DRAMA TIMELINE and LOGIC UNDERSTANDING
SUMMARY: Tantai Jin is simply a vessel, a chess piece in the Devil God and Ancient God's game to destroy / save the world. However, he eventually breaks free from destiny and makes his own decisions about his future. To be a Devil or to be a God, Tantai Jin's fate is in his own hands.
Cr. my own understanding, various posts in the drama super topic, 透视眼娱乐, 新加坡小笔尖
I think what makes this story standout from other xianxia is how refreshing it is (gods are fighting for the world, not for a single person or for romance) and how everything is interrelated with fate, destiny and karma, and the ripple effects caused by a change in thought (一念). This is really important in the part of Chinese culture that is influenced by Buddhism (hence why the gods' are from Dunhuang culture)
Updated 13/04/2023 - SJ death, TTJ's teardrop
Updated 27/04/2023 - Cang Jiumin arc, Note 4 about Jing and Sheng
Updated 04/05/2023 - Note 6: Original Devil God's thought process
Will keep on updating as the drama progresses to the Cang Jiumin story arc:
1. How it all started
Ten thousand years ago, the war between Mingye and the ancient gods vs. Devil God (golden mask and golden eyes, let's call him 1.0 - now known as Original Devil God) happens. Even though Mingye has Tantai Jin's face, the actual Mingye doesn't look like Tantai Jin. Tantai Jin is like playing a VR game and roleplaying as Mingye.
The OG Devil God is actually the original one with Luo Yunxi's face (Tantai Jin is technically using Devil God's face, since he's the devil fetus), and is the actual villain. He is formed from all the anger, misery and sadness during world creation.As long as these negative emotions exist, he will exist. Sick of being the trash can for the world's emotional garbage, he decides to create the All-in-distress Way, a black hole that will suck all the goodness in, leaving the world in a state of negativity and misery, which will in time return the world to a state of Hundun (chaotic nothingness). (Refer to Note 6)
To create the All-in-distress Way, he needs to temporarily extract his evil bone from his body, which gave the gods a chance to kill him. However, Original Devil God also has a plan - he will create a resurrection vessel for him through the creation of a devil fetus, that will die when the time comes and allow OG to take over the body and wreck havoc again. He signed a pact with the Yiyue (Moon) Tribe that is situated next to the Soul River for them to give birth to the devil fetus.
2. 500 years in the future (unknown which exact time loop this is, but it's what we see in EP1)
God of Space Chuhuang was pregnant before the war against OG Devil God, and is Li Susu's mother. Li Susu's evil soul was lost and became Ye Xiwu in Universe A of the Kingdom of Sheng, where she tortured Tantai Jin 1.0. Tantai Jin 1.0 died while kneeling on the frozen lake, causing the evil bone to awaken and became the Devil God 2.0 (red hair, red eyes) we saw at the start of the EP1. This is why Devil God 2.0 was so surprised to see Li Susu, who looks exactly like his evil wife. Devil God 2.0 knows he is just a continuous resurrection vessel for OG Devil God, and is sick of being stuck in an endless time loop. He is curious to see if Li Susu (who also happens to have the forehead mark of a god) can change his fate, hence purposely allows her to travel back to 500 years ago and enter the body of Ye Xiwu, thus creating Universe B.
The 500 years is actually a never ending time loop, until the Devil Fetus is successfully guided along the path of righteousness. 
3. 500 years ago (current timeline)
From that day, we have Tantai Jin 2.0, who is our main character.
Tantai Jin 2.0 is the AI-like hero who can understand emotions by copying other people, yet cannot truly feel them. Treated badly by the Ye family and on the King of Sheng's assassination list, he escapes back to the Kingdom of Jing.
As King of Jing, Tantai Jin thinks Mingye is a powerful demon that he can eat to increase his own powers, and enters the Fleeting Life dream. Turns out the dream was created by Mingye especially for the future devil fetus to try and guide him onto the correct path. In the dream, Mingye cleanses the bone-refining seal, uses it to form Xiaoyao Sect and tries to swap Sangjiu's devil bone with the clean bone-refining seal, but because Sang Jiu's body was already eaten by demons during Huangyuan, she transformed into a devil to stay alive. Mingye finds a place for himself in front of Sang Jiu's stone statue in the Mo River (clams' hometown), and waits patiently for the devil's fetus to enter his dream.
Mingye in dragon form knows Tantai Jin 2.0 is the future Devil God (there's a scene where Tantai Jin 2.0 has an evil expression in the dragon's red eye, yet a normal expression in the dragon's golden eye), and gives him a chance to experience romantic love, comrade love and responsibility to the world in the dream. This is the first step to pushing Tantai Jin 2.0 to the 'good devil' side. Together with the Fleeting Life Dream and the Soul Slaying Pearl Teardrop that fell from Tantai Jin's eye, 2 out of 3 steps are now complete to forming the nine soul-slaying nails. The final step is to grow a love thread, which will happen when Tantai Jin falls in love with Ye Xiwu (Li Susu).
