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Chapter 1 — Funeral Bell

written 4 march 2022.

• chapter title comes from a phildel song by the same name. it was a song i found when trying to make a playlist to fit the vibe for this fic from the music i already have, and i was using one of those sites that gives you songs that sound similar to ones you already have, so i put in a regina spektor song (probably "better" or "samson"), discovered phildel and had a field day that afternoon LOL.
• "funeral bell" was chosen in particular perhaps in part bc it was the first phildel song i found, but i'd like to think it was chosen more for its haunting vibe.
• still, even without the context of it being a song title, the words "funeral bell" set the tone of the chapter exactly as i want. "funeral bell" can be in reference to qiqi— and yes, the child xiao killed was intended to be qiqi if you weren't aware of that hc/implication idk which it is— dying n becoming a zombie, but it can also be read as referring to xiao and how he feels this is the end of his duty and therefore his life.
• version 2.6 leaks abt the chasm were releasing as i wrote this chapter and are still coming out as i write this, which drives me a little nuts tbh bc i wish to know the electro yaksha lore pls. i've deliberately left the whereabouts and activities of the other yaksha open to interpretation in this chapter as a result, though i have a few explanations in mind for the time period i have picked (and will not be revealing until close to the end)
• the bit where it's just like "CRACK!!! / and everything goes black" was done to give the impression that xiao was killed.
• i did toy, very early on, with the idea of leaving it unclear as to whether xiao was alive or not during his time at the lighthouse castle until the very end, but the image of xiao unwillingly falling asleep came to me so vividly that i ultimately dismissed it lol.
• "his lungs panting heavily in his chest and his heart pounding sharply between his ribs, each for want of air" was written w/the association btwn air, wind, and freedom in mind.
• i'm sure you could say smth like, "oh, despite what he thinks he desires (to obey his believed duty to die), what he really wants/needs is to take his graveness down a few pegs to be free to live" but i didn't have, like, a specific analysis in mind, just the association. i guess that makes it kind of a useless reference lol
• the room in the tree where xiao is put to sleep is where wangshu inn is in-game
• "you made a mistake, and i must be strict in correcting it" is meant to reference the chinese three word classic/san zi jing. the specific line in this case is "教不嚴, 師之惰" and roughly translates as "if [a child] is not taught strictly, then the teacher is lazy/at fault"
• san zi jing is a classical children's text abt the importance of teaching n discipline n stuff, among other things little kids ought to learn early if they're to become scholars, which is why xiao comments that he learned to read because of these words/concepts and finds it patronizing of zhongli to reference them when he's meant to be on death's door.
• "if jade is not cut and polished, it cannot be a thing of use" is also from san zi jing: "玉不琢, 不成器", this time (a translation) quoted wholesale. both of these san zi jing quotes are my own translations
• some notes abt this one is that to carve and polish jade are essentially the same thing;
• and that the word for "thing", "器", is more specifically the kind of thing that is used as a tool, like 武器 (weapon) or 器官 (anatomical organ).
• i don't remember where i first heard "a flaw does not conceal jade's lustre" ("瑕不掩瑜")— i found it written down in a discord channel i use to talk to myself/keep scraps n quotes i wanna remember— but i looked into its source when writing this, and it comes from a different, older, chinese classic, the book of rites/li jing, which is actually mentioned in san zi jing as one of the six classics to be studied.
• in the a/n i said i'd leave what zhongli means by using all these lines up to reader interpretation, and ofc my intended meanings as the author are no more important than any other interpretation a reader may draw that is supported by the text (that's death of the author babey!!!!!!!), but this is a post-mortem so i'll give my thought process anyway lol
• BEAR IN MIND that classical chinese writing style is written in such a way that as few words as possible are used, and are carefully chosen based on their history, connotations, and contexts they are frequently used in.
• chinese is a language where often times, you use two words w/abt the same meaning individually to pin down your exact meaning/connotation through their overlap, so classical texts are very open to interpretation because they will only use one word and expect you to use context clues + knowledge of other words this one is frequently combined with (and also sometimes knowledge of other classical texts/folk stories n legends).
• as a result, any translation of them will be colored in by the translator's interpretation, and i am no exception. the way i word things in my translations may shift depending on what i'm trying to portray/emphasize more in my writing or analysis, meaning that no matter what, if you only look at me in english, there will be parts where you are interpreting my interpretation of things.
• i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, since english is my first and best language anyway, and despite strongly believing in death of the author, i still want my intents to come through strongly, but sometimes i wonder if people who had a more culturally chinese education than i would find my interpretations unusual.
