How Does Hong-Er’S Role Impact The TGCF Story Arcs?

Honestly, the sheer volume of 'fix-it' fics for He Xuan is kind of hilarious and also makes me super emotional. Everyone really took the 'food' thing personally, huh? So you get these incredibly detailed, soft AUs where he gets to just... be fed and cared for, often with Xie Lian awkwardly but determinedly learning to cook something that isn't congee for him. It's less about romance and more about addressing that specific, visceral hurt from the novel in a tangible way. Another massive one is the 'family' theme, but like, a weird, cobbled-together family. Fics where the Mount Tonglu trio—Hua Cheng, He Xuan, and Black Water Subduing Palace—become a weird, bickering, co-dependent unit. Sometimes it's platonic, sometimes it leans into polyamory, but the core is always this fierce, protective dynamic born from shared trauma. They're the only ones who truly get it, so they build their own world. The found family trope hits different when it's between three ancient, powerful, deeply broken ghosts. Surprisingly, a lot of fics explore Xie Lian's 800 years without Hua Cheng from Hua Cheng's perspective. Like, stories where he's a silent observer, a ghost fire watching from the shadows, or later as San Lang, subtly manipulating small events to ease Xie Lian's suffering just a tiny bit. It's this beautiful, painful exploration of devotion that's seen but not acknowledged, filling in the blanks of canon with so much yearning.

I've spent way too much time scrolling through 'Heaven Official's Blessing' fan art corners, and the depictions of Hong-er, especially around Xie Lian, tell a whole story the novels sometimes just hint at. It's rarely just a portrait; it's a study in devotion and distance. A lot of artists focus on scale and perspective—Hong'er gazing up at His Highness from the shadows of a festival crowd, tiny and almost lost in the frame, while Xie Lian is bathed in light. That visual hierarchy screams about the gulf between them, this god and his most devoted, desperate believer. What hits harder are the pieces that play with time. Seeing Hong-er's small, bandaged hand reaching for the hem of a white robe, contrasted in the same image with Hua Cheng's powerful, red-clad arm offering a protective hand to Xie Lian's shoulder. That single composition bridges 800 years of unwavering loyalty. It makes the eventual relationship feel earned, built on a foundation the art lets you see all at once. The fan community really latched onto the parasol as a symbol, too—you see it in so many pieces, either held over young Hong-er or later, as Hua Cheng, held over Xie Lian. The protector becomes the protected, and the art crystallizes that shift beautifully.

Okay, so the whole 'Hong-er is a future version of Hua Cheng' theory has basically been canonized by most of the fandom at this point, but digging deeper than that, people are obsessed with the exact nature of the transition. The really wild one I keep seeing on Weibo and Tumblr speculates that Hong-er's 'death' wasn't a clean break. They think fragments of that original, furious, grief-stricken child consciousness might still exist within Hua Cheng, buried but not gone, and that it surfaces in moments of extreme protectiveness over Xie Lian—like a ghost of a ghost, a core identity that never fully dissolved into the Calamity. Then there's the timeline nitpicking. Some argue that Hong-er's ghost fire period, those 800 years, wasn't just passive waiting. The theory goes that he was actively, painfully learning to reconstruct himself from pure devotion and rage, gathering power not just to become strong, but to become the specific kind of strength Xie Lian would need: a believer, a protector, a shelter. It re-frames his evolution as a deliberate crafting of a new self, with Xie Lian as the blueprint, which honestly makes the 'Gege, I'm here' moment hit even harder. It wasn't luck; it was a project 800 years in the making.

I'm not sure this counts as a 'scene' per se, but the moment that guts me every reread is when you realize the true weight of Honghong-er's final gift. After everything—the abuse, the crown prince saving him, the desperate devotion—he doesn't just give away his eye to save Xie Lian. He gives away his 'luck,' his entire future destiny of suffering, and takes on Xie Lian's 'misfortune.' It's not just sacrificial; it's a complete, willing annihilation of his own potential path. That conceptual layer hit me way harder on a later read. The physical act of plucking an eye is brutal, but the narrative trade is on a cosmic scale. He’s not just paying a debt; he’s ensuring that the prince he worships will have a chance, however slim, at a better life, while dooming himself to eight hundred years of torment. The fact that Hua Cheng doesn't even see it as a choice, just as the obvious, necessary thing to do... that’s the core of his character right there.

Hong-er feels to me like he exists on a different timeline than everyone else, including Xie Lian. His whole arc has this crushing sense of waiting—eight hundred years of it—that the narrative only lets us glimpse in shattered pieces. It's less about a relationship evolving in a linear way and more about an identity forged in absolute, stubborn devotion. He becomes Hua Cheng not through growth but through erosion; everything that wasn't his fixation on his god gets worn away. That's what makes his final reunion with Xie Lian hit so hard. It's not a romance born from shared experiences, but one built on the preservation of a single, perfect memory that only one of them even knew they had. The fanart that shows him as this crumbling statue covered in butterflies while Xie Lian tends a garden somewhere else captures it perfectly. His development is a monument, not a journey. I've seen a lot of debate about whether his obsession is healthy, and honestly, I find those discussions kind of miss the point of the genre. This is divine-level myth-making, not a relationship advice column. His worship is the engine of the entire plot; without that scale of feeling, the heavens wouldn't shake. The real beauty is in how Xie Lian, over time, doesn't try to 'fix' that devotion but instead steps into the space it created and makes it a home for both of them. It's a completion, not a correction.