During the red wedding, Tantai Jin was hit by nine soul-slaying nails - the last three failed to implant themselves in his heart because he was protected by Mingye's reverse scale. Tantai Jin now has six soul-slaying nails in his heart along with the evil bone. During YXW's cultivation of divine essence using the evil jade, Tantai Jin has become her life support through transferring his life from the Yang bracelet (what TTJ is wearing) to the Yin bracelet (one that Ye Xiwu is wearing) hence all the blood spitting along with the heart ache from the nails.
During the tower scene, Ye Xiwu shows Tantai Jin his future crimes (they were technically committed by red-haired Devil God 2.0, because Ye Xiwu has already changed the timeline and created a new universe) and exchanges her divine essence for his evil bone. Her mortal body dies. Tantai Jin goes suicidal and enters the underworld, where his body is corroded every time he walks into the river to try and find Ye Xiwu's soul.
4. 500 years later, back to cultivation world, but everything has changed compared to EP1
However, her divine essence always heals him. Towards the end though, the essence's power has run out, and he is already deaf from the corrosion. As he is drowning, he is saved by the OG Devil God's crossbow. He is taken in by Master Zhaoyou from Xiaoyao Sect, and given the name Cang Jiumin. He meets Gongye Jiwu, a clone of Xiao Lin that is made from the blood of his heart and the tear from his lover Ye Bingchang.
In the new universe caused by the butterfly effect from Li Susu's time travelling, she is actually recovering from a love trial, and is now trying to cultivate the Heartless Way in order to keep the evil bone sealed forever. We will later know this is of no use, because Tantai Jin will be identified as the devil god based on the bone-refining seal (Devil God's heart) and the god-slaying crossbow (Devil God's eye). The Devil God's sword is currently with Dimian, who is locked up in the Demon Realm after he betrayed the original Devil God (with golden mask).
Dimian is released thanks to a rigged spell he gave Siying, who was trying to steal the bone-refining seal from the cultivations sects. When Cang Jiumin is on trial, Dimian repeats OG Devil God's story for his devil fetus -turns out Cang Jiumin's life was already planned out to be the worst of the worst, filled with depair, sadness and betrayal.
Cang Jiumin is framed for Qu Xuanzi's death, and is stuck in the Barren Abyss. Initially, he decides to self-implode and destroy Barren Abyss as well, but Mingye jumps out at the last minute to save him, telling him that the original Devil God will just find another devil fetus. Mingye says that there's a better way for him to end his life, as the All-in-Distress Way (opened by Dimian) will only be destroyed if the Devil God is destroyed.
When he escapes from Barren Abyss, only his teacher Zhaoyou believes him, and before dying, Zhaoyou tells him "Cultivation disciple Cang Jiumin can no longer save the world, but Devil God Tantai Jin can." This gave Tantai Jin the idea to go back to the Barren Abyss and take on his destiny as well as the original Devil God. He was able to absorb the original Devil God because he had a purpose in life and experienced all the powerful positive emotions as a human, god (Mingye) and cultivation disciple.
Tantai Jin forces Li Susu onto the Heartless Way to try and turn her into a god so she can kill him, tells the cloud version of Pang Yizhi to give the instructions on how to kill the Devil God to Gongye Jiwu and allows the cultivators into the Barren Abyss on the wedding day so they can all participate in his death. In the end, Tantai Jin successfully became a God after understanding his purpose in life (aka die to save the world) and destroys the All-in-Distress way and his own evil bone and disappears. A sliver of his soul is left in Mingye's reverse scale, but because gods do not have a next life, he is well and truly dead.
Note 1: Mingye actually died not long after Sang Jiu - the dragon form Tantai Jin saw under the river was actually just an illusion, and turned into dust after the dream arc finished. Sang Jiu also forgave Ming Ye in the end, because she knows he is the God of War and hero of the world who loves everyone and everything.
Note 2: The evil jade that Sangjiu created by sucking all the powers of the immortals saved Li Susu (probably because Sangjiu knew Li Susu was the kind-hearted Chuhuang's daughter) when Li Susu escaped from Tantai Jin's ship. In EP9/10, Tantai Jin ate the jade piece to amass his powers in a short time to save Li Susu and defeat Tantai Minglang's lackey Fuyu. Because of all the poison and powers he used, he would've died, thus mission fail. Hence Li Susu took back the evil jade and swapped her own eye for Tantai Jin's so Tantai Jin wouldn't die with the evil bone intact and become the Devil God.
Note 3: The kid next to the God of Time Jize was hit with a ruler and kicked down from the Upper Immortal Realm to "find the camellia flowers that he accidentally dropped", but it was actually to save his life and allow him to cultivate further in the mortal world. In the current timeline, he is Pang Yizhi, the unreliable Taoist master and Xiao Lin's older disciple uncle.
Note 4: Mortal World History (from the storyteller) - the Kingdoms of Jing and Sheng were once one kingdom separated by a river 1,000 years ago. There was a lot of conflict, and then the kingdoms split into two. Tantai Jin is known for being a king that did good for his country and unified the kingdoms.
