most of the other hostages to back away, Lan Wangji dashes over to stand beside Jin Zixuan, in between her and the guards. This is absolutely in his character, but it's also the first time we've seen him act to protect anyone other than Wei Wuxian. (Well, okay, there was also the thing of turning himself in to stop Wen Xu from murdering any more disciples, but it's slightly different when it's his own clan.) The look on Mianmian's face is interesting, though: she seems unnerved and unsettled by him throwing himself in harm's way for her sake. Like she's afraid he's up to something. (Given the way Wen Chao was behaving towards her, I can't blame her for being alarmed, honestly.)
Ah. A different angle helped to explain things.
Wait. Wait. That doesn't line up with how Lan Wangji moved to get there.
Okay, I've watched the sequence several more times now, and I still can't wrap my head around it. This is where they're all standing as the Wen Clan troops are starting to move in towards Mianmian:
Unless there's suddenly another Lan Clan disciple there, that's Lan Wangji holding the torch in the center of the picture, directly behind Mianmian in this angle. But in him darting to get in position lined up with Jin Zixuan, he's going past Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng closely, which...I mean...is he the Infinite Improbability drive now?
I guess they were editing together enough takes with different staging that the continuity got mucked up? It's confusing, whatever it is.
Actually, maybe what happened was that with most of the takes, they were following the novel's version, wherein Lan Wangji just happened to already be near Jin Zixuan, only then someone wanted Lan Wangji to hasten to purposefully take part in protecting her, because that's the sort of thing he does. But they didn't reshoot the other material, just added some cut-ins.
And since Su Minshan isn't there to try to hand her over, it's a couple of Jin Clan disciples, so that both Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan can stop them, and Jin Zixuan can rebuke them as a disgrace to the clan. (Though, really, that's not true. The Jin Clan is just inherently disgraceful. Jin Zixuan is the exception, not the rule.)
And unlike in the novel, it turns into an all-out fight. Lan Wangji is using his torch to fend off the Wen Clan swords, and Jin Zixuan turns out to be handy with a palm strike. Wei Wuxian is the first we see getting a sword away from a Wen Clan soldier, but Jiang Cheng is the first one we see definitely killing an opponent. (But then Jin Zixuan gets two in short order, so...)
LOL! After Wei Wuxian quotes Wen Mao's saying about the punishment that should befall those who depend on their clans' strength in order to do evil, Wen Chao gets angry at him for spouting BS. This of course makes Wei Wuxian laugh, but it also makes Wen Zhuliu shake his head in disgust that Wen Chao is that ignorant. I feel sorry for him being saddled with babysitting Wen Chao, who embodies everything he hates.
Wen Chao actually engages Wei Wuxian in a brief sword fight (brief because Wei Wuxian 1000% outclasses him), and Jiang Cheng hastens to intercept Wen Zhuliu before he can break up the fight. He, um, doesn't fare so well in that fight.
Wen Qing takes charge of the situation after Wei Wuxian has Wen Chao hostage on the "island" in the lake, and she's the one who orders the Wen Clan solders to put down their weapons, as Wen Chao is too scared even to do that.
The show doesn't always make sure to explain why its new additions don't alter the events from the novel, but in this case, they do show the bottle with the energy restoration pills falling out of Wei Wuxian's clothes as he's saving Mianmian from being branded in the face.
As the Wens are fleeing, it takes two of the common troops to drag Wen Qing out of there. Again, a good touch to establish her character. I'm not clear on why Jiang Cheng and Wen Zhuliu are fighting again, though. Wen Zhuliu seems to have set out specifically to fight him; did he look like he was going to interfere with their retreat? It feels like it was just thrown in there to give Jiang Cheng a more long-standing personal grudge against Wen Zhuliu. (Honestly, does he need it to be a longer grudge when Wen Zhuliu will soon kill both his parents and then melt his golden core so he can't avenge them? That seems more than sufficient reason to me; anything preceding the fall of Lotus Pier becomes inconsequential.)
Despite how often he's threatened her, Wen Chao personally helps Wen Qing up off the ropes at the top. I think he knows deep down that his father would probably be more pissed at losing her than at losing him. She tries to stop them from cutting the ropes, but Wen Chao is able to hold her back from physically interfering, so all she can do is shout at them not to, and look agonized as she's being dragged away. And as they're closing up the opening with rocks, two of the soldiers are holding her back as she's shouting at them to stop. And when she objects that they'll all die if they're closed in there, Wen Chao says it's fine if they do, so she replies, with tears in her eyes, "This will make it difficult for your father to face the main clans." Even this upset, she still manages to say what's expected of her role, instead of saying the honest truth that she can't bear to watch so many innocents suffer and die. (The fact that she's befriended a few of them only compounds her anguish, of course.)
And I was right that Wen Zhuliu is the one dragging her away from the cave after this point. (Or rather, I did remember correctly when in my fic I had her talk about his bruising grip as he dragged her away from the cave.) Wen Chao says they'll come back for the corpses in two days. Which isn't really long enough? In reality, there would 100% be survivors after two days, because a) that's not really long enough for people to starve to death, and b) there would definitely be at least one person willing to resort to cannibalism to increase their own chances of survival. In a xianxia setting, that's even less long enough, because they're all cultivation disciples, so some of them (like Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji) would already know how to practice inedia, making them able to last a lot longer than two days without food. Maybe Wen Chao is just assuming that they'll all be eaten by the monster, but in that case there wouldn't be any corpses, so what is he expecting to collect?
Poor Mianmian! She blames herself for all this! Wei Wuxian is trying to console her, and still ends up flirting a bit in the process, which he kind of has to do if they're going to keep the line from the novel when she tries to defend him after he resurrects Wen Ning and rescues the Wen remnants from the work camp. Not surprising that it's that partial flirting that makes Lan Wangji turn and start walking away.
Okay, I think this counts as a Cultivator Power rather than a Crazy Wei Wuxian Power since it seems basically in line with things others have done so far.
14) After biting his finger to produce blood, Wei Wuxian draws a talisman on his hand and presses that down against the ground. A line of flames is produced, which goes towards the Xuanwu of Slaughter and forms a barrier of flames between the monster and the land.
I think there was mention of using fire talismans against it in the novel, but...enh, clearly I need to reread it. Details are growing fuzzy.
The moment in this when it becomes clear that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji can't escape is so powerful. Jiang Cheng is desperate to get back and save Wei Wuxian; Jin Zixuan has to drag him away. It's one of those spots where Jiang Cheng's true brotherly feelings show through despite all his tsundere posturing.
I'm not sure why Wei Wuxian concludes that the monster is "sealed" in the bottom of the cave "somehow." It's like...yeah, it's "sealed" by being far too large to pass through the opening you just went through. It's trapped down there because it grew too big. Or considering all the people it's eaten over the years, it's more like it's trapped down there because there was a cave-in and the larger openings went away. But there's no reason for it to have been a magical seal.
On top of saying that Mount Muxi is closer to Gusu than to Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian also says that it will only take Jiang Cheng a day or two to get to Yunmeng. Um. Just how far did they walk to get there!? In the novel, he specifically says it takes five days to get to Yunmeng from Mount Muxi, not "a day or two." That's a really bit difference, and even more so considering that the indoctrination camp's location is different in the drama.
People just move unnaturally fast on this show, I guess.
This sequence is so different in the novel, with Lan Wangji acting downright crazed. And, of course, in the novel his father was massively wounded and in fact dying when he was taken to the indoctrination camp. Unlike here, where his father's been dead for an unspecified period of time, implied to have been years.
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