Work Text:
I. Introduction
In Airplane extras part 2, Wei Qingwei leads a party of disciples to find the missing An Ding disciples of which Shang not-yet-Qinghua is the only survivor. Wei Qingwei is described as having a reserved smile, and he carries two swords, one short and one long. Wei Qingwei greets Shang Qinghua by calling him X-shidi and says he doesn't even look human, then claims it was a joke when Shang Qinghua is upset. Upon being interrogated, Shang Qinghua pretends to faint, and Wei Qingwei pokes him in the face while he gives orders to bring Shang Qinghua back to the sect. Later in the Airplane extras, part 3, Wei Qingwei reports that Hong Jing didn't react to Shen Qingqiu. In the Return to Childhood extra, Wei Qingwei comments on Luo Binghe getting bigger while recovering from his qi deviation as "admirable growth". In xyz, Wei Qingwei is present when Liu Qingge delivers a second short-haired beast, and suggests that the short-haired beasts might be more interested in each other than the bamboo, if they're male or female - a setup for a subtle joke about "what if they're both male?" whose speaker is unknown. From this, we can describe Wei Qingwei as someone who likes to "poke fun" at others, sometimes in sore spots, but who is efficient and straightforward in his duties.
The sum of what can be considered canon information about Wei Qingwei amounts to three scenes, only one in which he has more than one line. He's a bit character. If an author were to write a fanfiction about him, they would need to flesh him out extensively. Some people believe that with how much has to be added on to bit characters to write about them, they're just original characters with a canon name.
While this isn't entirely wrong, it's not entirely true either. Bit characters can be thoughtfully and faithfully developed. We can draw upon their context, the information around them in canon and the archetypes they resemble within the genre, to create a scaffold to build detail on. This can't be called a "canonical" representation - it's at best an educated elaboration. It creates a more interesting character to explore, and often feels more in tune with the canon work.
I can't attempt to analyze Wei Qingwei's archetype. I am reading in translation and without sufficient knowledge about popular Chinese literary tropes. There is a small but workable amount of information in the rest of the book that can be analyzed. Namely, the information about Wan Jian Peak, which Wei Qingwei is Peak Lord of.
II. Wan Jian Peak
Wan Jian is a peak of 铸剑大师 zhù jiàn dà shī, which the official translation reads as "master swordsmen". Looking closer, the phrase is 铸 zhù, to cast or found metals; 剑 jiàn, meaning a straight sword with two edge; 大师 dàshī, great master. Thus, Wan Jian is a peak of master smiths who forge jian swords.
The jian sword is considered to be the king of weapons, the weapon of nobles and scholars. It demands balance, flexibility, and precision. Even though Bai Zhan is the peak of greatest martial ability, Wan Jian's sword-smiths must be those most well-versed in the sword as an art form. As those most familiar with the technical aspects of the sword, it makes sense for Wan Jian's martial style to be the most precise, demanding, and technical.
Prior to the development of the scientific method, technical and dangerous crafts, like forging and sword-smithing, were often rigorously traditional. A lot of details have to be controlled for in order to produce quality weapons: the steel has to be mixed with the right amount of carbon and iron, it has to be brought to the right temperature at the right time, folded and tempered in specific ways, and through all of this the safety of the workers has to be maintained around extreme temperatures, hot metals, and a lot of other workers doing equally demanding and precise tasks. With Wan Jian producing swords for an entire martial sect of twelve separate peaks, which are also spiritually imbued and may require even more extreme materials and temperatures, the importance of precision, coordination, and safety increases. Wan Jian is likely to be a very traditional place, which matches the information we know about.
The Peak Itself
Physically, Wan Jian is described as having a "perfect environment", 天时地利人和, meaning both favorable geography and harmony between people. The place where swords are kept and then drawn from is called the "Sword Trials Terrace", 試劍台. This Sword Trials Terrace likely faces onto a stone face of the mountain where completed spiritual swords are placed to mature and cultivate. It's implied that the swords are named before they are drawn from the rock wall.
When Luo Binghe had pulled it free from the rock wall, it had elicited a wave of surprised exclamations and praise from various sect members.
Vol. 1, Chapter 4: Conference
Ming Fan had yearned for the Zheng Yang sword on Wan Jian Peak, and he had spent many years thinking about it.
Vol. 1, Chapter 4: Conference
Disciples draw their swords
Disciples from all of Cang Qiong's Peaks may receive their swords from the Sword Trials Terrace, once their cultivation reaches "a certain stage". No known cultivators of Cang Qiong use any weapons other than swords. It's not impossible that cultivators of Cang Qiong could use other weapons, but it would likely be much harder for them to get a high class spiritual weapon than simply drawing one from Wan Jian. When drawing from the Sword Trials Terrance, the person may choose whatever sword they please, but the consequences of drawing a poorly matched sword can be severe.
