Hua Cheng

* Real appearance
* As San Lang

* Manhua
* Donghua
* Novel
* Audio Drama

* Manhua
* Donghua
* Novel
* Audio Drama

**Hua Cheng** (花城, *Huā Chéng*), also referred to as **San Lang** (三郎, *Sān Láng*), is the deuteragonist and main love interest in *Heaven Official's Blessing*.

He's a ghost of Supreme rank and the most notorious of the Four Great Calamities, widely known as **Crimson Rain Sought Flower** (血雨探花, *Xuè Yǔ Tàn Huā*).

## Appearance

As a Supreme, Hua Cheng possesses an extremely powerful shape-shifting ability not even gods can see through. It's said that no one has ever seen his true form because he transformed so often.

The first time he met Xie Lian after the third ascension, his appearance was about sixteen to seventeen, noted to be good-looking in a boyish, devilish way with eyes bright as the stars. He wore casual, maple-red clothes of high quality and had a loose, carefree ponytail.

In his true form, Hua Cheng is a handsome youth of eighteen to nineteen years. The childish aura of his younger form is one of calmness in true form, although there is still a wild playfulness to him. He has skin as white as snow and wears maple-red clothes along with exquisite, silver vambraces. Hua Cheng is also taller than Xie Lian, he has to stretch his neck in order to see him.

He has a deep, gentle voice that is pleasant to the ears in his true form. Even in his younger appearance his voice is still deeper than typical for that age.

Hua Cheng has Xie Lian's name tattooed on his left forearm, but no one could read it for a long time due to his hopelessly terrible handwriting.

As Wuming, he was dressed in black robes and neat warrior attire. He had his hair tied up in a high ponytail and also wore a white smiling mask.

As a child and teenager, Hua Cheng wore bandages over the right side of his face at all times, due to being bullied for his appearance. The bandages were in fact covering his right, red eye. Said eye was eventually carved out and now a black eyepatch hides it.

## Personality

He is charismatic and intelligent, with a nonchalant attitude. He cares little for others and mostly acts in his own best interest. However, to Xie Lian he is very gentle, treating him with the utmost care and respect and offering him anything he desires. After the two get married, he has been shown to be a passionate lover and dislikes being away from Xie Lian.

Due to deeply loving Xie Lian since he was very young, he despises everyone who has wronged Xie Lian in his eyes. He does not care about the objective circumstances and is firm in his distaste for anyone who left or stood against Xie Lian at one point.

Despite being a ghost king, he is not outright evil, seemingly neutral as he neither undertakes altruistic actions nor engages in evil or barbaric acts. He seems to have a love of collecting rare treasures, having a large collection of antiques and priceless artifacts and weapons, some of which are thousands of years old. Ironically, he treats them rather poorly. He does not care when they are destroyed and has been shown to abuse or misuse them himself on occasion.

He is confident in his abilities, though rightfully so as he is one of the most powerful beings. Despite this, he does have a more vulnerable side. He is deeply insecure about his feelings and feels he is unworthy of Xie Lian's love, but once he learns they are reciprocated, he is immensely joyful.

## Trivia

* Hua Cheng's nickname, *San Lang*, means "third son".
	+ In-world, he is called this as he was supposedly the third son of his family, although there is no confirmation whether he made this up or he actually had siblings.
	+ Meta-wise, *San Lang* is the continuation of an in-joke where all the main love interests of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's novels have monikers that can be organized chronologically -
		1. **Luo Bingge** (Big brother Luo) from *Scum Villain Self-Saving System*
		2. **Lan Er-ge** (Second brother Lan) from *Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation*
		3. **San Lang** (Third son) from *Heaven Official's Blessing*.
		4. The main character of MXTX's fourth novel also follows this trend, the character having the nickname **Si Shao** (Fourth young master).
* His most famous moniker, Crimson Rain Sought Flower, was attained during his early days as a supreme. After he annihilated a ghost's lair and causing blood rain to fall, he found a lone, white flower struggling under the heavy rainfall, so he shielded it with his umbrella.
	+ In a meta sense, "Crimson Rain Sought Flower" (血雨探花) is also a reference; tanhua (探花, lit. flower snatcher) is the title of the overall third-place scorer of the ancient Chinese imperial examinations.
	+ *Xuěyǔ* (血雨) can also mean "heavy rain colored by loess sandstorm"
* Hua Cheng has incredibly bad handwriting, but Xie Lian often helps him practice.
* Even though he is canonically one of the most handsome men in the novel, he sees himself as being ugly and deformed. MXTX confirmed this, saying that because in childhood he was often called an ugly beast due to his heterochromia. As he grew in power he began to believe that he's not bad-looking but would still feel lacking in front of Xie Lian.
* MXTX confirmed in an interview that out of the three main love interests in her novels, Hua Cheng has the best skills in bed.
* Some said that Hua Cheng is the only one who can curse and insult the Heavenly Emperor without fearing any retribution due to his power.
* In the novel's postscript, Hua Cheng is confirmed to have a father of Xianle royal capital while his mother was described as being 'an evil beauty of foreign ethnicity'. Due to this, Hua Cheng had traces of a foreign culture, such as his connection with butterflies, maple leaves, silver accessory and beast totems.
	+ The butterflies, maple leaves, silver accessory and beast totems are common symbols in the Miao/Hmong people's culture.
	+ In an abandoned draft, Hua Cheng often sang a love song in a long-lost language his mother taught him for his beloved. Whenever Xie Lian asked what he's singing, he would have answered with nonsense.
	+ As MXTX wrote the novel she felt that Hua Cheng's parentage and background wasn't necessary, so she scrapped it all.
* Hua Cheng's "birthplace" is Shanghai as MXTX was struck by inspiration to make his character when travelling there.
* He is so unbearably rich that he would treat legendary, incomparably precious treasures like they're disposable garbage.
* In the manhua Hua Cheng’s symbolic animal is a fox as seen in both art by the official artist and actual chapters. In addition, Mu Qing explains, *“Hua Cheng will only need to humor him with a couple of sweet words, and he’ll believe him, just like one enchanted by a fox spirit.”*
	+ In Asian folktales fox spirits are seductresses, known to enchant and charm innocent people and make them fall helplessly in love with the spirit.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 14: Clothes Redder Than Maple, Skin as White as Snow
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 36: Admiring the Flower through Red Clouds; A Heart full of Sympathy
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Novel, Book 1, Chapter 37: Admiring the Flower through Red Clouds; A Heart full of Sympathy II
4. ↑ Novel, Book 5, Chapter 244: By the Heaven Official's Blessing No Paths are Bound
5. ↑ Novel, Book 4, Chapter 192: White Clothed Ghost Appoints Black Warrior as General
6. ↑ Novel, Book 5, Chapter 232: Adroit Dice; Snake Eyes Rolled Alarming the Heart
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Novel, Extras, Chapter 252: The Ghost King's Birthday
8. ↑ MXTX Interview - TGCF Questions (Translation)
9. ↑ MXTX Interview - March 2018 (Translation)
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Novel Postscript
11. ↑ Novel, Book 3, Chapter 176: Cave of Ten Thousand Gods; Faces of Ten Thousand Gods Revealed II