• anyway the greater context of the san zi jing references translates out to smth like:
• "if a father feeds his child without teaching them, then it is his fault [for having an uneducated child]
  if not taught strictly, then the teacher is careless
  if not taught when young, what will all your life have been for when you're old?
  uncarved jade can't be used for anything
  an unlearned man cannot know his righteous duty."
• basically, this belongs to the part of san zi jing that hammers in the importance of rigorous education. a person isn't born knowing anything, but we all still have a duty to do right by others and contribute good, meaningful, valuable, etc things to society. confucianism and filial piety n stuff.
• in sum: "if you're not strict to correct a person's mistakes while they're learning, then they won't be able to contribute to society."
• as you may have noticed, the jade line can alternatively be translated as "uncarved jade" instead of "if jade is not cut and polished" — this is bc i preferred the imagery of polishing smth that already exists over carving smth new in english.
• the context around the li jing reference translates out to smth like this:
• "the ideal virtuous men of old were comparable to the best and loveliest parts of jade: [snip] while its flaws do not hide its lustre, neither does its lustre shadow its flaws, like loyalty [snip]"
• the parts i snipped were just other examples of how jade is like a good man but here is the full text if you are interested w/an en translation if you hit the word "english" in the upper left-hand corner: https://ctext.org/liji/pin-yi; it's the last part on the page lol
• i actually hadn't known that what i had written down was part of a greater thing when i was writing this, so i found the reversal in the original text to be interesting, but that's neither here nor there for the time being
• anyway, "a flaw does not hide the rest of the gemstone's beauty" is basically a saying that means one mistake doesn't automatically make an otherwise virtuous/good person bad or evil, though i believe in its full context it also means that one must also not use this as an excuse to overlook a person's mistake entirely.
• the thing that the original bit reminded me of was this thing called the jade cabbage, which is, like, exactly what it says on the tin: a realistic cabbage [bok choi] carved from jade. but it's far more interesting than just that, see, because when i was a kid seeing the cabbage in the museum, my mother translated the tour guide's story behind it. i can't seem to find any records of this story in english online except for like, some mormon site that takes it and uses it as a jesus lesson,,, so if that's what you find w/further research just know i am not a mormon and i really have no idea what could have possessed people to do that
• okay so, to my memory what happened is that this guy ordered a block of expensive jade to be carved for like, an important order or something. now, high quality jade is either ALL DARK GREEN or ALL WHITE. basically, all one color— the "flaws" in the li jing jade reference actually mean like, the dappling of color variation in a stone.
• and the guy was like, "aiya!! from the top, the jade looks fine, but then the color doesn't stay all throughout!!" and then on even closer inspection it was like, "aiya!!!! it's cracked and flawed throughout as well!!!!! what am i going to do??"
• and well, it was an important order, and/or just a really expensive block of jade, so he HAD to do smth with it, so he thought on some thoughts, and he thinked on some thinks, and he was like, "…you know what ELSE is green at the top and then fades to white at the bottom? CABBAGES."
• and so then he carefully carved the salvageable parts of the jade into the likeness of a cabbage, turning the cracks into the edges of leaves and the dapples in color into smth resembling the spots you see on a vegetable, and he turned it in or whatever and now it is a national treasure kept in the national palace museum in taipei.
• i don't really have anything else to say abt this or tie it back to lighthouse i just really like the jade cabbage story and wanted to talk abt it. when writing this i found out that the national palace museum also has a MEAT-SHAPED STONE and like. whoever made that n the jade cabbage knew what was up.
• where was i going with all this? OH RIGHT ELABORATING ON MY INTENDED MEANING BY HAVING ZHONGLI QUOTE/REFERENCE THESE THINGS
• so basically, all together, "you made a mistake, and i must be strict in correcting it. […] if jade is not cut and polished, it cannot be a thing of use, but a flaw does not conceal a gemstone's beauty" is zhongli saying, "i have to discipline you for your mistake, but don't think that you're a bad person for making a mistake at all."
• i feel like that meaning is very obvious even w/o explaining all the context around the classics n stuff.
• like, the reason i had zhongli use the jade spear as a prop w/the lines around jade is specifically because even though it is a tool, it is still beautiful; and even though it has cracked under pressure, it is still able to be used. practically speaking, it isn't perfect, but there's no reason to destroy it.
• i also earlier mentioned that xiao feels kind of patronized by the fact that zhongli is quoting san zi jing, but i chose to reference san zi jing in the first place bc of its famous opening line: "人之初, 性本善"
• what it means is that a person (or people) at their start will innately have a nature rooted in goodness/kindness/virtue. "people are born good" basically.
