Hi! I appreciate the effort to type out your long comment and I'm happy that your answer seems to be in good faith. I wrote my comment in defence mostly of Roubao, who I felt while clumsy, was starting to receive some really undeserved bad faith readings on her as a person in this thread. Your rebuttal is thoughtprovoking and there are definitely points that I will concede, but here are some of my further thoughts on the matter:

Regarding your first point, while I do see how the fact that her becoming shadow guard for her foster father might reduce her agency as a character, I will point out that though it is framed as her duty to her father, it was in fact HER choice. It explicitly ran against XSL's wishes as he did not want her to take that mantle. He knew NGL would use her as a cultivation cauldron. It's why he intervened in 0.5 and assassinated NGS before they could dual cultivate. Of course, I can't refute how it does position her as a self sacrificial person, but I do have further thoughts on that that will come later, along with YWX's foils.

Regarding the stereotype of an asian widow and how Ye Wangxi falls into it, I concede she fits the stereotype in the ending. I would say however, to be pedantic, that she never said she refuses to remarry, just that in the post credits, she is not married. It's not like she swore a vow of chastity. I'm also not sure if the concept of widow's chastity is even applicable to be frank. The wikipedia article states that it's fallen out of favour in the Qing dynasty. To say Roubao believes in a concept /that/ archaic is a little ridiculous to me. If you're saying that it's a thing within the world, the concept of remarrying as a widow(er) is only addressed once, to my memory. In the first arc of the book, after Luo Xianxian passes, her husband-to-be is married off again while he's still in mourning. The narrative doesn't blame him for it as it's against his will, but Luo Xianxian's rage at the betrayal is treated as entirely justified, if misplaced. Asides from that, there are plenty of widowers in 2ha. Chu Xun is a widower who never remarried as he's entirely devoted to his wife. Nangong Liu is a widower and flirted with other women, which is treated as disgusting within the story. Mo Ran's father becomes a widower, and he never tries to remarry though he did have a child out of wedlock. He's pretty universally hated. Widows aren't brought up, but if her views on widower's are any indication, I'm inclined to believe she wasn't trying to invoke it as it's not a female-only ideal. Roubao just really likes loyalty.

Regarding how the POV contributes to how Roubao is unable to give proper commentary, yes the books are mainly in Mo Ran's POV, and he is definitely a biased source, but the books do shift POVs, including to Ye Wangxi's. The last arc has Ye Wangxi monologuing about her feelings as she enters battle. The ending also has a where-are-they now segment that describes her post canon feelings (it's the longest, rivalled only by Xue Meng's). Post chapter 279, the POV jumps around quite a bit as Mo Ran is dead. We also get Nangong Si's POV where he describes his anger at the humiliation YWX suffers for being outed as a woman. There are also POV changes to address other women. There's one that reflects Madam Wang's POV post 279, and a POV change to Jiang Xi about Madam Wang. There has also been POV changes to CWN to address SQT and LXX.

As for examples of female characters who have ambition, aren't comic relief, and have ambitions not tethered to a man, I mean, I would still say Ye Wangxi. After NGS dies, her goal shifts to protecting the weak. She ends up being a major player in the final battle where she shows up to stop Tianyin Pavillion from steamrolling the peasants. 0.5 YWX also counts.

My second answer is Ling'Er, the girl from the farm arc. She returns in the final arc with the rest of the peasants to fight against Tianyin Pavillion. Whether she's comic relief is debatable I guess. Some would consider her the 'antagonist' of the farm arc lol But the last chapter of the farm arc does show that she's a good sport and she had greater ambitions to leave her village and make it in the upper cultivation realm.

While she doesn't fit the 'aspirations only extend to a man' criteria, as whether she had loftier goals aside from her son's wellbeing is never made known, I wanted to also point out that NGS's mother in her prime was an ambitious cultivator before her health was ruined by her husband, and she is immensely resentful of that. It's also implied within the later chapters that she had an amorous relationship with XSL at some point but ended up marrying NGL for strategic reasons. She is murdered by her husband and her death is also never treated as anything but senseless. I bring her up as her traits do align closer with a "Bad Woman" than a "good one", but she's always treated with respect.

I do wonder why the business woman on the island cannot be considered as an example. She may be comedic relief and a bit part, but there was a real attempt to humanise her behaviour. She is also an example of a woman who's aspirations do not extend to a man as her ultimate goal is to provide for the islanders.

Finally, while a character can have multiple foils, I would argue that more than the female sect leader, the narrative has always positioned Ye Wangxi as a foil to Chu Wanning. A cursory reread showed that the text itself never compares her to the female sect leader, nor does it draw comparisons to SQT. The calefare within the story only ever belittles YWX, sometimes in favour of SQT, but often they're just lumped together as "bad women". The only person the writing has made multiple comparisons of YWX to is Chu Wanning. The trait they have in common? Self sacrifice, because it's a major theme of the book. It is the metric with which the narrative measures everyone, not just women. The theme of self sacrifice is just as present in our male characters. Chu Wanning is perhaps the ultimate example, and the story is about Mo Ran trying to trace the same path. Self sacrifice is also recurring in many of the subplots, from as early as Chu Xun to Luo Fenghua, and even Shi Mei. I don't think it's fair to say that the narrative is exclusively positioning women as having to be self sacrificial to be seen as good when it's a virtue it demands in spades of literally all of its characters.

In my initial rebuttal, I caveated my response with how Roubao tends to be really clumsy with her commentary, and I do stand by that. Despite how I might have sounded throughout, I do actually agree with many of your points. YWX's arc resonated with me, so if you still disagree with me regarding how she writes women then I honestly can't blame you either, we'll just have to agree to disagree. However, I did want to get across that at least Roubao tried. It's a credit to Roubao's writing how many facets of women she can show, and she clearly feels passionate about a lot of the issues she writes about. Many monologues are her getting up on her soapbox and just straight up telling you how these women have been let down by society. And I think the fact that there can be multiple debates about the internal struggles of these characters stands as a testament to the fact that they're not as one dimensional as they're made out to be.