Till the End of the Moon 长月烬明 Opinionated Summary

Disclaimer: the following summary is focused on the two main characters and many other characters and key items are not mentioned for the sake of brevity. Hence, it may seem like a #romance, but who am I kidding, it is mainly a romance lol.

Demon lord (Tantai Jin) wreaks havoc and destroys the cultivation world. Sole survivor girl (Susu) goes back in time to prevent the awakening of demon lord so her world does not perish. Demon lord is still a mortal, sole survivor Susu transmigrates into the wife of Tantai Jin, Ye Xiwu. Perfect, the gods are helping her she's found her target. BUT, she can't kill him or the "evil bone" within him will awaken and he will become the demon lord! Here begins a journey of the see-saw between fear and hatred, sympathy and love.

From some dreams of the past, we learn that mortal Tantai Jin is just a mortal with social impairment, he lacks common sense, emotions and a moral compass. He is hated for a variety of reasons such as causing the death of his mother, his status as a hostage prince in an enemy country and his lack of humanity. He's just a poor soul who wants some care and attention. The original Ye Xiwu is a spoilt brat who is equally lacking a moral compass. She's married to Tantai Jin in the first place because she plotted against her own elder sister (Ye Bingchang) but the ploy failed and fell onto herself instead hurr hurr.

Now that Susu has taken over, Tantai Jin wonders why his wife has stopped whipping and punishing him but is clothing and feeding him instead (The poor soul). Susu lies and tells Tantai Jin it's because she likes him. (How is this even believable? Only socially impaired TTJ would fall for such a lie TT^TT) Now, the poor soul who craved care finally received the care he so desired. BUT, he overhears Ye Xiwu saying that she hates him and will never be sincere towards him. [insert shocked pikachu face]

Traumeowtised by her betrayal, he decides power is more reliable than love from others. Politically, he decides to return to his own He begins to absorb demonic power from other demons (community service really, he's cleaning up the place) Susu proceeds to toggle between two states - when she sees him associating with demonic powers, she wants to kill him - but when others try to harm him, she becomes the protective mother hen. Tantai Jin being on the receiving end of this see saw, is a confuddled mess who ends up trusting her at one moment and not trusting her in the next moment.

During a moment of mutual distrust, they, along with the second main couple (Xiao Lin and Ye Bingchang), enter a dream that dates 10,000 years in the past (yes, again. dreamland) and we the audience have to get used to their new identities in the dream. Their identities honestly don't matter too much, except that the person who prepared this dream in the first place, is Mingye, the god of war and leader of the Upper Immortal Realm 10,000 years ago. And Mingye meant for Tantai Jin to live out his past in a dream, in order to learn what is love. On the other hand, Ye Xiwu is told by the god of time that she needs Tantai Jin's teardrop, shed out of love and that if she earns his love, the teardrop will grow 9 spikes that will be able to pierce his heart and destroy the evil bone, her objective.

In the dream, we first get fed with some sweet moments between Mingye and Sangjiu (TTJ and YXW). But those are, unfortunately, pretty short-lived. The female of the second main couple (Ye Bingchang, or Tianhuan in the dream) is the third wheel who stubbornly thinks of Sangjiu as the third wheel. She sows discord between Mingye and Sangjiu, tricks, bullies and scams Sangjiu while lying to Mingye simultaneously. To the audience's horror, Mingye and Sangjiu never think of meeting to talk things out but just believe in Tianhuan's lies baselessly. They separate without resolving their misunderstandings, but not before they consummate. (??? don't worry. You are not alone, let us be confused together.)

Mingye goes to fight a battle against the then demon lord and goes missing. Sangjiu hears the news and remembers the god of space gave her a one-time-use teleport-to-Mingye ability, uses it, and rescues his baby little dragon form. He's blind so she shifts her voice a few pitches higher and fakes an identity. He buys it until his sight recovers and he realises who she really is. But in order to spend more time with her, he pretends to still be blind. Here we get fed more sweet moments, but honestly, how can Mingye not recognise Sangjiu earlier? How can Sangjiu be so okay with Mingye being so close to her when she thinks that he thinks she's someone else?!?! Grrrrrr.

