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Lan Wangji is a character who often falls victim to misunderstandings.
The illiterate portray him as a Neanderthal who communicates in monosyllables and grunts; in reality, he is cultured, intelligent, courageous and honourable, even if he is a man of few words. He is a master of the Six Arts. A fantastic mentor to the younger generation ("Do your best without overdoing it") and an unexpectedly funny man (such as when, after more than sixteen years, he petulantly reproaches Wei Ying for introducing himself as "Yuandao" to flirt with "Mianmian")
The fools consider the love story between him and Wei Wuxian to be "secondary to the plot."
The unreasonable judge him to be a boring Top.
Ironically, Lan Wangji is one of the Danmei Tops who has undergone the most personal growth. He has loved Wei Wuxian from the outset, of course, but he had to come to terms with his feelings and grow into his own skin before he could fully embrace that love.
Módào zǔshī is as much about Wei Wuxian's journey as it is about Lan Wangji's.
6 years old
His mother dies. She was the only person who had ever treated him with affection and light-heartedness. Otherwise, his life was filled with nothing but rigour, coldness and severity. There was Xichen, yes, a kind and smiling older brother. However, Xichen was also raised with equal severity by their uncle.
15 years old
Lan Zhan is a fifteen-year-old accustomed to a reality of rules and austerity who, for the first time, falls in love with someone.
The object of his affection is a boisterous and brazen boy of the same age. Wei Ying turns his life upside down. Lan Zhan discovers that he is a "cut sleeve" and, moreover, Wei Ying is the opposite of everything he has ever experienced.
It's only natural that Lan Zhan's first reaction at fifteen was to reject him.
Even though we know that he had very vivid sexual fantasies about Wei Ying back then: he was a classic example of a repressed, frustrated and anguished gay teenager who didn’t know how to deal with his feelings. Lan Xichen, who knows his younger brother inside out, immediately realises that Lan Zhan would have liked Wei Ying to be around.
16 years old
At the archery tournament in Qishan, Wei Ying approaches Lan Zhan after a year apart, greeting him with the same light-heartedness and innocent flirtation as ever. Lan Zhan is still a repressed, frustrated and anxious gay teenager unable to handle his feelings. Wei Ying inadvertently removes his sacred family ribbon, which only "the person destined to receive one's heart" may touch. Lan Zhan shows the most visceral reaction he has ever displayed up to that point.
17 years old
By that time, Lan Zhan had already secretly written a love song dedicated to Wei Ying: WangXian.
This was not mere infatuation, but a deep-rooted feeling.
During the Wen indoctrination, Lan Zhan shows us several moments of genuine emotion for the first time: he openly accuses Wei Ying of setting people's hearts aflutter and provoking them.
He wrongly lashes out at Wei Ying, calling him the most hateful and unbearable person of all.
Then, at the height of his exasperation, he bites him. This is an abnormal reaction, but it is how a repressed boy expresses himself when he is unable to control his impetuous feelings towards a boy who flirts superficially with other girls right before his eyes and tells him: "Don't worry, I don't like boys."
Even before the bite, Lan Zhan angrily pushed Wei Ying and slapped him on the still-throbbing burn with an open palm, in response to his comment that the wound would ensure Mianmian would never forget him. Lan Zhan was further exasperated when Wei Ying misinterpreted his rebuke about his habit of flirting with everyone and eventually asked him if he liked Mianmian.
However, more significant than the negative ones, which in any case speak of a feeling of love, are the various moving actions that punctuate the entire Xuanwu section. Lan Zhan risks having his leg bitten off by a monstrous beast in order to protect Wei Ying. He shouts his name. The same person who, aged fifteen, saved Wei Ying by grabbing him by the collar of his robe now squeezes firmly his waist. The thought that Wei Ying might be dead makes his hand tremble.
(In turn, driven by the imperative to save Lan Zhan, Wei Ying draws upon an almost superhuman strength that astonishes even him. Using only the strength of his arms, he pries open the Xuanwu beast's jaws and forces it to release its grip on Lan Zhan’s leg.
After fainting with fever, Wei Ying is cradled tenderly in Lan Zhan’s lap. He steals the perfume sachet that a pretty girl had given to Wei Ying. He hums the love song he wrote while pining for him.)
When Lan Zhan and Wei Ying see each other again for the first time after Wei Ying’s three-month disappearance, Lan Zhan is initially so overwhelmed that his lips tremble as if he is on the verge of tears.
Despite seeing Wei Ying in a disturbing and sinister state, he does not hesitate for a moment before putting himself between him and Wen Zhuliu to protect him.
