Progress Review: A Friendly Look at The Vendetta of An

So far, The Vendetta of An is not a finished historical drama. It’s a deliberately open-ended power story. The show is less about a straightforward revenge plot and more about watching a system slowly fall apart. Strategy, violence, and psychological change are tightly connected here — you can’t really separate one from the others.

Because of that, this isn’t a final verdict. It’s a look at what the story has done up to now: how it’s built, how the characters evolve, and how the show is setting up the next major storyline.

Strategy Over Classic Drama

If you take The Vendetta of An seriously — and you should — then the reference to the 24 Stratagems in the Chinese title is not decorative. It’s the blueprint of the entire narrative.

This isn’t a simple revenge tale. It’s a long-term power operation told through a historical drama format.

Payoffs are delayed. Decisions don’t show immediate effects, but resurface later, often after characters have already shifted positions. Consequences are structural rather than emotional. The show demands patience — and instead of emotional release, it rewards viewers with clarity.

Violence and Strategy: Not Either–Or, but a Division of Labor

On the surface, The Vendetta of An is brutal. Fast, bloody, sometimes excessive. People die frequently, and rarely in a clean or honorable way. At first glance, it looks like a classic revenge spiral — violence feeding more violence.

This is where many viewers misread the show.

Violence is not the strategy.
Violence is the result of the strategy.

Xie Huai An doesn’t plan killings — he plans situations. The deaths we see are side effects of shifting power, not the end goal. The series consistently separates:

• strategic causes
• chaotic outcomes

The killing spree doesn’t happen because someone loses control. It happens because someone else already has it.

Who Kills — and Who Benefits?

One of the core mechanics of the series is outsourced violence.

Xie Huai An rarely kills with his own hands. Instead:

• subordinates act
• enemies escalate
• institutions intervene

Violence emerges when people react emotionally — out of fear, panic, pride, or desperation. The true strategists remain visibly clean. This follows classic stratagem logic: kill with someone else’s knife.

As the story escalates, a clear pattern appears:

• Characters who openly kill lose power
• Characters who trigger violence gain power

Why Does It Still Feel Like a Bloodbath?

Because the show constantly cuts between two levels:

• Macro level: long-term planning, positioning, strategic patience
• Micro level: raw violence, revenge, fear, impulse

As viewers, we mostly experience the micro level — blood, death, brutality. The macro level stays in the background, almost invisible. That creates a sense of chaos and loss of control.

Narratively, however, the opposite is true:
The messier the surface looks, the tighter the hidden control usually is.

Violence as a Character Filter

The extreme violence isn’t there just for shock value. The show uses it as a sorting mechanism:

• Those who kill impulsively expose themselves
• Those who think strategically survive — for now
• Those who believe violence equals power are slowly removed from the board

This is why the death of Yan Feng Shan matters on more than one level.

He is not a random casualty. He is the central perpetrator of Xie Huai An’s trauma — and his death fulfills Xie Huai An’s explicit vow of personal revenge. At the same time, his removal creates a massive structural vacuum. It marks the moment when personal vengeance and systemic collapse intersect — revealing who understands the game being played, and who does not.

Xie Huai An: Not an Avenger, but a System Player

Xie Huai An doesn’t act on impulse. His loss is real, and his trauma is deep — but his actions are careful, patient, and methodical. He isn’t chasing fast revenge. His real objective is to destabilize the system itself.

Killing individual enemies is not enough. His goal is to shift the balance of power until the system collapses under its own weight.

For him, revenge isn’t an emotional outburst. It’s a project with a timeline.

There is one clear boundary:
He has sworn to kill those directly responsible for his family’s death. Yan Feng Shan falls squarely within that boundary. His death is not a lapse in control — it is a deliberate, anticipated act where personal vengeance briefly overrides strategic distance. Outside of this frame, violence is consistently delegated.

How Xie Huai An Actually Operates

1. Invisibility as Power

Xie Huai An doesn’t begin by attacking anyone. He begins by staying out of sight.
For a long time, he is not part of the visible power structure at all. He watches from the outside, gathers information, studies who is loyal to whom, and pays close attention to how people react under pressure.

