Why Did Hua Cheng Wait 800 Years In 'Heaven Official'S Blessing'?

Question

As a 'Heaven Official's Blessing' fan, Xie Lian's suffering still haunts me, so Hua Cheng's centuries-long devotion truly hits different. What kept his love so unwavering?

Sandra tot · Answer

First of all, there’s his absolute devotion. Even though he thought Xie Lian had abandoned him long ago, Hua Cheng never gave up faith in his god. He used the 800 years to build up his strength, solidify his influence and set up the events of the novel so he could meet up with Xie Lian again—this time as Xie Lian’s equal. It’s an interesting take on the theme of the protagonist building up his strength over long years in order to keep a promise. We see a similar take on this in ‘Reincarnation - The Divine Doctor and Stay-at-home Dad’, where a celestial being has been reincarnated into the body of a modern man who is living with his family as a stay-at-home dad. It takes this divine being a long time to rebuild his powers in this new world while dealing with the very mundane tasks of caring for a family and a household.

Kevin · Answer

A soul so determined to revise the very fabric of the universe to include the object of his adoration—Hua Cheng—loves Xie Lian so deeply. For 800 long years the heavens misconstrued Xie Lian’s irreproachable virtues as inferiority. To defy the gods and the ghosts was to ensure Hua Cheng’s eternal notoriety. Some legends were born of great deeds, but not so Hua Cheng who was determined to become a great and powerful shelter for Xie Lian. A long 800 years passed during which time the devoted mortal collected every last memento that the careless god had ever discarded. Hua Cheng had studied every last smile of his beloved god. He was the architect of the greatest number of temples ever thrown down and re-built by the mere mortal’s hand. Time was his instrument, a keen tool that was molded by Hua Cheng into increasing layers of more and more deep devotion with each passing year. A long, empty eternity was not what was experienced by the Ghost King. Instead his long life was packed with an infinite number of quietly devotional actions and steps along the way to Xie Lian’s return.

Delilah · Answer

In typical love stories, the waiting is rarely shown. But in Heaven Official’s Blessing by Tianmai, Hua Cheng’s 800 years are at the core of the novel. Those years were not empty or sad; instead, he used that time to rid himself of his flaws and become someone who can provide for Xie Lian more than sympathy. Hua Cheng’s devotion was not passive; he studied Xie Lian’s sufferings and acquired skills to heal them. He even died once to protect the Heaven Official. All that waiting and devotion was the basis for their happy ending.

Ruby · Answer

The ongoing 800 year wait of Heaven Official’s Blessing’ Hua Cheng is so faithful it’s become a legend. The man is busy, other than protecting the current reincarnation of his beloved god Xie Lian from dark spirits from centuries past. This Ghost King is like a busy mortal in ascension to higher status and amassing power, one century at a time, to settle himself in heaven at last. He also managed to build his prized possession, Paradise Manor, where he could properly relax, 10,000 handcrafted lanterns lighting up his abode in wonderful warm colors to await his beloved god’s return. His love is not dormant; in fact it’s so blazing that it permeates through the centuries like fire through time. That long wait was not in vain; he knew that his god would come back and the universe would be ready.

What is haunting is that he never requested acknowledgment. As Xie Lian grew to recognize his encounters with Hua Cheng as chance, he continued to help the heavenly official, all the while remaining incognito. In those 800 long years, all of that was his masterpiece, his silent work of loyalty to the man he adored.

Liam · Answer

Hua Cheng’s wait is the ultimate power move. First, he transforms from a lonely devotee into a being of immense power after 800 years of devotion. All that while evolving into a god who is challenging heaven, Hua Cheng collects resources, builds alliances and creates his own little piece of heaven – all while keeping Xie Lian at the center. It is brilliant because he lets Xie Lian stay kind in a world that doesn’t deserve it. His wait becomes armor, his love his weapon. When the two are finally reunited, it is clear that every single second of wait was worth it – he is no longer just a lonely devotee, he is the storm that will shelter his god.

Evelyn joy Santayana · Answer

I suppose one could interpret this scene as a gift: Hua Cheng has given Xie Lian freedom. 800 years or so of Xie Lian’s life have unfolded without Hua Cheng’s knowledge of Xie Lian’s devotion to himself. He lived his life in complete and utter anonymity, yes, that included the pain as well as the rare moments of joy that came anonymously too. If Hua Cheng were there in those days, life would definitely be different. It might be even easier for Xie Lian but then again, he would have had to face the fact of Hua Cheng’s devotion to himself already in those days. Hua Cheng must have understood that Xie Lian needed to have lived 800 years of his punishment as a totally independent human being. Hence, Hua Cheng had been watching Xie Lian from afar as a silent guardian. All the secret shrines and such must have been for purposes that Hua Cheng himself could not even have imagined. And yes, he intervened only in extreme circumstances when it was not possible for Xie Lian to have dealt with the situation on his own and in most cases Xie Lian would not even have known about it.

It wasn’t until Xie Lian was thrown back into the Heaven politics that Hua Cheng began to reveal himself to the world. That was the time when Xie Lian most needed protection, and Hua Cheng stepped up to shield him. It was a long wait, and a restrictive and patient gift of space for Xie Lian to breathe, no matter how painful it was.