Though it was said that the person picked the sword, in truth, the sword also picked the person. If a person with subpar talent insisted on taking a top-class sword capable of condensing spiritual energy collected from the heavens and earth, it would be the equivalent of a beautiful woman marrying an ugly man or arranging fresh flowers in cow dung. As you can imagine, the sword would be entirely unwilling.
The metaphors here are very typical of Shen Yuan's heteronormativity and limited worldview - there are plenty of reasons why a beautiful woman might marry an ugly man, and fresh flowers arranged in cow dung can take root in rich manure. However, the canonical example of a person who did draw a sword far above his capabilities, Yue Qingyuan, shows extreme consequences. The exact nature of the immediate consequences are unclear - Shen Qingqiu assumes them to be a severe qi deviation - but all we know for certain is that in order to recover from these consequences, Yue Qingyuan was thrown into the Ling Xi Caves with a destroyed body to be remade over an entire year, which tied Xuan Su to his very lifeforce.
That said, if we listen to Shen Yuan's metaphors as being accurate to the world, we could potentially imagine there being circumstances where a very powerful sword would consent to being wielded by a person with lower cultivation.
After a cultivator of Cang Qiong dies, their sword, or rather the sword's shards, are returned to Wan Jian Peak. The exact purpose of this is unknown. Is the sword laid to rest, or are the materials recycled? Shattered swords can be reforged - both Zheng Yang and Xiu Ya are reforged, Xiu Ya while Shen Qingqiu is in his five year dirt nap, so the shattered swords of dead cultivators likely can be reforged. Whether this is typical practice however is unknown.
The Pangolins
By the way, Wan Jian canonically has pangolins. Did that surprise you? It was one word in a blink and you'll miss it high speed Shang Qinghua bemoaning ramble.
Moreover, Shang Qinghua had been to Wan Jian Peak’s sword trials terrace at least three times to polish swords for Wei-shixiong and his buddies, and every time they’d wanted him to sweep their rooms while he was at it, and to make them food, and to also feed their pangolins—how could they have already forgotten his face?!
(This would be an arduous task, as pangolins are anteaters, and artificial recipes have an extremely low success rate.)
Why does Wan Jian have pangolins? We don't know, but there are two possibilities.
They could simply be pets. We know that Shen Qingqiu keeps short haired beasts on his peak that were dropped there by Liu Qingge, who intended them to be eaten to boost cultivation. Today in our world, pangolins are extensively poached in China as their scales are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. So it is entirely possible that someone, a previous Bai Zhan Peak lord, or simply a random member of one of the peaks, captured pangolins and brought them to Wan Jian to be eaten. Whoever was Peak Lord at the time refused, and when a male and female pangolin were brought, they established a breeding population. Wei Qingwei suggests that Shen Qingqiu have the same arrangement with the short haired beasts on Qing Jing, saying "If one of them is male and the other is female and you put them together, maybe they’ll be drawn to each other and won’t gnaw on the bamboo anymore.". However, as mentioned, ordinary pangolins are very difficult to keep in captivity due to their unique diet. If the pangolins have naturalized to the area, they are likely just fine, but if they must be fed, are they really just ordinary pangolins kept as pets?
The pangolins could be spiritual beasts. In the same part of the Airplane extras, Shang Qinghua bemoans his decision to make Proud Immortal Demon Way a "low-fantasy xianxia world", 低魔仙俠, which "doggedly adhered to these kinds of unromantic, dismal, and disgusting principles of realism." The exact boundaries between Wuxia and Xianxia aren't really clear, but one trope common to Xianxia is spiritual beasts playing a role in certain paths of cultivation. Spiritual beasts do show up in another of MXTX's low-fantasy xianxia novels, with Fairy, Jin Ling's dog.
Lord of Wan Jian
Having examined the context of Wan Jian Peak, we return to the beginning: what can we infer about its Peak Lord from this? The Peak Lord of Wan Jian oversees the Sword Trials Terrace, where disciples choose their spiritual sword they will spiritually bond to, a relationship metaphorically compared to marriage and taking root. The Wan Jian Peak Lord may be attuned to relationships between people, similar to their awareness of the relationship between wielder and sword. That would fit with Wei Qingwei's fondness of jokes; trying to encourage social harmony. He may not be the best at it, as his jokes sometimes land wrong and hurt others. As the master of a large smithy, the Wan Jian Peak Lord must be an efficient and capable leader - which is held up in canon - and aware of the real value in "traditions" that are actually safety rules. As a smith, the Wan Jian Peak Lord must be very strong, though we know from Liu Qingge that this does not always mean buff. The Wan Jian Peak Lord must be skilled in technical and precise sword arts, and is likely to be highly bonded to their sword(s). And, since we know that Wei Qingwei wields two swords, he may also be open to the idea of dearly intimate bonds not strictly needing to be monogamous.