• i tend to translate it as "when humanity first was new, all were innately good," but while i feel like it preserves a sense of poetic rhythm, i find it imperfect bc it's very much based in my interpretation of the text and doesn't feel as if it lends itself to interp the way the orig cn is
• really it's like [person] [innate possessive quality] [first, the beginning of], [smth's nature, character, or innate quality] [foundation, origin, to be based on] [goodness/kindness/virtue], and that is the best i can give you to understand just how this thing's meaning is both very specific, yet also broadly open to interpretation w/some specifics
• anyway that line + the one immediately following it (性相近, 習相遠 — while close in nature, experience makes the difference.) are the ones most well known and easily recited, kind of like the first few digits of pi, and i imagine that like the first few digits of pi, it's one of those things you never really forget, lest you come off as uneducated. i would imagine that even xiao, who doesn't really get people n humanity, would at least understand these lines.
• however, xiao doesn't consider himself a person, so he wouldn't understand how any of this applies to him. he doesn't see the point zhongli is trying to make about mercy, which probably isn't helped by the fact that he signed his contract when zhongli was the more punitive god of war.
• this is how he comes to the conclusion that zhongli's intended punishment is for him to spend a hundred years finding and eating nightmares. which is, if you think abt it, kind of a fucked up punishment to give xiao, who probably definitely has trauma around that kind of thing from his time under the evil god, but since xiao is actively trying to see the punishment in this consequence (hence "he doesn't like it once bit / but perhaps that is the point of it"), it makes sense to him.
• i don't think it'll ever be explicitly acknowledged in the story, but ideally, the gentleness of zhongli's portrayal should give the impression that he cares greatly for xiao's well-being and does not actually intend for xiao to go off and torture himself eating nightmares.
• i do think that in this situation, zhongli fails to realize that xiao refuses to see himself as anything other than a weapon, which is why his words fall short of his intentions. this is probably his fault, too, since i imagine he never really told xiao otherwise, not very strictly anyway, bc it probably never really seemed like that much of a problem, and xiao doesn't argue enough with what zhongli says for it to seem like a problem.
• the bit where xiao lies down in bed n zhongli sits next to him was intended to have the vibe of a parent tucking their young child into bed after a long, bad day. y'know, with like the comforting hair stroking n the weight of their presence giving the feeling of safety n stuff
• like, xiao is obviously Not Comforted by it, but that's meant to be another example of how they view xiao's personhood differently.
• "'sweet dreams,' rex lapis does not say[…]" this entire paragraph came to me so vividly, and it is in fact what possessed me to write this fic instead of the ganqing au i mentioned in my a/n.
• "softly, gently, and against his will, he falls merely asleep"
• xiao would rather die, hence "against his will"
• knowing his history w/violence, "softly, gently" is meant to be exactly what he expects (or maybe even wants) his execution to not be.
• "he falls merely asleep" sometimes i pick phrases based off little turns of phrase i know in chinese. this is not one of them; i have no idea how well this would translate into chinese, but the idea in english was that he fell asleep (into the land of dreams) instead of dying (falling into hell/the land of the dead, or simply ceasing to be).
  
• "still, if this is his command, xiao will piously obey" specifically described as "piously" for two reasons: one, "pious" has pretty religious connotations in english; and two, the concept of "filial piety" and the duty you have to the wishes of those who raised you. it's mostly meant to come off as xiao obeying bc his god commanded him, but also implying that their relationship is also similar to that of parent and child.
• zhongli giving xiao medicine to keep his karmic debt in check is mostly hand-waving on my part to explain why it wouldn't, like, poison the earth as he sleeps in one place, but it's also based on zhongli's voiceline abt xiao, where he asks the traveler to deliver medicine to ease xiao's pain.
• "it's not the worst thing he's ever put in his mouth" pretty obvious dream eating eating reference
• he's also probably not supposed to chew the medicine, but i as i was writing this bit, i was thinking of this time when i was a kid and i ate these really sharp and bitter black herbal pills, and idk if i was supposed to chew on the pills but i did anyway and like NO ONE STOPPED ME.
• "i cannot guarantee they will work outside your physical body" is hand-waving for the bit later on when xiao nearly falls to his karmic debt bc of all the nightmares he's been eating
• "he remembers the days when he could turn into a bird […] and the feeling makes him want to pick at something in his chest" on the same day that i started writing lighthouse, i was also possessed by a scene that may or may not show up later on in the fic that mentions that xiao was once able to turn into a bird, so i figured i might as well commit to that early.
• birds pick at their chest feathers when in stressful situations they can't escape

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