If no one sees you as a threat, no one tries to stop you.
If no one knows you’re involved, they can’t target you directly.

His absence isn’t weakness — it’s protection.

2. Indirect Pressure Instead of Open Violence

Xie Huai An almost never attacks directly. He doesn’t rush in with force or make loud moves.
Instead, he lets other people act for him.

He uses:

• subordinates
• rival factions
• political institutions
• his enemies’ pride, fear, and greed

Violence happens, but it’s not his hand holding the knife.
Others take the risks.
Others take the blame.
Others suffer the consequences.

3. Time as His Most Important Weapon

While everyone else wants fast results, Xie Huai An is willing to wait.
He delays.
He lets tensions build.
He allows people to make mistakes on their own.

Over time, people stop being relationships and start becoming variables.
Time does the damage for him.

4. Checkmate Without Pulling the Trigger Himself

This does not mean no one gets hurt — many people do.

It means Xie Huai An doesn’t need to deliver the final blow himself in most cases. He puts his enemies into situations where:

• every choice damages them
• inaction is as dangerous as action
• someone else will always strike first

When violence happens, the outcome is already decided.
They are not defeated in a duel.
They are finished because no viable move remains.

The Death of Yan Feng Shan: A Beginning, Not an Ending

Yan Feng Shan’s death closes Xie Huai An’s personal revenge — but it opens a much larger conflict.

What matters now is how the old Huben react.

The show asks a brutal question:
Will they act out of anger and repeat the same mistakes?
Or will they recognize that uncontrolled revenge is not strength, but exposure?

Here, death is not an ending — it’s a stress test for power logic.

Psychological Profile: Xie Huai An

Xie Huai An isn’t a typical antihero. He’s a high-functioning control strategist.

Key traits:

• extreme impulse control
• strong need for predictability
• emotional withdrawal in favor of cognitive dominance

His trauma doesn’t manifest as rage, but as a need to control outcomes. Emotions aren’t processed — they’re neutralized. Morality isn’t a fixed compass, but a flexible variable.

Even when Xie Huai An acts directly, his moves are calculated. He anticipates changes, adapts quickly when plans shift, and rarely commits to a single outcome. He prepares for multiple scenarios and adjusts to remain in control.

The paradox is clear:
The more successful he becomes, the further he drifts from the original reason he started. He doesn’t lose the fight — he loses himself as a reference point.

Wu Zhong Heng: The Calculated Beneficiary of Chaos

Wu Zhong Heng is the King of Tienmo — a sovereign power player with a clear agenda. His approach is defined by patience, calculation, and a deep understanding of systemic weakness.

He waited deliberately, knowing Chang An was unstable and that the old Huben would eventually tear themselves apart. Yan Feng Shan’s death was not a surprise — it was the trigger he had anticipated.

His goal is simple:
Maximum gain with minimal effort.

Chang An is not meant to be conquered by force, but absorbed once it is weak enough. Wu Zhong Heng does not create chaos — he profits from it.

Where Xie Huai An destabilizes from within, Wu Zhong Heng waits from outside.

Who ultimately wins remains unresolved — and that uncertainty is exactly what fuels the next arc.

Final Thoughts (For Now)

The Vendetta of An doesn’t ask whether revenge is justified.
It shows what revenge turns a person into when it is executed perfectly.

Xie Huai An doesn’t win because he is morally right.
He wins because he understands that in a corrupt system, ethics are not a weapon — they are a liability.

And that is the real tragedy of his character.

 ladybugCY2023:

Love it.  Thank you for breaking everything down!!

And I am happy that you are loving it. Thank you too!

Oh wow!!! Nicely written and very insightful. Thank you for sharing! Your last three sentence really hit me hard... He understands it but he also couldn't cross that line as he doesn't want to be like those he is taking revenge on... as he said on that raining night of killing his uncle...he have mercy but he also understands in order to accomplish his mission, it is a weakness/liability...sigh...