Unfortunately, however, things immediately start to go wrong. Lan Zhan is deeply upset, but unable to express his feelings. Meanwhile, Wei Ying is distrustful, moody, clearly carrying heavy emotional baggage. He is less able than ever to understand a boy who, like Lan Zhan, finds it hard to express himself.
17–20 years old
The more Lan Zhan worries about him, the more Wei Ying misinterprets his actions, believing him to be hostile.
Those years are spent at war. Lan Zhan is the only one concerned about Wei Ying’s mental health and well-being; everyone else treats him as a fighting machine without a second thought. Nevertheless, the more Lan Zhan tries to stop him from digging up corpses, the more touchy and quick-tempered he becomes.
Lan Zhan travels a thousand leagues to Jiangling to help Wei Ying, but ends up angering him. It is written that this made them both unhappy.
They fight on the front lines day after day. The relentless nature of war fuels their anger and violent instincts. They frequently argue, but Lan Zhan never stops reprimanding Wei Ying, simply because he is worried about him. He repeatedly expresses his fear that the demonic path will harm Wei Ying's body and spirit. In a highly significant display of care for someone so reserved and composed, he even attempts to physically restrain him.
If he openly reproaches him for his "cruel and bloodthirsty ways" and accuses him of "forgetting his true nature", it is because Lan Zhan has unwavering faith in Wei Ying's righteousness and goodness.
However, we need to open a separate parenthesis here, as the Eastern concepts of honour and revenge differ greatly from their Western counterparts. In the context of Modao, Wei Ying’s vengeful and ruthless anger is perfectly normal. Aside from being a traumatised, very young man, he is a warrior who fights enemies while standing on the right side of history: first against Wen, and later against the entire cultivation world that oppresses innocent civilians. Wei Ying is always on the morally right side.
During the SunShot Campaign, Lan Zhan is solely concerned with the desecration of corpses, something which, in his second life – more mature and psychologically balanced – Wei Ying himself will look back on with regret, admitting that he "really went too far" by deliberately digging up the Wen family’s graves to have enemy cultivators killed by their own dead.
This and, of course, the fact that "demonic" cultivation was dangerous if used excessively.
Just a note: one should actually speak of "Gui Dao" rather than "Mo Dao" — "spectral cultivation" rather than "demonic", since Wei Ying harnesses the resentment of the dead without ever manipulating the living.
It was his detractors who deliberately confused the two practices in order to accuse him of being an evil cultivator.
Anyway, Gui Dao also subjects its user to constant and dangerous contact with resentful energy.
While everyone else, including Jiang Cheng, ignored the impact on Wei Ying's psyche, focusing solely on how useful his power was to their own goals, Lan Zhan was always concerned for his well-being.
20 years old
The war ends and, on the surface, Wei Ying seems to return to his old self. He resumes his innocent flirting with Lan Zhan, throwing flowers at him, asking him to borrow his ribbon and pointing out to Jiang Cheng just how handsome he is. However, it is clear that he is not the same person as before.
Lan Zhan is still worried about him and, what's more, he is more in love with him than ever.
It is worth emphasising again that Lan Zhan was right to be distressed. "Demonic" cultivation was indeed corrupting Wei Ying's mind and temperament. This was due to his lack of a golden core to balance the influence of resentment and the enormous amount of resentful energy he needed to draw upon to accomplish his task.
Certainly, the "demonic" cultivation only begins to heavily influence him after he abuses it by purifying and protecting the Burial Mounds every day; even before that, though, Wei Ying was just a twenty-year-old boy without a golden core who had spent years commanding corpses in the war.
Through the perspective of Wei Ying from the future, we see that at the Golden Carp Tower Blossom Festival, Lan Zhan never takes his eyes off him. His brother, Xichen, who instantly understands him, asks him directly why he hasn't gone to speak to Wei Wuxian yet. After Wei Ying storms off following an argument with Jin Zixuan, Lan Zhan tries to talk to him, taking a step towards him. However, Wei Ying doesn't notice and doesn't give him time to open his mouth.
On the next occasion, during the siege hunt on Mount Baifeng, Lan Zhan pours five years of repressed feelings into the kiss he gives to a blindfolded Wei Ying. He steals the flower that Wei Ying had pinned to his chest. Afterwards, he almost clears a forest due to the impetuous feelings raging inside him. When he is caught up with, he certainly makes a mistake in taking it out on Wei Ying by shooting him "murderous glances" and snarling at him to "stay away from him."