AGAIN the sweetness is cut off by the burden - Tianhuan. Things happen, Tianhuan destroys the Mohe River, and Sangjiu is the sole survivor (again). She turns evil and hunts down Tianhuan in revenge. More things happen - Sangjiu massacres many, including Tianhuan; Mingye attempts to save her but fails; she dies; he survives, but lives in longing for the rest of his life. Everyone awakens from the dream. Tantai Jin has successfully felt love through Mingye's memories. He sheds a tear for Sangjiu, and Susu now has the teardrop she needs. Next is to earn his love and grow those 9 spikes.

Back in the mortal world, Tantai Jin does a fantabulous job at leading his country (possibly gained some insight from leading the upper immortal realm through Mingye?). Ye Xiwu busies herself trying to curry favour with Tantai Jin. A few spikes grow. Again we have the same see-saw plot development. Someone plots against Tantai Jin, he retaliates, she hears half the story and determines Tantai Jin is evil after all, from this one incident, forgetting how good he was as an emperor. She also does some stupid thing that causes him to think she's betrayed him. They both distrust each other due to misunderstands caused by partial information AGAIN. The spikes retreat.

Ye Xiwu eventually learns the full story and realises it's all a misunderstanding, they make up. Spikes grow again. Ye Bingchang learns all the bad things from Tianhuan and plots more schemes. One thing leads to another and she manages to cause a gigantous misunderstanding between Ye Xiwu and Tantai Jin again. Spikes retreat again. This time the misunderstanding is so convoluted I'm actually impressed by it. At the same time, I am completely nonplussed as to why this see-saw mechanic happens so many times and no character seems to learn any better. WHY DOES YE XIWU STILL NOT TRUST TANTAI JIN AFTER REPEATEDLY BEING PROVEN THAT HE'S NOT INTRINSICALLY BAD?!?! WHY DOES TANTAI JIN STILL THINK THAT YE XIWU IS TRYING TO KILL HIM WHEN SHE'S SAVED HIS LIFE A BAJILION TIMES ALREADY?

The funniest part? Now they make up without even resolving their misunderstandingS. Why? Because Susu has given up trying to see the good in Tantai Jin. The situation is not salvageable. Let's just trick him. "Let's not talk about what's happened. (no you guys really need to talk. How many times have you guys had unnecessary conflict because of a lack of information and communication?) I want to be your empress" she says. Somehow, her coming back to him, after attempting to poison him to death, yet now wanting to marry him, was enough to make all the 9 spikes grow. Uhh. Ya'll seem to be forgetting something. Ya'll are already married. Bruh. ??? Tantai Jin says that Ye Xiwu is the only one who cared for him when he was a nobody, the one who taught him love. 呸！ YOU WERE JUST SUSPECTING HER OF ATTEMPTED MURDER... I rest my case.

ANOTHER wedding. Consummation does NOT happen because Ye Xiwu starts to pierce his heart with them spikes, 3 at a time. She reveals that she is not Ye Xiwu, she is Li Susu, who came for no other reason than to kill him. Boy, you should have suspected her of plotting your death after she asked to marry you, not before. Lel. Hindsight is 20/20~~~ The number of lines Susu has to say in this scene is so numerous that I'm led to believe she is either a sadist who wants to prolong his pain or still half-hearted about killing him. When the last 3 spikes were about to be pierced, Mingye's dragon scale flies out and deflects them. (Scale, why you only come out now?!?! Why not defend from the start?!?!) Susu is devastated as she ought to be. After all, she somewhat unwillingly tried to kill the one she loves in order to protect a future realm from future devastation [rolls eyes]

Tantai Jin suffers constantly from the 6 spikes in his heart. He keeps Ye Xiwu locked up in jail but refuses to kill her because of his insane possessiveness of her. Susu very quickly learns the information she was missing and regrets very much that she mislabelled him (for the umpteenth time), did not trust him and even hurt him. She then recalls that in the dream of the past, Mingye once exchanged his immortal marrow with Sangjiu's evil bone. She now comes up with a new plan, to cultivate her own immortal marrow, trigger a lightning tribulation, and exchange it with Tantai Jin's evil bone. (If this was an option WHY WAS THE WHOLE TEARDROP WITH 9 SPIKES EVEN NECESSARY?!)

