I can already tell I'm going to have a complicated relationship with Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou. Luckily, Mo Xi, the protagonist of "Remnants of Filth", makes a much better first impression than Mo Ran (a man who belongs in a dumpster, and the dumpster is wrapped in chains, and then the dumpster is thrown into the ocean).
The thing I'm finding, both here and in "The Husky and His White Cat Shizun", is that Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou writes novels with mysterious plots where I end up genuinely intrigued in what went down. There are stakes, a real sense that shit went down, that shit is going down, and even if the lead is the worst protagonist in the world (MO RAN) or the romantic relationship at the heart of things is complicated-to-problematic (a lot of how complimatic things are in "Remnants of Filth" between General Mo Xi and traitorous slave turned general Gu Mang depends on what's going on with the plot). I'm not particularly invested right now in Mo Xi and Gu Mang getting back together, but I do want to know how Gu Mang's betrayal went down, what happened when he defected to the enemy, and what precipitated being returned to his homeland to certain death or torture prison (it's torture prison).
A lot also rests on whether Mo Xi's personal arc is realizing and embracing that his empire, with its slaves and PRISONER OF WAR TORTURE BROTHEL, kind of sucks and deserves to be defected from, actually.
There is a scene with a villain who pops out his victims' eyes with his thumbs and then has the eyeballs on his thumbs and eats them like a tasty sugar plum, nursery rhyme style, which is a step in the right gore-violence direction.
