listen…. it’s easy to persuade me to explain things lol

I think Nie Huaisang:

- is known to be smart. people who don’t know him might think he’s probably stupid, but people who know him are frustrated because they know he’s capable of dedicating his time and attention and just isn’t bothering. this is literally how wwx describes him: “it wasn’t that he wasn’t smart— he just had zero inclination to apply himself academically. All of his smarts were spent elsewhere: in painting fans, catching feathered friends, skipping class, and loading around. His capacity for cultivation was indeed amazingly poor…” (226)

- related to that quotation, is truly, genuinely uninterested in anything to do with the clan or the sect. he’s not secretly the diplomat/spymaster of the Nie clan, he likes to paint and look at expensive statues and erotica (mood)

- does not develop an interest in politics writ large when Nie Mingjue dies. He is deliberately letting the clan fall into disrepute! he is interested in his revenge scheme, just as he used to be interested in art and birds— it’s his new passion project, unrelated to his wider responsibilities, and I think deliberately continues his tendency to neglect what he should do in favor of what he wants to do. I’m torn on the extent to which he’s intentionally cultivating the Headshaker persona to throw off suspicion vs being genuinely unsure of how to run a clan/still unwilling to put in the work—I kinda think it’s a combination of both, because becoming the leader of a powerful Nie sect would also give him a lot of tools to bring down JGY, probably with way less risk of failure and of harming innocent bystanders… which feels like further proof of the fact that he is unwilling to do the work of running the clan, even if it would further his goals*

*i’m admittedly unsure of how him becoming chief cultivator fits into this, since we don’t see how it happens—I’ve always understood it less as him deciding “wait I’m great at this stuff” and more that he’s the last man standing and the society overall losing its taste for actually powerful/effective chief cultivators

I think The Headshaker persona is deliberate by present day, if only because he couldn’t do all the legwork by himself. The spying and information gathering needed to find out about Qin Su and JGY being related, to find out about JGS’ murder and track down Sisi, to arrange for their arrival at just the right time, various corpse reassembling and dissassembling- like SOMEONE is carrying out his plan with him. I believe there is also talk of the Nie situation getting better postcanon, and he is praised for conducting himself well at the coffin sealing ceremony. This goes to show that it pays to slack off so you can exceed expectations by just stepping over the bar on the ground.

This is my personal interpretation, but I tend to think NHS was genuinely struggling hard after NMJ’s death and really relying on LXC and JGY. I don’t know how or when he discovered the truth behind NMJ’s death, but I tend to think he didn’t start suspecting for awhile. After a year or two of genuinely being in over his head and needing help, it’s easier at that point to continue to play into that, especially as it keeps JGY’s guard down. If NHS was being outwardly super competent, the business with NMJ’s corpse would have gotten the gears turning in JGY’s head.

Of course that’s just my opinion, and particularly in the book NHS is kind of a cipher.