More fights and many deaths later, she successfully cultivates an immortal marrow, triggers the lightning tribulation, takes his evil bone from him and gives him her immortal marrow. She dies, he lives (still with 6 spikes in his heart but now that he has an immortal marrow his life is prolonged and so is his pain ;-;). He becomes less compassionate and more of a tyrant of an emperor, caring less about his country and more for a corpse. After multiple attempts of suicide, his subordinate tells him about the Nether River where perhaps he would be able to find her soul. Tantai Jin fakes his death, hands the country over to Ye Qingyu (the best character in the whole show imho, but I skip his story in this summary ;-;) and goes to the Nether River. The water of the Nether River burns his flesh but he pushes onwards nonetheless, for 500 years.

We are back where we started in the timeline, the cultivation realm is alive, the demon lord did not awaken, and Susu wakes up as if from a 10-year closed-door meditation/trib but she remembers all her memories as Ye Xiwu. For whatever reason she decides to treat it as a dream, even though the evil bone within her EVIDENTLY tells her it was real. Her body is of some special vessel and is able to hold the evil bone, but it's slowly exhausting her cultivation. She tries to practise the Heartless way to grow her cultivation quickly and keep the evil bone under control.

Tantai Jin on the other hand is pulled out of the Nether River and into the cultivation realm, and saved by Zhaoyou, one of the sect leaders of the cultivation realm. After a bunch of redundant push and pull, Tantai Jin realises that this is where Ye Xiwu, or Susu originally came from, and that he could possibly revive her, and eventually become the disciple of Zhaoyou. Here we have another bout of redundancy of almost-meet-but-miss-each-other-by-a-hair between Tantai Jin and Susu. It served no purpose whatsoever as they anti-climatically do end up meeting. Susu tries to pretend not to know him in order to continue practising the Heartless way. He can tell he's faking it and easily tricks her into revealing herself.

They eventually make up, get together, and prepare for YET ANOTHER WEDDING. But before the wedding can happen, the people of the cultivation realm find out Tantai Jin's identity as the demonic fetus. On top of that, with the unwelcomed assistance of some characters from the demonic realm who are trying to awaken their demon lord, as well as another morally lacking character who is trying to become the demon lord themself, Tantai Jin is framed for a lot of things he didn't do. But there's one silver lining. Susu trusts Tantai Jin, that he is innocent. REJOICE. THERE IS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. throws confetti

No thanks to the morally lacking character who dreams of becoming the demon lord, Susu's painstaking efforts of exchanging her immortal marrow for Tantai Jin's evil bone go to waste. The evil bone is removed from her, and morally lacking character attempts to absorb it but is controlled by the evil bone instead. Susu is somehow alive and well without any core.

We come to the crux of the story. Both the cultivation realm and the demon realm think of Tantai Jin as the demon lord. In an innocent effort of protecting the cultivation realm, as well as a powerlessness to defy his fate, Tantai Jin pretends to be the demon lord. He then gathers all the demons and attempts to self-detonate, killing the entire demon realm and any chances of the demon lord's awakening. Mingye's consciousness speaks to him through Mingye's scale and stops him from killing himself.