Jeremy Bucher · Answer

For 800 years, Hua Cheng held onto hope. He spent an eternity searching for Xie Lian while finding nothing. His loneliness is eerily disturbing. To maintain such hope in the absence of any kind of proof over the course of such a long period of time speaks to an almost superhuman level of resilience and mental fortitude. No, Hua Cheng did not simply wait for the man he loved to return to the world of the living. Instead, he found hope in the void left by that absence and continued to believe in Xie Lian for centuries. His wait for the man he loves to return is the ultimate test of his character, one that he has triumphed over with complete and flawless success.

This makes his subsequent moments of fear in regards to Xie Lian’s potential rejection all the more poignant. Despite his incredible time and power, the core of Hua Cheng remains that of a simple believer. The centuries may have made the potential rejection of Xie Lian more catastrophic to his heart, but they did not harden him to the fear of such. And in the end, it takes incredible courage for Hua Cheng to confess his feelings to Xie Lian.

Andrew von Hatten · Answer

This is all fairly logical math, with narrative necessity added in. The third time Xie Lian ascended, he was banished for 800 years. Since Hua Cheng wanted to find the other man, he had to wait out this rather long period of time. He couldn’t just go up to Heaven to search for him, and searching the mortal world for a god as deliberately obscure as that, cursed on top of it all, is akin to searching for a needle in a very large haystack across an entire continent. So he waited, growing in the meantime, building up a network of informers and spies. When Xie Lian finally reascended (the second time, as a reincarnated soul) he was ready to jump in to save him.

This wait time was likely a far from idle stretch of time for Hua Cheng. The novel hints at how Hua Cheng never gave up hope in searching for Xie Lian even after hundreds of years, following leads and tidbits of information that were tossed his way in the form of rumors heard many years after the fact. In the end, he was searching for centuries, until Xie Lian’s ascendancy became a fact that the heavens could no longer ignore. When he reappeared, it was to Hua Cheng as if only moments had passed, and the powerful ghost king’s vast intelligence network enabled him to know of the god’s return in an instant.

Anna J H Oncke · Answer

I have been pondering so many profound points, but I just had to share this ridiculously silly one that just popped into my head: With Xie Lian’s luck, if Hua Cheng had found him any earlier, he’d probably manage to burn down the entire ghost city within a week or so. Perhaps Hua Cheng was building up something so solid that it could withstand the misfortune-bringer that is Xie Lian for 800 years. And honestly, that’s mostly half-true (as always). It’s also partially true that Hua Cheng has this meticulous and powerful world that is always somewhat gently uprooted by Xie Lian’s utter chaos. All that waiting really did give Hua Cheng time to create structures that can withstand that particular blessing of Xie Lian’s.

Estin Nitse · Answer

Simple and cute, he probably waited for 800 years in order to get the perfect reunion. I know that Hua Cheng is a dramatic perfectionist, and if he were to find Xie Lian when he was in the worst of times, then it would be all dramatic and unkempt. Or he would find him in a mess and then he would have to clean him up, which wouldn’t be how Hua Cheng would want their reunion to be. Instead, he would wait until he had the power, and built up a beautiful Ghost City. Then he could find Xie Lian in his time of need, and present himself as the mysterious and powerful benefactor. In all of his stability, he could be their savior, their safe haven, and their kingdom.

His drama needed a closure as wonderful as their first meeting. He didn’t just want to find Xie Lian, he wanted to save him in the most spectacular way possible, then rule over a kingdom with him, becoming his ultimate safe haven. All of that requires a long time to prepare and rehearse. Their 800 years of solitude were but a dress rehearsal for the two of them for the rest of their eternal lives.

Janice · Answer

In my opinion, Hua Cheng’s ultimate expression of faith is to save himself, not to get Xie Lian’s recognition. He waited 800 years for no reason, simply because his faith was the core of his existence, and gave him a direction after he had died. His existence was sustained solely by his faith in Xie Lian. As a result, his waiting was not for Xie Lian, but his existence was that of Xie Lian. All the ways that he spent his immortal existence, such as building shrines, collecting memorabilia of the God, and fighting against those who blasphemed Xie Lian, were all focused solely to give him a purpose to exist in that afterlife.

This moment marks the end of his solitary faith, not its beginning. The reunion with Xie Lian is the proof of his devotion, but the origin of it remains solely with Hua Cheng. In other words, even if Hua Cheng had to continue waiting for another 800 years, he would have done so just fine. This is the core of his wonderful and extraordinary love. It is distinctly different from an ardent hope of return of love and yet so powerful.

TEAM WINNERS · Answer

This 800-year period is not something that is tossed off in an attempt to make something more dramatic. Instead, this is integrated into the history. We hear stories of past events, of dynasties that fell, of legends lost to the ages. Hua Cheng is watching, waiting for all of this to happen. This grounds the fantasy in real history. The wait is not simply a number. The Jin Dynasty rises and falls. The styles of art change. The languages evolve. This history makes the love story of Hua Cheng and Wei Wuxian feel so real and part of the world in which they live. This is incredible world-building and character development all wrapped up in one very beautiful choice.

Why Did Hua Cheng Wait 800 Years In 'Heaven Official'S Blessing'?

12 Answers

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