You know, originally, my favorite thing about this rather average series was that the MC's gender didn't matter, but this arc has completely ruined that. Worse, I'm 99.99999% certain that it's devolving into a love triangle with two a** holes and that her personality and free will are not long for this world. I'm not sure I can think of a reason not to drop it anymore.
I'm holding against hope that the story gets past this marriage trap arc nonsense before long somehow. She is making friends and contacts among the younger generation for the future, but if the current trend continues it might all be moot if she has to flee the region to escape
Spoiler: SPOILER the next few chap is q unexpected for me as well as how this marriage thing turns out
Regardless of what happens, it feels like Ding Qingqing will be the biggest loser. It's just a question of if she'll be executed or enslaved. That aside, I wonder if this will be enough to convince the queen to grant the MC's wish and leave her alone.
All the refined young women of the capital breath in poisonous incense at night. It's the latest fad! Didn't he know that? I wonder why she cared enough to bother to be informed about the new generation ranking rankers. Or did she only become informed about them after she saw the MC and thought, "Hey, maybe she's on the NGR. Let's check."?
The NGR list is probably something most higher tier people are aware of at least a little of, especially the top placing person. Since this new woman seems to know Mingshu's master, she may have looked into it more after seeing her fighting style that reminded her of Mingshu's master
If I had to guess I'd assume it would be closer to a trial than a tournament-something closer to the 9 jade thing where they were trying to reach the gates and such. It might end up being similar to hidden realms in other novels-a sort of free for all to get some goal or object and fighting on the way there and then over the target
Honestly, that trial was one of the tournaments I was referring to. That said, a free-for-all type thing is probably the best we can hope for. Though, if it winds up that way, then I hope that the two helpers they send with her wind up being helpful and not trying to sabotage her to take her place, or just dead weight that she has to protect.
Well, Spoiler This won't be a tournament iirc. While there will be 'contests' in the future of the story, and mini-tournaments that takes 2/3 chapters, iirc there won't be any big one from now on
I was wondering when she'd wind up having to face Ling Wuxia. She was just brought up too many times for the MC to be able to avoid her forever. Now I'm just wondering if the MC will have a clear victory over her, and if so, how those who find out about it will react.
So, why didn't they ask her how she had a sword made if they were watching her 24/7 and never saw her go near a weapon refiner or make any moves to refine the weapon herself?
Yeah I thought that was a bit weird too. The best explanation I came up with was that they thought she already had a partially forged sword and she imbued the extra material in the sword to improve it. The sword and this process would potentially occur in some type of internal space where they wouldn't see so they weren't suspicious (a bit like Seeking the flying sword path's method of sword cultivation). They didn't ask her afterwards as they didn't want to offend her, going along the lines of everyone has secrets sort of thing. However, yeah that doesn't really hold up well and it seems more like the author decided that she wanted Lu Mingshu to have a sword upgrade for the Ling Wuxia battle arc but forgot about the issue of how to make the sword appear from nowhere. The issue mainly stems from the fact that she had the fairy gravel given to her by the Bon Voyage fleet, which was a decision I appreciated as usually we get arcs where the mc suddenly coincidentally stumbles upon a massive pile of the required materials instead (through killing someone else/a mine etc) which then leads to a big conflict of some sort.
The older Huo guy seemed decent and not the type to meddle, but him allowing his younger brother to scheme will end up with at least the brother on LMS's hitlist when they keep interfering with her. The Zhang family seem like they could end up as opportunists, but that also opens the possibility of them not antagonizing LMS So the "Lunar God" sword that was made for Mingshu was made so that it doesn't catch people's eyes? That's definitely a good thing in the setting LMS is at-if it looked too fancy even more people would try to find issue with her and rob her, and she hasn't reached the point of strength where she can thrash anyone who comes after her, and her backing is unstable to put it kindly. I think that the fleet people are probably suspicious about the sudden new sword, but are willing to let it rest for now since they don't want to antagonize LMS and are going with the "everyone has secrets" angle. The other girl (Wen Xin?) who lost her spot to Mingshu may bring it up though, and that could cause some trouble at some point
"But what should I do now? Most had this question in their head." Why didn't they think about that before they came? They had months, if not years to plan. I mean, I could understand if they realized that the question changed every time, but it was implied that they didn't.
Ok, my opinion of Ling Wuxia has dropped now after that little stunt with making it a point to remind everyone Lu Mingshu had the Mystic Dewdrops. Now she just seems like an annoyance, and she plans on trying to steal LMS’s answer to the riddle or follow her.
Stunt? LMS didn't take any damage from this and cannot take in the future. Literally everyone knew it already. Stunt should at least serve some purpose, right. Ling Wuxia only said it to remind her juniors – my version. Nah, it's useless to steal the answer. You either find it yourself or lose. You can take hints from other competitors actions though, and LMS clearly took one from observing Ling Wuxia, so why the latter cannot do the same all of a sudden? And I can't even find this novel on mtl sites now. Damn.