The wager that Sifeng didn’t quite win
(a Love and Redemption analysis + headcanons)
In episode 58 of Love and Redemption, Sifeng challenges Bailin to a wager: he bets that Luohou Jidu is not a heartless demon hellbent on destruction. If he loses, he and Luohou Jidu would go to hell and die together. If he wins, Bailin will never appear in Jidu and Xuanji’s lives again. At this time, Jidu and Xuanji are sharing one body. No matter whether he loses or wins, by the terms of his wager, Sifeng would remain by Jidu/Xuanji’s side (in death or in life) and Bailin and Jidu/Xuanji’s will never see each other again.
Later, things seem to turn out exactly as Sifeng hoped: Luohou Jidu is influenced by Xuanji’s feelings and lets go of his desire to destroy the world. Bailin admits that he has lost the wager, and publicly apologizes to Jidu/Xuanji and asks her to kill him.
Xuanji’s soul takes back control over her own body, and following Sifeng’s wishes, she decides to let go of her hatred for Bailin and tells him: “I have no more room in my heart for hatred. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
At this point in the story, Si Feng seems to have completely won the bet.
(In addition, the fact that Xuanji refers to Bailin as “other people” here is also very revealing: she really doesn’t care about Bailin anymore. Xuanji has completely let go of her romantic feelings as the God of War and her hatred as Luohu Jidu. She is unwilling to take the life of “other people”.)
But as Luohou Jidu had said in a previous episode, he is not Chu Xuanji. Sifeng knows Xuanji very well, but he doesn’t truly know Jidu, and Xuanji, as just one small part of him in his ten thousand years of life, doesn’t fully understand her other self either. So they both underestimated his fixation on Bailin. The moment Xuanji announced that she will have nothing more to do with Bailin, Jidu separated from her body. From that moment on, it became impossible for them to be one person again, because Jidu refused to get over Bailin.
Since Xuanji doesn’t want any part in Bailin’s life or death, Jidu finally leaves her behind to deal with Bailin on his own. In Luohu Jidu’s life, Bai Lin could never be just “other people”. He stole Jidu’s life and forced him to become his. Now his life is forfeit: he now belongs to Jidu just as much as Jidu once belonged to him.
So I think here, Bailin, who has lost the wager to Sifeng, wins back half the “prize”. Jidu is unwilling to follow Xuanji in fulfilling Sifeng’s dying wish. He is unwilling to never see Bailin again.
At the end of the story, he and Bailin recall the time they spent together, and finally confess to each other how they never forgot the time they spent together and how much they both cherished their bond.
A thousand years ago, all Luohou Jidu wanted was to be able to drink with Bailin every day. A thousand years later, he still cannot let go of their drinking date, the cup of wine that Bailin never drank, and the feelings that Bailin didn’t reciprocate.
Not only does he want Bailin to die, he also wants to die with him. This was when I started shipping this pairing. In most revenge plots, the protagonist kills the enemy who wronged him, and moves on. Why would he accompany Bailin in death and reincarnation if all he sought was revenge? What else does he want from Bailin?
He cannot forgive Bailin for his betrayal and cruelty, but I think he also couldn’t bear to just kill him and never see him again. The thought of Bailin never appearing in his life again is unthinkable. Luohou Jidu refuses the terms of Sifeng’s wager. He will never let Bailin go.
A thousand years ago, he showed up to a date with his soulmate (actual word used in the drama) with a heart full of warmth and trust, but all he received in return was “betrayal by the one he loved and trusted”. His original heart was dug out and sealed, and replaced with crystal heart.
After a thousand years, when the crystal heart turned into flesh and blood, he left half of it with Xuanji and gave the other half to Sifeng to return his ten lifetimes of love and devotion (after all, this crystal heart grew flesh and blood because of Sifeng).
So all that is left with Luohou Jidu now is his original heart, the one that was chopped to pieces by Bailin a thousand years ago. It is a heart full of love and hate, all tangled up. But the object of this heart’s love and of it’s hate is Bailin, and only Bailin.
This heart has been waiting for a thousand years for Bailin’s reciprocation. And reciprocate he does. Bailin finally drinks his cup of wine, finally acknowledging who they are and who they have been to each other all these years.
They look into each other’s eyes as they leave together, their gaze affectionate and gentle.
