review: remnants of filth vol.1
I have no idea if this perception in any way reflects popularity in China or other global fandom spaces, but in today's English-language fandom, the “Big Three” danmei writers are Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, priest, and Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat. This doesn't mean other authors aren't read or known of, but these are the authors with multiple officially licensed titles out via Seven Seas and, in my experience, most English readers coming to danmei since ~2019 will have had the entry point of one of these works.
Remnants of Filth is a novel by the venerable Meatbun. Until last week, she was the only one of the “Big Three” I'd yet to spend any time with. Meatbun's Erha is highly popular but I've held off on actually reading it because there's a lot of noncon and it will either work for me or really, really not. However, I've been in the mood to read pulpy trash, and when I read that Remnants of Filth is a lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers military story, I figured I might as well start there. (Anyone who knew me in my Golden Kamuy days knows what's up.)
Going in, I knew nothing about RoF that wasn't in the one-paragraph book blurb. Let me attempt to summarize volume 1.
Also, huge CW for discussions of slavery, rape, torture, et cetera.
We are in an old-timey xianxia setting; however, this novel goes way beyond Mo Dao Zu Shi in its integration of the cultivation world with a comparatively grounded political landscape affecting non-cultivating normies on every level of society. This is a period of internecine conflict characterized by bloody campaigns between kingdoms. While there are also independent cultivators wandering the jianghu, in the kingdom of Chonghua (and presumably the others?), cultivation academies are part of the state's military apparatus, divisions of the military are headed by cultivators, and aristocratic noble families lead cultivation clans focused on specific specializations. Chonghua has a particularly bitter enmity with the Liao Kingdom, which is the only one of the Nine Provinces to specialize in demonic cultivation.
Chonghua had a star general named Gu Mang, who was a cultivation prodigy and master tactician. He was born into slavery and headed an army of soldiers from similar backgrounds, whom he led with great compassion and bravery... until he defected to the Liao Kingdom. (This is presented as a “seemingly out of nowhere” decision, but we eventually learn that not long before his defection, he engaged in a fruitless effort to have his fallen soldiers honoured in the state grave site for valued warriors.)
Gu Mang had a shidi, Mo Xi, who later became a celebrated cultivator in his own right and a close comrade-in-arms... and Gu Mang's SECRET LOVER. Mo Xi is the only son of a noble cultivation family, but seems to have been under the thumb of his uncle in a bad way until his uncle's death (details presumably forthcoming in later volumes.) Some time after Gu Mang defected, Mo Xi flew out to confront him, and was stabbed mercilessly in the chest for his trouble. Mo Xi now heads Gu Mang's former army. Gu Mang is public enemy #1 and ridiculed by the people of Chonghua daily, but everyone knows to NEVER!!! mention Gu Mang around Mo Xi because Mo Xi hates him so so so much.
One day, the Liao Kingdom agrees to enter into political negotiations with Chonghua and offers up Gu Mang as a prisoner to prove their sincerity. Mo Xi is off on campaign at this time and refuses to let himself get involved until his troops are recalled to the capital two years later. Upon his return, he can't resist doing some digging to find out what Gu Mang has been up to since his imprisonment within Chonghua.
Everything I've written up to this point might give you an incorrect impression of the tone of this novel; things really kicks off in Chapter Five or so, where we learn that Gu Mang has spent the last two years at Luomei Pavilion, which is the special brothel (!) staffed by famous prisoners of war (!!), where Chonghua's elites can pay to take out their frustrations on their enemies... By Any Means Necessary (!!!!).
Mo Xi sneaks in to go see him... But Not Like That, only for reasons of platonic revenge/closure/?. (Mo Xi's whole thing is that he's known as an austere ascetic; the only stain on his reputation is his passionate love affair with Gu Mang... though no one knows that.) Vibes are way off during their whole interaction (I MEAN, OBVIOUSLY, BUT YOU KNOW), until Mo Xi figures out that Gu Mang doesn't recognize him or even remember who he himself is.
It turns out that before Gu Mang was returned to Chonghua, he had his spiritual core destroyed. He's amnesiac and can't cultivate; even speech is difficult. Mo Xi hates himself for going to see him, not least because Gu Mang is now a delicate tragic waif who doesn't remember why everyone treats him like shit and keeps referring to himself as Mo Xi's whore even though they didn't fuck (Gu Mang not aware that they had a relationship in the past.)
This is the part where I had to put my ereader down in awe of the sheer concentrated authorial self-indulgence at work here. I am but a pupil of this mastery.
Mo Xi is Going Thru It. See, he and Gu Mang didn't just fuck sometimes, but they had exchanged I-love-yous, they were supposed to be COMRADES and LOVERS until the END OF TIME. He continues digging and begins to nurse a theory that either Gu Mang is entirely pretending, or his memories/personality are only suppressed, potentially reversibly so.
However, there is an obstacle in his way, and that obstacle is Murong Lian, the owner of Luomei Pavilion. He's a scion of another one of the big cultivation families, as well as the emperor's cousin. Murong Lian was granted custody of Gu Mang by the emperor upon Gu Mang's return to Chonghua on the basis that he was Gu Mang's slave master back in the day (the hows and whys of an enslaved person going through cultivation academy and leading an army are not entirely clear to me but I could also just be forgetting details, and I know stuff like this is not completely without precedent in real life.) Murong Lian is very evil; I'll be interested to see if he gains depth later, because right now he is truly without a redeemable character trait. Mo Xi and Gu Mang were sneaking around under his nose during their secret love affair, and Murong Lian was obsessed with making unsubtle implications about how he was convinced they were together despite not having proof. Also, Gu Mang spent that whole time wearing a magic slave collar in public as punishment for some heroic stuff he did during the war that Murong Lian was mad about.
