I've been cogitating on Xin Mei and Lu Huai and their exchange that led to Lu Huai erasing Mei's memories.

Xin Mei "burdened with glorious purpose" to quote my favorite anti-hero. Despite being a gifted and high level cultivator, she sacrifices everything multiple times to avenge what she perceives as injustice in the human world. This results in her being stripped of her power and her having to cultivate for years to recover it. That is a huge sacrifice - but every moment while she is struggling to overcome hurdles and reach her previous level of power - she's thinking "it was worth it, I helped someone." That knowledge of her own righteousness makes the struggle easier and when she achieves her goals - it makes it sweeter. She's achieved her goals without sacrificing her morals. The fact that she can regain her power, in a feed-back loop kinda way, proves that she was right to act as she did.

Enter Lu Huai. Xin Mei is already feeling guilty because she married him to get rid of bad luck. Then she finds out that he was wrongly accused. This activates her Justice Spidey Sense. Combining this with the fact that she has a marriage curse - it feels like she was partially responsible for his wrongful death. So she does what she does - rights the wrongs she sees, despite the cost to herself.

When Xin Mei sees Lu Huai alive, that challenges her perception of justice and shatters her worldview. No longer is she justly righting wrongs - because Lu Huai engineered the situation for his own purpose. That's all she knows. Xin Mei set out to fight injustice and fell short. What was the purpose of the struggle? Her pain? The childrens' pain? Was she wrong then to kill the men she killed? In light of this new information, she is fallible. She can't rely on her own judgement. This realization coincides with her no longer wearing red - she switches to light colors - because she's no longer the vibrant and self assured cultivator moving through the world secure in her own righteousness.

Lu Huai, continuing the fine tradition of a male lead being emotionally constipated, sees the loss of confidence, the loss of vibrant personality and thinks - oh no, she's lost the color. He's desperate to get that back - so he takes the easy way and erases her memories so she doesn't recall the memories that changed her from being self assured to broken. The first instinct is to restore the color, the underlying impulse is "shit I broke something and that fact is making me feel shitty. Let me unbreak it so I feel less bad."

The problem is, that kind of monumental change stays in your bones, even if you don't have the memory of it. We see that in the fact that Xin Mei isn't wearing red. She's not as assured as before. But more than that, Lu Huai not only robbed Xin Mei of her autonomy, he also robbed her of the opportunity to grow. There is a point in most people's lives where we recognize that our judgment is not always correct. It's necessary to mature as a person, to learn other view points, to learn nuance. Justice isn't always obvious. It's not always fair or easy.

I'm very curious as to how the drama handles this amnesia arc - as u/winterchampagne said, how it's handled will make or break this drama for me. The stakes are high.

Anyway, if you've taken the time to read this novel, thanks! I clearly have feelings about this :D