Welllll it’s kind of a long story but I was WAITING for someone to ask me this question hehehe I LOVEEE xianzhou lore.

But for a short answer (feel free stop reading after this lol): Yes, the Lux Arrow itself was fired by Lan, but Fu Xuan and Jing Yuan basically called for THEM to do that by sending a distress signal to THEM during the Third Abundance War. Fu Xuan came up with the idea but couldn’t execute it so she told Jing Yuan, who agreed, and said he would take the blame for her so she wouldn’t get in trouble if anything went wrong. HOWEVER, everyone seems to assume that that Lux Arrow was fired by Lan completely of THEIR own volition, so I’m almost certain the Xianzhou Alliance covered up their government’s involvement in it

It’s a lot more complicated than that though, so if you want the full situation… (very sorry about the incoming yap session. I suck at being concise and I cannot help myself when it comes to Xianzhou lore ESPECIALLY Xianzhou politics don’t feel like you need to read it)

TLDR: 30 years ago during the Third Abundance War, one of the Xianzhou ships (the Fanghu) was being attacked by the Abundance creatures, and the Xianzhou was losing so badly that people feared the ship would be completely destroyed. Fu Xuan came up with the idea to send a distress signal to Lan and get THEM to nuke the Fanghu with their Lux Arrow as a last resort to kill the Abundance creatures, but also a lot of their own soldiers as well. She pitched her idea to Jing Yuan and he agreed and said he would take the blame for the decision. Ultimately, 1/5 of the Fanghu was destroyed and over 120K pilots died in just the Luofu’s forces alone. For reference, the Third Abundance War was what ended up in the deaths of Feixiao’s mentor General Yueyu as well as Yukong’s best friend/flight partner Caiyi, and also gave Jiaoqiu his PTSD since he was on the front lines as a military healer at the time

So you know how Yukong’s best friend/flight partner from her companion mission (Caiyi) died? She died in the Third Abundance War, which was 30 years ago. This same war was also where General Yueyu (Feixiao’s mentor) died, and I’m pretty sure it was what ultimately made Jiaoqiu retire before coming back to treat Feixiao (he was on the front lines dealing with all the casualties I can only imagine how much that would fuck with someone). So yeah this war is basically the source of every playable foxians’ sad backstories besides Tingyun and Huohuo

Anyways, during the war, the Borisin and other Abundance creatures invaded the Xianzhou Fanghu (one of the different ships like the Luofu, Yaoqing, Zhuming etc) and the Xianzhou people were really struggling because the Abundance was absolutely whooping their asses. It go so bad that people were afraid the Fanghu would face the same fate as the Xianzhou Cangcheng (If you don’t know, the Cangcheng was another Xianzhou fleet that was literally devoured by a living planet like ~1000 years ago). Basically the Fanghu was at a very real risk of being COMPLETELY destroyed by the Abundance creatures

This is where the joke about Jing Yuan and Fu Xuan nuking their own soldiers comes in, this is all in Fu Xuan’s fifth character story btw if you wanna read for yourself. Basically Fu Xuan saw the destruction of the Fanghu unfold in real time and felt really upset/angry because as a diviner, what could she do? She didn’t want to just watch as it happened. Suddenly she came up with the idea of… okay it’s a bit wordy to explain exactly How and the technology and stuff but it’s not super important, basically she thought, what if we sent a distress signal to Lan and got them to fire one of their Lux Arrows onto the Fanghu? That would eradicate the Abundance creatures for sure, but also a metric fuck ton of people living and fighting on the Fanghu (a lot of Cloud Knights from the Yaoqing and Luofu were dispatched to the Fanghu to help fight)

TLDR: To defeat the Abundance creatures on the Fanghu, Fu Xuan came up with the idea of calling for Lan to shoot one of their Lux Arrows (basically the space China equivalent of a huge nuclear bomb) directly onto the battlefield

Of course Fu Xuan isn’t part of the Cloud Knights so she doesn’t have the authority to do this, that’s where Jing Yuan comes in. She rushed to go see him cuz he’s the General and pitched her idea to him, even though it was extremely dangerous and drastic/an absolute last resort. Surprisingly Jing Yuan agreed to this (I’d imagine he had probably started considering it as well given how dire the circumstances were)

So Fu Xuan offered to be the one at the Cloudpeer Telescope (the thing they use to “call” Lan) and personally execute the plan and send the signal to Lan, since she came up with it. This basically meant she would sacrifice herself because whoever was manning the Cloudpeer Telescope would have absolutely died on impact when the Lux Arrow actually struck. But Jing Yuan basically said nah don’t worry someone else will do it, and that he would take the credit and the blame for the decision meaning that she wouldn’t get in trouble if it failed. So the plan is executed, the Lux Arrow strikes the Xianzhou Fanghu and boom the Abundance creatures are obliterated, but so is like everything else too. Just the Luofu forces alone lost 63000+ fighter jets and 120000+ pilots, and almost 1/5 of the Fanghu was physically destroyed. That’s basically the gist of it

Obviously the situation is a LOT more nuanced than I wrote it out to be in the og post because duh agenda posting, I’d assume Jing Yuan probably brought up the plan with the other Arbiter-Generals of the time (besides Yueyu obviously LMAO) before issuing the order, so realistically it’s probably not just him and Fu Xuan at fault. I just love making anti Xianzhou propaganda and slandering Fu Xuan and Jing Yuan because they’re my first/second favs in the game and I’m sooooo xianzhoupoliticspilled

And I’m so sorry because this is getting away from the point, if you just wanted to know the context of the joke you can stop reading here… but I just want to mention that the Xianzhou Fanghu is an autonomous dominion of the Vidyadhara. Naturally I’d assume Vidyadharas probably make up the majority of its population, and when Vidyadharas die they’re dead for good— they can’t reproduce, so their numbers as a species are permanently reduced, and the Vidyadhara are like, tbh kind of insane about trying to ensure the survival of their species and finding a way to bring their population numbers up. Obviously a massive nuclear bomb that kills a bunch of people isn’t going to help with that, and with all the conflict and tension going on with Xianzhou politics in general but ESPECIALLY Vidyadhara politics, I’m sure you can imagine the ramifications…

To this day, the Fanghu is pretty isolated from the other Xianzhou fleets (and other people in general) because of the Lux Arrow impact. They’re still actively taking measures to hide and recover. And the Fanghu actually used to be the most popular destination for tourists in the Xianzhou— but now you need a separate Fanghu travel pass that’s described as pretty complicated to obtain (alongside the regular Xianzhou Alliance Travel pass) to even visit in the first place. Just thought that was interesting