Again, I cannot possibly overstate how horny this is on the page. If you're like “I bet you're just framing everything in a purposely horny way but it's more sensitively handled in the text,” I cannot tell you in words the degree to which I am not doing that.
Mo Xi wants to get Gu Mang out of Murong Lian's custody and into his own, so he can continue investigating the situation of his missing memories etc. However, Murong Lian doesn't want to give Gu Mang up, because he's a sicko. This gets taken to the emperor after Gu Mang goes berserk and escapes confinement (only to be recaptured by Mo Xi.)
Oh yeah, in between the first brothel scene and Gu Mang's escape, there's a part where Mo Xi reluctantly goes to a party at Murong Lian's sicko mansion where people imprisoned at Luomei Pavilion have been provided for ~entertainment, and there's a bit where Murong Lian is like “oh, what is it?? Not interested in any of the beauties here? I bet you'd actually rather be fucking your ENEMY...” and then Gu Mang gets brought out in immortal-binding cables and whipped while Mo Xi can't intervene for fear of letting on that he CARES. This entire volume comprised of scenes of Gu Mang being put into various forms of bottom storage.
Anyway, there was a vicious mass murder the night Gu Mang escaped, and the emperor decides to resolve the conflict of who should get to be Gu Mang's sexy slave master by telling Mo Xi and Murong Lian that the first one to solve the case can have him. Murong Lian thinks Gu Mang was somehow responsible, and tortures Gu Mang horrifically (this is at least the third graphically described beating/whipping that Gu Mang has received by this point); meanwhile, Mo Xi recognizes in the victims' wounds the signature of the Water-Parting Sword technique of the famous cultivator Li Qingqian. Mo Xi goes to the prison after Murong Lian leaves and can't stop himself from healing Gu Mang's wounds, and leaves a tracking device on him. Not long after Mo Xi leaves, he detects that Gu Mang has left the prison... left, or been TAKEN.
Plot happens until Mo Xi, Murong Lian, and Yue Chenqing, Mo Xi's 17-year-old buffoon of a deputy general, find and incapacitate Gu Mang near a creepy cave wherein the suspect of the murders is clearly hiding. They quickly determine that the culprit is Li Qingqian's shade, with the man himself having been killed as a spirit sacrifice to speed up the cultivation of a blade called the Red Peony Sword. “Li Qingqian” is now a vengeful sword spirit in turn devouring souls for XP, etc etc.
The gang tries to break the seal on the Red Peony Sword in order to destroy it and kill Li Qingqian. At one point, Li Qingqian is able to possess Gu Mang's body. Mo Xi engages possessed!Gu Mang in a fight to the death that culminates in Mo Xi being just out of earshot/sight of the rest of the group and having to break the possession talisman, which is ungodly painful, so he has Gu Mang bite his shoulder/neck to get through the agony and it is, as you'd imagine, very horny. And then Mo Xi cradles Gu Mang's trembling form. Li Qingqian also jeers about how Mo Xi totes has a thing for Gu Mang, in a way that has me keenly tallying how many other characters are going to make scandalous intimations as to the nature of their relationship—I shall report back.
Things look salvageable until they don't. Something goes hinky with the seal breakage and Li Qingqian is able to reunite with his true form (as the sword), giving him access to his full powers. Just when things are looking dire, Yue Chenqing's mysterious and powerful fourth uncle shows up... and there we end things for now.
I wasn't meaning to get this granular, I was just continually astounded by the horny heights to which this novel was willing to ascend. It felt like reading a 200k OOC Wangxian darkfic where Hanguang-jun acquires the Yiling Patriarch to discipline and subjugate and makes him his sexy concubine. Except if that was the text of the story.
What did I actually, like, think of it? GREAT question.
The way the novel sets up Gu Mang in the first several chapters is very vivid and effective—he's a well-drawn character as both ML and pseudo-antagonist. I didn't devote much time here to, uh, character nuances, but whatever of that has thus far been present is largely regarding Gu Mang. For most of the book, Mo Xi felt comparatively bland despite being the POV character, though there are frequent gestures to mysteries and layers hidden below his surface, and once he started becoming an increasingly pathetic Guy In Tragic Love I appreciated his presence more and more. I also strongly commend Meatbun's commitment to writing top POV. Especially since Mo Xi is kind of... ~sensitive.
I have sufficient attachment to the leads and interest in the plot to keep reading. I would only recommend it to people who enjoy extremely elevated and melodramatic woobie torture porn. The historical fantasy political drama is not, at least at this point, so fresh or engaging it's worth wading through if you don't at all enjoy gratuitous whipping scenes and such, even if that enjoyment comes from appreciation of the absurdity of a lot of these developments, because there's just simply going to be a lot of that. However, if you are in the market for some real trash with enough of a real plot to give you something to chew on... it is absolutely what it says on the tin.
My more clearheaded evaluations of it as A Work Of Storytelling are going to have to wait til I get through the rest of it, because there's a lot of “I'm waiting to see where the narrative actually lands on X in order to decide if I like it or not.” Also, I apologize if I sound flippant and dismissive of really horrible shit, this is just a story that takes place in Dead Dove Do Not Eat porn world and I am incapable of taking it 100% seriously.
The translation reads pretty smoothly; the only thing that jumped out to me as an awkward choice is that there's a lot of translation of verse into rhyming couplets in ways that typically sound quite silly.
Also, I kept thinking that if they were lesbians the the tone and nature of the relationship would just feel like. Realistic. You know.