73 pages • 2 hours read
Sue Lynn TanDaughter of the Moon Goddess
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 3, Chapters 31-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 31 Summary
Xingyin wakes in a guarded room, bound with magic-suppressing bracelets. She still has her flute, but the pearls and bow are gone. She remembers Wenzhi’s strange eyes and gathers hairpins for weapons. Wenzhi arrives, still with silver eyes. She attacks him, and they fight; he disarms her and admits that his black eyes were a disguise. He reveals that he is a prince of the Cloud Wall, which Celestials call the Demon Realm. Xingyin confronts him about his deceit and abduction, but he points out that she agreed to come home with him, and that she also lied about her identity.
Xingyin realizes he is a Mind Talent. They argue over the ethics of Mind magic: Xingyin hates it, Wenzhi views it as a neutral tool. He also reveals his motivations: Wenzhi wants to be Crown Prince in order to protect his loved ones from his terrible half-brother. The king—their father—agreed, as long as Wenzhi helps him overthrow the Celestial Kingdom and brings him the dragons’ pearls. Wenzhi snuck into the Celestial Kingdom army, used the magic-suppressing ore from the Xiangliu’s mountain to make shackles, orchestrated the merfolk rebellion through Renyu, kidnapped Princess Fengmei (as the mysterious archer), and allied with Lady Hualing to kill Liwei. Liwei’s death was a gift for his father, as Wenzhi failed to acquire the pearls until Xingyin’s quest.
Furious, Xingyin accuses him of lying to her about his feelings. He insists his feelings for her are all true: “The first time I watched you shoot was when you moved something in me. […] It was partly why I decided to give up on the pearls and return home. I wanted no more lies between us” (392). However, when the emperor tasked Xingyin with acquiring the pearls—the very thing Wenzhi had been trying to acquire—Wenzhi could not overlook his duty. He promises to free Xingyin’s mother after he overthrows the Celestials, but Xingyin refuses. He leaves, locking her in her gaudy palace prison.
Part 3, Chapter 32 Summary
Xingyin unsuccessfully attempts to escape. Wenzhi tells her that she was branded a traitor; Liwei was attacked during Xingyin’s abduction, but escaped.
A soldier reports a situation with the Celestial Army. Wenzhi must go handle it; Xingyin tries to spy on him, but fails to learn anything for a while. From her window, she observes him leading a military exercise in which clouds are disguised as sand. Xingyin ponders this, then realizes the Demons’ plot: creating a false border to manipulate the Celestials into breaking the peace treaty and inciting a war.
Part 3, Chapter 33 Summary
Xingyin is determined to escape and warn the Celestials of Wenzhi’s plots. She calms down enough to devise a plan and convinces her guards to escort her to Wenzhi’s quarters. On the way, they pass through a garden; Xingyin finds star-lilies (which, as she learned in Part 1, Chapter 5, can induce sleep) and secretly picks them. They also encounter Wenshuang, Wenzhi’s half-brother. They reach Wenzhi’s chambers; he lets her in.
She demands to know why he won’t free her, and he insists that it’s because he still loves her. She lies, falsely accepting his proposed alliance, and suggests a toast to celebrate their union. He orders plum wine. She convinces him to play his qin; while he is distracted, she drugs the wine with the star-lilies. While he drinks, she plays her flute for him, drowning out his discovery of her deceit. She then plays his qin until he falls unconscious.
Part 3, Chapter 34 Summary
While Wenzhi is unconscious, Xingyin searches his quarters for her belongings. She is interrupted by Wenshuang, who snuck into Wenzhi’s room. He offers to let her go in exchange for being the scapegoat for Wenzhi’s murder.
Despite Xingyin’s hatred of Wenzhi, she protects him in honor of their past camaraderie. She and Wenshuang fight; once he is incapacitated, she finds the pearls and bow. She summons the Black Dragon just as Wenzhi stirs. Xingyin escapes. The Black Dragon arrives just as Wenzhi catches up to her. Xingyin has a chance to kill him, but chooses not to; instead, the dragon carries her away.
