My beef with this conversation isn't with Dan Heng, though. It's with Taoran.
There's a few lines preceding this clip, where he outright admits to providing aid in sending the sabatoged mechs into the Shackling Prison, providing maps of the prison to the Borisin jailbreakers, as well as invisible assassins to cover their escape. He didn't say outright, but it's also clear that he was also responsible for helping get the Stellaron to trigger the Ambrosial Arbor, and helping Phantylia betray the Luofu.
Note, at this point, the Hoolay jailbreak incident alone had already caused deaths, and Hoolay is just about to start a massacre of civilians to sow further chaos / distract the generals from his next goal. So this bodycount should also be on Taoran's hands as well.
However, he's clearly confident that all he'll get is a "fixed" rebirth which will preserve his memories. That no matter what, he'll "live". There doesn't seem to be any worry about what happened to Dan Feng, where his original sentence was death. And only after intervention by the other high elders was it commuted to forced molting.
Just... I have to question what is the reason for the difference in treatment here. Is a Preceptor more valuable/important than the High Elder, despite the fact that it's the latter who's spent multiple incarnations serving the Xianzhou as warden for the Arbor? Is Taoran's crimes somehow lesser than Dan Feng, when they both fiddled with the Ambrosial Arbor? Is handing the Arbor to an Emanator of Destruction (who's on her way to become the Xianzhou Alliance's next Hunt target, btw) somehow less severe than using the Arbor to create a monster that was able to be killed?
Or is it just a matter of Taoran being able to play the political game better? He knows the right dirt to pull the right strings and make the right deals? Whereas Dan Feng, maybe he was in PTSD mode still and didn't try, but you'd think that being a political leader he should automatically come with associated social links and power structure ties and stuff that would make others be cautious of how to sentence him.
Also, Taoran is clearly certain that if he does get sentenced to forced molting, it's the equivalent of getting off scott free, meaning he also wouldn't get held accountable for his crimes after the rebirth, despite the fact that he outright admits that he's going to bypass the memory wipe. Dan Heng, however, still gets stuck growing up in jail, chained up for torture after his forced rebirth. The dichotomy here is... stark.
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Date: 2024-09-11 04:56 (UTC)There's a few lines preceding this clip, where he outright admits to providing aid in sending the sabatoged mechs into the Shackling Prison, providing maps of the prison to the Borisin jailbreakers, as well as invisible assassins to cover their escape. He didn't say outright, but it's also clear that he was also responsible for helping get the Stellaron to trigger the Ambrosial Arbor, and helping Phantylia betray the Luofu.
Note, at this point, the Hoolay jailbreak incident alone had already caused deaths, and Hoolay is just about to start a massacre of civilians to sow further chaos / distract the generals from his next goal. So this bodycount should also be on Taoran's hands as well.
However, he's clearly confident that all he'll get is a "fixed" rebirth which will preserve his memories. That no matter what, he'll "live". There doesn't seem to be any worry about what happened to Dan Feng, where his original sentence was death. And only after intervention by the other high elders was it commuted to forced molting.
Just... I have to question what is the reason for the difference in treatment here. Is a Preceptor more valuable/important than the High Elder, despite the fact that it's the latter who's spent multiple incarnations serving the Xianzhou as warden for the Arbor? Is Taoran's crimes somehow lesser than Dan Feng, when they both fiddled with the Ambrosial Arbor? Is handing the Arbor to an Emanator of Destruction (who's on her way to become the Xianzhou Alliance's next Hunt target, btw) somehow less severe than using the Arbor to create a monster that was able to be killed?
Or is it just a matter of Taoran being able to play the political game better? He knows the right dirt to pull the right strings and make the right deals? Whereas Dan Feng, maybe he was in PTSD mode still and didn't try, but you'd think that being a political leader he should automatically come with associated social links and power structure ties and stuff that would make others be cautious of how to sentence him.
Also, Taoran is clearly certain that if he does get sentenced to forced molting, it's the equivalent of getting off scott free, meaning he also wouldn't get held accountable for his crimes after the rebirth, despite the fact that he outright admits that he's going to bypass the memory wipe. Dan Heng, however, still gets stuck growing up in jail, chained up for torture after his forced rebirth. The dichotomy here is... stark.