Review: Heavenly Official's Blessing

I’ve recently slipped into Chinese stories (the Boys’ Love stories by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu to be more precise) and “Heavenly Official’s Blessing” is my favourite out of her three series which are now officially released in English (there have  been fan translations before). I simply love Xie Lian, the main character, and the way the story unfolds during the two (of four) books I’ve read by now.

Once, Xie Lian was a prince. He did good deeds and proved himself worthy of ascension, so he was elevated to the status of a god (Chinese mythology comes with many gods, so it isn’t that impossible for a human to attain god status, provided they are good at what they do). Acting on his idealistic mindset, he broke the laws of heaven, specifically the one not to use his divine powers in favour of one group of regular humans — in his case his country. For this, he was banished from heaven, his powers blocked. He learned to survive in the world and was deemed worthy again, so he ascended once more — for about half an hour spent in battle up in heaven. This led to his second banishment. Recently, he has ascended again, but did a lot of property damage as he did. Now Xie Lian, the Scrap Immortal, has large debts to pay off, but not a single temple or shrine from which to ear merits, the heavenly currency.
I’m not summarizing the first book here, by the way. That is how the situation is after a short prologue which summarizes things for the reader. Xie Lian’s story doesn’t start with his ascension, it starts with him in debt.

Yet, Xie Lian has friends and so he gets the chance to work off some debts by following the cry for help from a local noble whose daughter has fallen prey to an entity which is dubbed ‘ghost groom’ and has been kidnapping brides for quite a long time already. Since Xie Lian has no powers (his are still bound by two curse collars on his body, so he cannot generate divine energy outside of heaven and thus has to be careful about using whatever he takes down with him), his friend Ling Wen (the up-most bureaucrat in heaven) tricks two young martial gods into helping him, which they do more or less willingly.
On this first mission, Xie Lian makes an important acquaintance — a strange man in red with silver accessories who turns into a cloud of silver butterflies when Xie Lian tries to attack him. This, he learns later on, is the most powerful ghost in the ghost realm, the only active of the Four Calamities who is worthy of the title ‘supreme’ (two of the others are no longer active and the last is ‘in name only’ as a calamity, he’s not really a supreme in power). The man in red is Hua Chang.
Hua Chang became notorious for challenging thirty-five gods after becoming a supreme ghost, thirty-three of whom rose to the challenge. He defeated them all and, after they didn’t descent from heaven as agreed to, burned all of their temples and shrines in one night to force them down from heaven. Yet, Xie Lian finds nothing horrible about that man whose face he didn’t see (on account of being disguised as a bride to lure out the ‘ghost groom’ and wearing an opaque veil).
Xie Lian then has a novel idea: if nobody else will built him a shrine and worship him, he’ll do it himself. This leads him to a peaceful village and makes him cross paths with San Lang, a young man from high in society who is travelling seemingly aimlessly and staying with him. San Lang, who dresses in red like the supreme ghost Hua Chang and knows too much about the past to be a regular human but doesn’t show any signs of a ghost pretending to be human (such as missing palm- or fingerprints).
This is not the ending of the first book, by the way, but rather somewhere before the midpoint.

I like Xie Lian’s outlook on his life. He’s learned humility during his eight-hundred years of banishment to the human realm, has become good at improvising and living off scraps (hence the moniker ‘the Scrap Immortal’). He doesn’t complain about his status as laughingstock, he doesn’t demand to be given something, least of all respect. He, the once powerful and immensely wealthy prince, is happy with the scraps he can find and accepts any kind of gifts with great humility and gratefulness. Xie Lian shows respect to all people around him (in later chapters showing him as a human, though, you see he was already going in that direction). He rarely uses a weapon — most of the time the silk band wrapped around his body which is a powerful divine object —, but is actually a swordsman second to none. He has simply chosen not to use a sword any longer after something he did in the past.
Hua Chang is another character who is easy to like. Yes, he’s an immensely powerful ghost even feared by the gods. On the other hand, he doesn’t appear to do horrid things, he doesn’t kill unprovoked (though he will, without hesitation, when he deems it necessary), and he rules the ghost realm well. He clearly is very much interested in Xie Lian (and might have been for a very long time, too) and wishes to be in his vicinity.
The two of them do make a nice couple, sharing both similarities and being different in other areas. Besides, what would be more interesting than a couple made up of a god (ascended for good deeds) and a ghost (descended for bad deeds)? No other couple of lovers can ever have been more star-crossed.

It also helps that the author is good at adding comedy to balance out scenes full of pathos and heavy feelings. There are scenes which are outright funny, scenes which are full of action, but also scenes filled with emotional depth. That’s one of the things which I love about her books. It’s easy, especially in stories which include such immensely powerful characters, to make everything seem grim and dark (and many authors would do so), but she breaks it up with lighter scenes to balance it all out.
I also like how her Boys’ Love stories are foregoing all the angst from the Japanese YAOI stories. In those, the whole ‘OMG, I’ve fallen in love with a guy, what will I do now?’ is a big part of the story. In the stories by this author I’ve read, it’s more sort of ‘that guy looks good, I wonder what happens when we go on an adventure together.’ It’s much more relaxed, the romance angle is there, but it is not played as a tragedy, it’s just part of the story. In some of her stories, like some scenes in “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”, it might lead to humour. In some of her stories, it leads to emotional scenes. It never leads to angst, though.

“Heavenly Official’s Blessing” by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is available in an official translation now and it’s a lot of fun to read, so give it a look at least. You might also like the other two series by the same author — “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” (turned in to a life-action series under the title “The Untamed”) and “The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System” (which is as ludicrous at times as the title looks). I’ve certainly had a good time with all I’ve read so far.