A thought about the juniors in Yi City

 Okay, so this post is going to contain a lot of spoilers for Mo Dao Zu Shi (aka The Untamed), so please don't read further if you haven't finished reading/watching it.  (I mean, I'm assuming no one would even want to read further if they're not the least bit interested in MDZS...)  This is relating to a background element of the Yi City arc, in the context of the revelations made at the end of the novel.

All right, so.  The luring of the juniors to Yi City.  Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji (well, mostly just Wei Wuxian) conclude that this was done by Nie Huaisang to make sure that they find the piece of his brother's body that Jin Guangyao hid there.

But...

Does that actually make sense?

Aside from being a bit out of his league, skill-wise,  what's the point of it?  The juniors get there after Wangxian, so they're clearly not drawing them there.  In fact, they kind of get in the way!

So, it occurred to me, what if that wasn't Nie Huaisang luring the juniors there with the cat-murdering incidents?  (And taking on the disguise of a local hunter to lie to them and make sure they went into Yi City.)

What if it was the same person who later kidnapped those exact same juniors in a blatant attempt to kill them?

I mean, we know that Su Minshan was actively aware of the conflict going on in Yi City, what with him popping up suddenly to take away Xue Yang's corpse in order to retrieve the partially repaired Yin Tiger Tally (and actually didn't he show up before that, too, to fight against Lan Wangji in the midst of everything else that was going on? or am I nuts?), and we also know that he's not capable of defeating Lan Wangji, and that no matter how much he claims otherwise, he knows, deep down, that he's not as skilled as Lan Wangji.  Therefore, wouldn't it be in his and his master's best interests to put the heroes off balance by filling Yi City with junior disciples they'll have to scramble to protect?

Seriously, the more I think about this, the more this is the only way it makes sense.

Jin Guangyao has to be worried by this point:  there are only two pieces of Nie Mingjue's body that aren't in our heroes' care, just the arm in Yi City and the head in the treasure vault.  He doesn't just want to retrieve the other arm before them:  he also wants to put a stop to them.  And he's got to be suspicious at this point that the man traveling with Lan Wangji isn't his mad half-brother Mo Xuanyu but a revived Wei Wuxian.  What better way to find out the truth than to put the two of them on the defensive around Xue Yang, who will definitely ferret out the truth one way or another?  (Also, how immediately certain Xue Yang was that Wei Wuxian was, in fact, Wei Wuxian does kind of suggest that maybe someone had already told him that Wei Wuxian was alive again and might be headed to Yi City looking for that arm.)  Plus with so many juniors to look after, then Wangxian might slip up and get killed by Xue Yang, or so the villains would have hoped.

Then, of course those same juniors were the first kidnapped in prep for the Second Siege on the Burial Mounds, because now they needed to die (in the villains' twisted way of thinking) because they might (and indeed did) side with Wei Wuxian against the clans since they now know him and know he's not the least bit evil.

Meanwhile, if we accept the explanation Wei Wuxian proffered, what is the logic of it?  Nie Huaisang would have to display skills we have no reason to think he has in order to risk his own life (and the lives of several underlings, since the groups of juniors were being lured simultaneously from different locations) in order to murder cats and leave them on doors and windows to make sure the juniors arrived in Yi City where their presence did absolutely nothing to inform Wangxian they needed to be there, and did little to nothing to help them resolve the situation.  (And yes, that was risking their lives.  Especially for whoever was luring Jin Ling, because Jiang Cheng would not have hesitated to kill pretty much anyone alive if he thought they were a threat to Jin Ling.)  I mean, I suppose the thinking was that Nie Huaisang assumed Wei Wuxian had been following Jin Ling when he arrived at the Saber Tomb rather than having a way to track the body parts, but that doesn't actually make much sense, given they found the torso without any assistance from Nie Huaisang.  Plus, if Nie Huaisang was the one luring them there, why would he have gotten random juniors from other clans involved?  Just Jin Ling and the Lan Clan juniors would be more than enough to get Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji motivated to save them.  I guess the theory could be that he was hoping to have exactly what happened happen:  that his real goal in involving the juniors was to get them on Wei Wuxian's side, so that when it was necessary to confront Jin Guangyao, those juniors might persuade their fathers to take Wei Wuxian's side, but...I don't know.  That feels a bit weaker as a reason for luring the juniors there compared to the obvious motive Su Minshan and Jin Guangyao would have.  Admittedly, Jin Guangyao wasn't able to bring himself to harm Jin Ling personally, but he did order him to be trapped in the Burial Mounds along with the other juniors, so whatever affection he had for Jin Ling, it wasn't that strong, considering the whole Second Siege of the Burial Mounds plan involved everyone there dying except for Su Minshan.

Ultimately, all I have here is a theory.  And I feel like I need to reread the novel to look for any details that could spell out a "yes, I'm right" or a "no, I'm definitely wrong" on this.  I probably won't reread it just for that (especially since I'm in the middle of trying to reread one of my own novels so I can rewrite it and make it suck less, and that's going so slowly that I'll probably barely finish by the time the next volume of Legend of Exorcism comes out) but whenever I next reread it, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for any signs on this subject.  (If nothing else, I'll keep an eye on this issue whenever I reread the novel in prep for the massively-complicated, undoubtedly-draining, NHS-centered, canon-compliant fic I have planned, which would be following his entire quest for revenge, actually starting before there was need for revenge, when he was still trying to prevent his brother's death.  I don't write many fics where the tragedies all still happen, so that fic might be my only chance to actually use this theory.)