But, to be honest, it’s clear that Lan Zhan’s self-control is hanging by a thread at that moment. He knows that all it would take was a spark to make him jump on Wei Ying. Furthermore, he is consumed by self-loathing and remorse. For him, this is a rare display of irrational emotion towards the one person whose mere existence is capable of turning his life upside down.
A few pages later, the author emphasises that Lan Zhan’s eyes linger on Wei Ying’s "full, moist and warm" lips before he looks away. These adjectives offer a glimpse into Lan Zhan’s point of view.
Shortly afterwards, during the altercation with Jin Zixuan, Lan Zhan crosses swords with the Jin clan heir to defend Wei Ying. When Jin Zixuan accuses Wei Ying of being the son of a servant, Lan Zhan’s gaze turns icy.
Months later, Lan Zhan wanders around Yunmeng in the hope of meeting him; Wei Ying is the first to spot him and catch his attention by throwing flowers at him. Among them is the pink peony that Lan Zhan will keep for the next fourteen years. However, once again, when they start talking, Lan Zhan’s concern is misinterpreted: they part ways, Lan Zhan feeling disheartened and Wei Ying looking gloomy.
Later, when he tells Jiang Cheng that Lan Zhan "was in Yunmeng looking for someone", Wei Ying once again demonstrates his complete naivety by showing no suspicion that Lan Zhan was actually looking for him.
Well, I won't deny that I also found myself getting exasperated in this scene, wondering why Lan Zhan couldn't clarify what he meant by "Come back to Gusu with me", given that Wei Ying still thought he was talking about imprisoning him.
However, the fact that a character can frustrate you is proof of just how true and realistic they are.
21 years old
The year of the end.
Lan Zhan confides in his brother that he is desperate to bring someone to Gusu. To hide him away. To protect him from everything and everyone. Lan Zhan feels that Wei Ying is in ever-greater danger and is sinking into darkness before his eyes. This is tearing him apart.
Immediately after Wei Ying bursts into Lanling, furiously demanding to know where Wen Ning and the other Wens, who were kidnapped by Jin Zixun, have been taken, Lan Xichen remarks that "Wei-gongzi's character has changed greatly."
Although he does not voice his thoughts, Lan Zhan appears deeply troubled and distressed. Clearly, he suffers more than anyone else as he watches the sunny, brilliant boy he fell in love with become increasingly sharp-tempered, gloomy and angry.
When Wei Ying sacrifices everything to save the Wen civilians and becomes the Patriarch of Yiling, Lan Zhan does not immediately take his side against the entire Cultivation world. But he was just twenty years old, trying to navigate the "justice" that had been strictly instilled in him from birth and the love of his life who was actually saving innocent people. He was torn between the injustices of which he knew almost nothing and the "reality" that was loudly proclaimed by everyone, including his own clan.
However, whenever the situation allowed, Lan Zhan never failed to defend justice.
When Wei Ying had that altercation with Jin Zixun over Wen Ning, for example, Lan Zhan was the only one to coldly maintain that Wei Ying was right to say that it was barbaric and inhuman to suggest that any innocent Wens should be killed simply because of their surname.
And, following the escape of the Wen civilians, he challenged certain statements made by Jin Guangshan and publicly defended Wei Ying’s moral integrity – he and Mianmian, who had been saved by Wei Ying years earlier, are the only ones to do so.
Furthermore, Lan Zhan travels to Yiling to visit Wei Ying and accompanies him all the way to the Burial Mounds to help when Wen Ning loses control. He is immediately affectionate and generous towards A-Yuan, the child that Wei Ying jokingly claims to have "given birth to."
After the ambush on the Qiongqi Path, remaining true to his upright and morally just nature — which has always united him with Wei Ying — Lan Zhan is the only one to defend Wen Qing and Wen Ning when they voluntarily surrender to the Jin.
Following the massacre in the Nightless City, when everyone hates him and calls for his death, Lan Zhan stands unhesitatingly in defence of Wei Ying. During the massacre, he fights against the ferocious corpses to help anyone in need and to protect Wei Wuxian from those who are trying to kill him. Ultimately, he carries him to safety in plain sight.
The only reason he then "abandons" him at the Burial Mounds and returns to Gusu to serve his punishment is because Wei Ying keeps telling him to get lost. Had Wei Ying asked him to stay, Lan Zhan would have stayed. Yes, he might have realised that Wei Ying was mentally shattered and didn’t know what he was saying, but they were both a mess at that point.
Lan Zhan’s love is no longer that of a repressed, frustrated and awkward boy. He now calmly and confidently states that he will share the consequences of Wei Ying’s actions with him, regardless of whether they were right or wrong.
This is the love of a man who has come to terms with his feelings and can hold his head high.