What we also know is Ye Qingyu now has Pianran's demon pill, and is immortal. He basically pretends to die every hundred years and comes back to the throne again wearing a golden mask. Of course, the ordinary people only think every new king is one of Tantai Jin's descendants.
Note 5: How the lower immortal world (cultivation world) formed
1. Bone-Refining Seal - was used by Devil God 1.0 to fight against the gods' Curse of the Stars (huge blue sword during the war), and was forced into the ground, which formed a crater that later becomes Xiaoyao Sect. The seal was cleansed by Mingye's reverse scale, and was given as a wedding gift to Xiao Lin in EP 4. Xiaoyao Sect is known to be a cultivator's treasure because it has so much good 'qi' - all thanks to Mingye from 10,000 years ago.
2. Sky Slashing Sword - was still in Dimian's hand when he sneaked up behind Devil God 1.0. It will still be with him when he appears again later after being rescued from the Demon Realm.
3. Immortal Slaying Crossbow - fell into Ruo River, which is where the Yiyue clan is also situated. It's also where Tantai Jin 2.0 will try and find Li Susu's soul after the tower scene.
4. During the war, parts of the Pillar of Heaven fell before Mingye fixed it. The fallen pieces formed Changze Mountain Ranges, which is where Hengyang Sect is (Li Susu's sect).
Note 6: Original Devil God's thought process
Devil God was born from pre-world chaos (aka pre-Big Bang in science terms) during the era of Nvwa and Fuxi (creators of the world and humanity in Chinese mythology). To protect humanity in case Devil God ever descended upon the Three Worlds and Four Continents, Nvwa and Fuxi created the Twelve ancient Gods. So the 12 ancient gods are actually a generation below Devil God, hence the huge difference in ability.
He co-existed with the other creation figures (Pangu, Nvwa etc.). They represent goodness, while he is the shadow of the world. The goodness and evil in the world are relative to each other just like yin and yang. Tired of working overtime and taking in all the sickness, pain and negative emotions from the world, he suddenly has a lightbulb moment and decides to think outside the box - if he removes all the goodness from the world, there will only be negative emotions. Without a comparison to the goodness, the people will only see the world's negativity and know nothing better, and eventually return the world to central chaos. With the world in central chaos, he won't have to take in all the negativity anymore.
IrisRain:
Very helpful.
However, I'm curious what are the main points that differ from the novel logic.
It follows closely but not entirely. For example, when Su Su goes back in time she makes a deal with YeXiWu - she will give her the body and susu needs to save the Ye family from TTJ. Su su also is shown YXW's life. Moreover in the novel it is told from early on, that YXW won't survive past the age of 20 by the symmetrical/asymmetrical appearence of her face.
We have a magic bracelet called Curved Jade that (as I understood, may not be 100 percent accurate tho) is part of the Mirror of the past. It is the companion of LSS during the mortal realm and also the means of LSS using immortal powers (drawing talismans for example).
YXW doesn't look entirely like Li Su Su, but only close to 80%. Sang Jiu and Ming Ye looked entirely different than in the drama.
The dream arc is changed. Sang Jiu giving her essence keeps the river water still for only 10 years. SJ and MY are married for 100 years, and TH is asleep for 100 years. Ming Ye is shown as really cold towards SJ during these 100 years. Also he is always away looking for artifacts to wake up TH. Also every year for one day he gives the crystal in his body to SJ so she can still the waters of Mo He river for a year, else her clan will die. One year tho, when TH was to wake up, that fell on the same day as SJ needed to borrow the crystal. When SJ asked MY for it, he declined, so taken aback, hurt and jealous SJ drugs MY and sleeps with him/is intimate with him fully knowing he may claim her life after the deed. He just tells her to scram. So she leaves. Overall the other aspects of what we have seen concerning MY and SJ are the same - minus all the details about Devil God 1.0, God war and meeting between LSS and her mom, as well as the reason why Ji Ze was in Barren Abyss. We are however shown at the end of Ming Ye arc what he did for her. Tian Huan was burned for 49 days in the cauldron to appease the souls of the clam clan. Also, there were small clams that were resurrected. XLs character was instead in the body of a demon wolf, whom SJ saved. He was in love with SJ.
We are told way later Devil God 2.0 makes a bet with himself and allows Susu back in time.
shiofmedea:
"Tian Huan was burned for 49 days in the cauldron to appease the souls of the clam clan. "
It was her only punishment? I sense some duble standards here, what is difference between her and demons' way? Immortals should have some better screening policy. That is my issue with that type of stories, in the most cases you need to take for granted what side is good as (with certain characters exceptions) the both sides behave in moraly dubious way or the so called good sects are way worse that evil ones.
but I really thank you for explanetions, it is confusing story.
SJ put her in that cauldron. And tbh dream arc in the novel is short, time passes so quick we get 100 years of married MY and SJ at the beginning.
cutie_daisy:
I want to know more about ye susu, like how was she the evil bone and how did she became yexiwu and if she was the evil bone, why doesn't she have it now and how did TTJ has the evil bone.
She was not the evil bone. The author of this meant that the evil part of her soul aka the demonic part, left her body and turned into Ye Xi Wu.