Part 3, Chapters 31-34 Analysis
The main themes of this section are The Value of Freedom and Honesty, Loyalty, and Honor in Interpersonal Relationships, specifically between Wenzhi and Xingyin. Xingyin spends most of these chapters learning the extent of Wenzhi’s betrayal and trying to escape her prison. She must stoop to deceit to free herself, tricking Wenzhi and drugging him, as she has no other means of escape. Using these methods despite her hatred of them demonstrates that she fully understands the importance of freedom and shows the extent to which she will go to achieve it. Freedom is arguably more important to her than even family, as she never considered searching for a dishonorable method to save her mother.
Her debate with Wenzhi about Mind Talent also discusses the ethics of the magic as it pertains to freedom—in this case, free will. Can such an ability truly do good, or does it only remove people’s freedom? Given Xingyin’s previous experiences with Mind Talent, she naturally feels the latter. However, Wenzhi believes that the Celestial Emperor took away the freedom to practice Mind Talent, which he views as a neutral tool just like the other Talents. Wenzhi argues that the negative elements of Mind Talent are balanced by its potential for good, and points out that Mind Talent was once rarely used in the first place. By outlawing it, the emperor made a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Cloud Wall citizens to regain their freedom from his control by any means necessary (389). In this way, Wenzhi is similar to the Celestial Emperor in that he will “use whatever means necessary” to achieve his goals (342), even if that means taking away others’ freedom to gain his own. This is arguably an extension of the overall Mind Talent debate—he has the power to control people, but whether his uses of it are “good” are “evil” is a matter of perspective. His choices contrast with Xingyin’s: Xingyin can control the dragons, but chooses not to restrict their freedom.
At the same time, when Wenzhi reveals the extent of his dishonesty, he throws doubt on their entire relationship. Nearly every meaningful interaction between them is now tainted. Killing the Xiangliu gave him access to the magic-suppressing ore; suppressing the merfolk rebellion gave him an opportunity to investigate their library for information on the dragons; warning Xingyin away from joining Princess Fengmei’s rescue mission was an attempt to protect her from his plot to kill Liwei; even joining her on the dragon pearls quest was a way to acquire the pearls for himself. His manipulation and lies also call into question The Influence of Romantic Love: If he is a Mind Talent, was he manipulating Xingyin’s feelings for him all along? He insists he loves her, but he is a proven ruthless liar, and Xingyin has no real way of proving whether he is being honest about his loyalty to her. Xingyin’s use of hairpins as weapons is her response: They symbolize her rejection of him and his actions.
Xingyin’s feelings are reflected through music. Before she drugs Wenzhi to escape, he plays qin for her, tying him to her “second choice” instrument and marking him as second place in her heart. His silver eyes add to this association, as silver is typically “second” to gold. Though Xingyin plays the flute for Wenzhi, it represents her determination to return to Liwei (whom she associates with the flute), not any fondness for Wenzhi. Her subsequent qin performance (on a borrowed instrument, instead of her own) is also not a true performance; rather, it masks Wenzhi’s struggle against the drug and is a declaration of her disregard for him.
Although Xingyin uses deceitful methods to escape the Cloud Wall, she regains her honor when she refuses to kill Wenzhi. Wenshuang’s intent to murder Wenzhi while he is defenseless is dishonorable to Xingyin, and she protects Wenzhi, upholding her personal morals despite everything Wenzhi has done to her and her loved ones. Similarly, she could have killed him when the Black Dragon arrived: He was conscious, prepared for battle, and determined to recapture her, so his death would have been both justified and honorable. However, she honors their past relationship and chooses not to. Summoning the Black Dragon is an interesting choice, since black dragons are traditionally associated with vengeance—interestingly, Xingyin shares a slightly stronger bond with the Black Dragon over the others, as it is the one who informed her of her father’s death.
Xingyin has proven that she is no saint. Though her reasons are understandable, she initially refuses to rescue Fengmei, she takes the dragons’ pearls, and she proves that she will use underhanded methods when necessary, even if she dislikes them. Whether she will seek retribution for Wenzhi’s actions remains to be seen.