Unfortunately, the cultivation realm has no plans on letting him off and start a war against him. Simultaneously, the character controlled by the evil bone starts up this mass of negative energy that will cause a bout of destruction. His master Zhaoyu saves him from the onslaught of the cultivation realm and tells him that the mass of negative energy cannot be stopped by anyone except the demon lord. During Zhaoyu's fight against the character controlled by the evil bone, he was tainted by demonic power and was turning into a demon. His last two instructions to Tantai Jin were to kill him before he completely transforms into a demon, as well as to become the demon lord and put the mass of negative energy to a stop. How righteous. Master does not want to become a demon. Disciple, you do it. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Hence, Tantai Jin proceeds as instructed. He kills his master; gets further misunderstood by the cultivation realm for doing so; he then kills the character controlled by the evil bone and absorbs it in order to become the demon lord, somehow keeping his consciousness and his will to save the cultivation realm. The immortal marrow and evil bone seem to be able to coexist within him too. [question marks all around]

Like what Susu once did, it is now Tantai Jin's turn to get inspiration from Mingye's dream. He decides to recreate the battle between the immortals and the demon lord. First, he must gather the three items of the demon lord in order to... extract the evil bone from himself. Apparently, only by extracting the evil bone does he become vulnerable, and can be killed by an immortal. Lol, he just absorbed it and now he wants to remove it again. What is with this back and forth? Not to mention, why is he trying to die again? Mingye stopped him from dying and now his master is asking him to die again. ???

The one thing that was interesting in this whole fanfare to me was this: Tantai Jin was someone who tried very hard to live when he did not receive love. When he was unable to love, his will to live was strong. When he learns to love, regardless of whether he receives love, he's willing to give up anything for the one he loves, even his own life. I found that to be quite touching and authentic. Back to the story...

There are no immortals at this point in time, but Susu is the child of an immortal, specifically, the god of space. If she is able to complete her practice of the Heartless Way, she will be able to become a full-fledged immortal who is able to kill the demon lord. Perhaps you may have realised but for the most part of the story, Tantai Jin wanted to be loved by Susu and hated when she wanted to kill him. He was always trying to convince Susu, convince the world, that he is capable of being good, that he isn't intrinsically evil. Now... he needs Susu to hate him enough to practise the Heartless way in order to kill him. Such a reversal. The entire show so far, has been dedicated to their misdirected hating and blaming due to unwanted misunderstandings. The last misunderstanding is now planted by Tantai Jin himself, the complete opposite of what he was trying to prove. Truth - that he is the demonic fetus but he is not evil. But Susu must believe - that he is the demonic fetus and he is evil.

For whatever reason, he arranges for YET ANOTHER WEDDING. Okay, the reason is actually that it's part of his plan to get her to hate him so as to turn her into an immortal. I'm just salty about the insane number of times they want to get married. The night before the wedding, he takes her on an unbearably redundant and confusing trip into an alternate reality he created using their memories in the mortal realm. For someone who is trying to make her hate him, he does so in a very unconvincing way, reliving happy memories and even consummating. It does form a weird parallel with Sangjiu and Mingye's past, having a consummation before a farewell.

The wedding happens and so does the plan to kill Tantai Jin begin. The cultivation realm acts exactly as Tantai Jin expects them to, using the marriage invitation to enter the demon realm and form arrays to attack him. Tantai Jin subjects Susu to the lightning that the cultivation realm meant to use on him. But the lightning acts as her tribulation and successfully transforms Susu into an immortal. Somehow she managed to hate Tantai Jin enough to cultivate the Heartless Way. Somehow the moment she is an immortal she still loves Tantai Jin anyway. Somehow I need to stop thinking logically.

They talk, while the war between the demon realm and the cultivation realm is still ongoing. Tantai Jin himself asks her how come she still has time to talk to him. Ha. Ha. They embrace; she deals a blow to the evil bone telepathically (yeah like, there was no obvious trigger); he tells her to let go; she says there's no need for an immortal if there is no demon lord. Aka, let me die together with you. He lies, "okay", while giving her Mingye's scale, protecting her from the detonation.

He's dead. She's alive. She even births his kid. The end.

inhale exhale