Lan Zhan endures thirty-three lashes for Wei Ying. He drags himself, half-dead, to the Burial Mounds just to see his body. He saves and raises the child that Wei Ying had adopted, giving him a name that crystallises the feelings of his own heart: Sizhui derives from a rhyming couplet and translates as "yearning for but cannot chase after you, longing for someday when you will return."
For thirteen years, Lan Zhan remains in mourning, surrounded by the small things that remain of Wei Ying: the perfume sachet, the dried pink peony used as a bookmark, copies of Lan Sect scriptures written by Wei Ying during his time at Cloud Recesses, the rabbits, the liquor he does not drink. The scars and the mark he branded on himself at the height of his anguish. Their son.
Meanwhile, despite his desolate heart, Lan Zhan continues to help people because that sense of righteousness and willingness to aid the weak and needy have always been what made him and Wei Ying alike.
Of course, I don't intend to blame Wei Ying either.
In his first life, he was completely unaware of his own feelings and those of Lan Zhan. From the outset, he was drawn to Lan Zhan, tirelessly gravitating towards him for years despite his coldness. However, he didn’t realise that this was because he loved him. He also failed to notice that Lan Zhan would become somber when he saw him flirting with others.
And that was when things were "going well."
I put that in quotation marks because even before the war — before the destruction of Lotus Pier, for which Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Cheng blamed him; before his hand was almost amputated; before the traumatic removal of the golden core; before the even more traumatic experience in the Burial Mounds; and before the resentful energy — Wei Ying had already experienced a great deal of trauma.
Orphaned at a very young age, he spent years as a homeless child, enduring hunger, the cold, indifference from others and dog bites. Then came Yu Ziyuan’s whip and her verbal abuse.
It's no surprise that Wei Ying has never been an emotionally healthy person. Let us not overlook the fact that he had serious alcohol abuse issues that Wen Qing had tried to cure.
He had never once considered the possibility that Lan Zhan might love him. He would never have believed it possible.
He was unaware, unwittingly insensitive and with obvious issues – even his "terrible memory" suggests that something is amiss; it is likely an unconscious instinct to enjoy everything and not become attached to anything. It took Xichen slamming the truth in his face to open his eyes.
Wei Ying was 100% oblivious.
Lan Zhan was 100% convinced that he was harboring unrequited feelings for a straight man who didn’t take him seriously.
I don’t blame Wei Ying. I’m just saying that Lan Zhan isn’t to blame either.
In their first life, Lan Zhan was a repressed, awkward gay boy who was unable to express himself. He watched his crush flirt with various girls and thought he was destined to never be loved in return. Later, he was a very young, overwhelmed man who watched the love of his life sink deeper and deeper into darkness, unable to save him.
It is unfair to criticise the young Lan Zhan by comparing him to the thirty-five-year-old Lan Zhan, who is an adult and a mature man that has spent thirteen years mourning and growing up.
Realistically, Lan Zhan was not born perfect. It is only as an adult that he achieves the mental stability and emotional honesty that enable him to always support Wei Ying, providing silent protection and open care, like an unshakeable rock.
Only a man with great self-awareness, maturity and many regrets could go so far as to stand up to the whole world to be by the side of the supposedly straight man who does not love him.
Lan Zhan grows up, questions everything he has been taught and develops patience and resilience. He learns to cherish his feelings rather than fearing and denying them.
Similarly, Wei Ying sheds a veil of emotional obtuseness and finally understands himself. His personal acceptance of his desires and needs is symbolised by the scene in which he lets himself fall from the very same tree from which, upon first arriving at the Jiang household, he had fallen without anyone being able to save him. But Lan Zhan saves him. Lan Zhan catches him in his arms, preventing him from hitting the ground. For Wei Ying, this has immense significance.
When he embraces Lan Zhan, his "thank you" expresses the gratitude of someone who, for the first time in their life, feels truly loved and protected.
WangXian is an extremely healthy couple, built on mutual respect, affection and protection. As previously mentioned, Lan Zhan and Wei Ying share high moral standards. They are always the first — and often the only — people to stand up for what is right. Their abilities and values complement each other perfectly.
And if they happen to have rather spicy sexual kinks, that is a private matter concerning only their intimate lives as consenting adults.
As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Regardless of personal preference, WangXian is undoubtedly the world's most famous and iconic Danmei couple. Their relationship has touched the hearts of millions.
Their story wouldn't be what it is if Lan Zhan and Wei Ying hadn't spent years learning about love after experiencing an immediate mutual attraction — "Galeotto was the meeting on the roof between wine and the full moon" — or if they hadn't undergone realistic personal growth.