Mistakenly Saving the Villain

by Feng Yu Nie

Synopsis:

DOES TIME REALLY HEAL ALL WOUNDS?

After a near-fatal catastrophe, Song Qingshi awakens to find his home, the Medicine King’s Valley, almost unrecognizable. But not to fear. His devoted companion, Yue Wuhuan, remains by his side, ready to guide him through the changes.

Yue Wuhuan seems transformed as well. There are rumors that he’s become a ruined beauty and a madman, but he insists it’s all an act. To Song Qingshi, he seems more stable than ever before. Yet when the volatile and injured An Long storms into the valley, Yue Wuhuan’s carefully spun narrative begins to unravel. Soon, the two are at each other’s throats again.

In a desperate bid to restore peace, Song Qingshi proposes a vacation together. But beneath the surface of this idyllic escape, Yue Wuhuan is still scheming—determined to eliminate anyone who dares sully his beloved “Zunzhu.” And if An Long thinks he can stop him, he’s about to learn just how far Yue Wuhuan will go for love.

Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain ended volume one with the critical injury of Song Qingshi, so volume two opens after years of healing, during which An Long and Yue Wuhuan have been fighting each other on the regular, with Yue Wuhuan concealing Song Qingshi’s condition and An Long knowing something must be the matter.

We get a lot more insight into An Long’s behaviour in this volume, and into his former disagreements with Song Qingshi. I actually have a lot of sympathy for him in this volume, given what we discover about him — he’s a brute, but he’s also genuinely struggling, fighting deep feelings and a sense of not having a place in the world. I kind of hoped that the interlude with Song Qingshi, An Long and Yue Wuhuan going on holiday together would end better, but… the way it did end makes a lot of sense.

As for Yue Wuhuan, it is fascinating to note the ways he’s got stronger, and the deep instability he’s still struggling with. I’m not sure if I hope that he gets fully better or not, because he’d have a long way to go for that and it feels… not entirely plausible, and not like the story’s driving in that direction at all. And given that it’s fiction, there’s something appealing about how unhinged he and Song Qingshi can be about each other: at times Song Qingshi really does match him on that.

(To be really clear, it’s not shaping up to be a super healthy relationship since there’s a lot of stuff going unsaid and I think Yue Wuhuan would happily lock Song Qingshi in a room and just bring him anything he needs, in order to keep him safe from real and perceived threats. One can enjoy this in fiction while knowing that one would have to try to get Song Qingshi to see the truth and act in self-preservation in reality.)

I’m very curious where this is going to go and how issues like Song Qingshi’s cultivation are going to kick in… and where the system is in all this, given that it’s been quite a while without any mention of it. I don’t think it came up at all in this volume!

So yeah, still having a lot of fun, but Yue Wuhuan is a whole bundle of red flags in the shape of a man, and Song Qingshi isn’t actually a whole lot better in some ways. Read with caution if that might trouble you.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)