Ahh, I wish I could have gotten this out earlier but time is not on my side since winter holidays don't happen until much later in China.
What I really like about the Meizhen interaction is that it really drives home how much Meizhen sees her as an equal. We know Cui thought of her as a viper, but clearly Meizhen expected her to behave as she would too.
Right now, Bai and Qi represent two opposite camps of thought when it comes to dealing with threats.
Bai is a show of force. Cut the threat out, root and branch - do not just kill the soldiers, torch their villages, put families to the sword and salt the fields. If people understand that your retaliation will cost them, if it is tangible and meaningful and nearly insane in its scope, then you will have reduced the threats to those stupid and insane enough to risk such things. Or those powerful enough to weather the consequences (e.g. Sun Liling). Meizhen grew up in a household where such logic was commonsense and probably driven home in all manner of ways, starting with the Sun/Bai split and then encouraged elsewhere (Kang mentioned the Bais turning on themselves?).
But there are consequences to such a philosophy: I doubt that the Sun/Bai split would have been half as acrimonious if the Bais weren't so obsessed with maintaining their reputation. Their patriarch certainly wouldn't have wandered into Sun's camp and declared a duel and then died. I mean, objectively speaking, it was a dumb move predicated entirely on their philosophy of total control and total fear. If one person acts out then you have to, no matter the cost, take them out.
Like I said, dumb. I hope they've tempered it somewhat since his fall though some can probably argue they've gotten worse.
The other, Ling Qi's, is to keep it secret, keep it safe. What people do not know of cannot be threatened, except incidentally. This is what Ling Qi did, as much as possible, for Zhengui and also for herself. The people that she has mentioned her past to can be counted on the fingers of one hand - I'm not sure she has even mentioned to anyone that she has a baby half-sister yet and I don't think that's a coincidence. Normal people, discovering they have a baby half-sibling would probably have mentioned something at some point, but Ling Qi has kept absolutely mum. She grew up on the streets - she trusts her ability to keep things hidden far more than she trusts her ability to protect them. Even with all the power she's accrued, she still defaults to thinking of herself as a girl cowering beneath a heap of trash with no friends and no power and no way to meaningfully retaliate.
It is the Yin/Yang difference I suppose, Bai playing Yang, Ling playing Yin.
I don't think one trip with Bai Meizhen will necessarily change Ling Qi's outlook on the matter - she's not so callow that the extremes to which Bai Meizhen will go are unthinkable to her, and I doubt anyone would actually be surprised by what Bai Meizhen and Ling Qi do to Yan Renshu (besides maybe Yan Renshu)- it's not just Meizhen's imperial serpent majesty aura that scared people off but her family's reputation which is also now part of Ling Qi's reputation. If there is a shift it'll be from 'considers certain things not okay' to 'doesn't really care' and arguments can arise as supporting one or the other that I'd see as near equally reasonable.
But someone whom we should consider is probably Zhengui.
See, Zhengui is young and impressionable. His drive to protect Ling Qi is probably due to the fact that Thunderdome Take 3 happened when he was a weeks-old toddler. The world was big and scary and big and scary people wanted to hurt momma and momma was not powerful enough to get rid of them by herself. So he needs to step up and protect her! (Zhen's thought processes are probably a trifle different)
And now we go after someone and do everything but kill him.
I'm not sure what that'll do to his development, but it's unlikely to be fun. If we do plan on going after Yan Renshu without caring if Meizhen goes overboard I kind of... want to leave him at home. Kind of like how parents, when they're about to have a screaming row, tell their kids to go to their rooms and then the kids go to their rooms, put pillows over their ears, and try to block it out. >_>;
Like it's easy to say 'he's a spirit beast and sooner or later he'll be doing stuff like this anyway' but at the same time he seems to be about 8 years old, mentally, and Ling Qi's totally treating him as smol son so let him be a baby a little while longer?
Annnd that's my ten cents on the matter.
