Volume 6 of "Heaven Official's Blessing" contains the White-Clothed Calamity arc (or the start of it) which is both so rough and so needed to help cement Xie Lian as a character who has been through a lot that's had a real impact on him.
The previous flashback arcs have made some of the hardships Xie Lian's endured clear and the core of his morality, but the fact that there seems little difference between mortal Xie Lian and present Xie Lian beyond his change in status, has made him seem almost too good. It's become obvious why Hua Cheng is devoted to him, why the established hierarchy of the heavens would have difficulty with him, but how could someone so good remain so low for centuries? Why are all his relationships so eroded?
Then you reach White-Clothed Calamity and a lot falls into place.
When Mo Xiang Tong Xiu lets things get ugly in her books, they're /really/ ugly. She doesn't play in the same sexual menace and violence arena that's come up in the Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou novels I've read, which keeps dark moments from being muddled with an element of grossness -- I can handle the grossness, for the most part, but when it's there it can be like a bit of a bump on the road to a really fucked up emotional place that, I think, is more compatible with catharsis than it is when violation is present.
It's something I've been thinking about in the same space as reflecting on my different reactions to the violence in Golden Kamuy versus Vinland Saga.
Maybe I've just been conditioned to view sexual violence as cheap or easy path to trauma or discomfort in media in a way that's at odds with its reality, as opposed to effect of stacking plot elements, character choices, and political situations seeming more crafted, although it's all a constructed fiction.
Anyway, the chapters collected in this volume were really missing something like the giant rats infested by the screaming souls of the dead.
