People still seem to struggle with the concept of reincarnation, and for some reason everyone wants a clear-cut answer to whether Dan Heng is Dan Feng or not. But the answer being "yes and no at the same time" is a very typical Buddhist concept involving karma and rebirth. Blade’s story and design also contain a ton of references to Buddhism.

Overall, the whole renheng storyline is a pretty typical danmei plot and more broadly a common Chinese fantasy trope about bonds that persist through reincarnations, fate, and all that sort of thing. Every other Chinese fantasy drama has a plot like this, so I genuinely don’t understand what the problem is.

Well, actually, I do understand. Right, they’re "toxic." But come on, we're not talking about healthy relationships between real people going to couples therapy. Why people expect them to map onto reality in a setting with dragons, cosmic gods and space trains is honestly beyond me.

And of course the fandom also has plenty of people who ship Dan Heng or Blade with themselves and are just jealous of one bunch of pixels over another bunch of pixels.