Unlike myself, who was only ever a passive witness, she… never let hesitation stop her from planning, judging, and conveying her will to the world.
Even when the prisoners in the depths of Hongyuan were sacrificed in the pursuit of immortality,
even when her warped sense of resentment brought about the annihilation of the Kong family…
... she never hesitated. I don’t suppose she ever felt any remorse about it, either.
Because she would’ve had no doubts about herself, that all she did was for the betterment of Hongyuan and Daguanyuan.
Compassion is a weakness. Emotions are obstacles.
That must be why she deemed my suffering necessary, why she deemed it my destiny.
I suppose, in grandmother's mind, that was... 'what Hongyuan needs'.
An iron rule that wields powerful Boluses and domineering presence of the Heishou Packs.
To inherit the memories of our founder, to follow the elders’ will.
Hongyuan was… a powerful Wing. The sight of these lands was monumental and awe-inspiring.
But I’ve watched the sceneries that lie within over and over again.
A cold, suffocatingly dry land. A devastated land that surrounds you with the sounds of falling… things.
I know it’s futile to look for any semblance of warmth in the City. I’m not naive.
But… I intend to depart this land in the pursuit of that very warmth anyway, futile as it might be.
Are you watching, grandmother? Hongyuan, the land you loved and cared for so much… will not crumble, in spite of your worries.
But… it will change.
I doubt Xichun’ll allow your choices that has wrought inequity and brutality in this land to continue to affect it under her rule.
You probably can’t hear or see me very well anymore, but…
I want to impart my last farewell and share my final, final feelings about everyone.
Goodbye, grandma.
Goodbye, revered elders.
Jia Mu
| “ | ” | |
–Jia Mu, Canto VIII: The Surrendered Witnessing | ||
Shi Miyin (Hangul: 사미윤, sa-mi-yun), commonly referred to as Jia Mu, is the Hierarch of the Jia family and the former head of H Corp., known across the Nest for her outward benevolence and intelligence. She is a major supporting character and antagonist in Canto VIII: The Surrendered Witnessing.
Appearance
Jia Mu is an older woman of short stature, with pale, grayish skin and golden eyes. She has long white hair tied up with a golden ornament which reaches down nearly to her ankles. She wears a white and gold hanfu with golden decorations of plants and clouds. The hanfu is tied with a black and gold sash. She wears a pair of qiào tóu lǚ[1], colored dark gold with a three-leaved plant decoration. In the Tiekan Temple, she reveals the Xianhuang Anamnaworm embedded in the back of her neck, a small creature with the face of the ancient hierarch of Hongyuan.
After consuming the completed Heixian Bolus, her body rapidly mutates, generating multiple different animal parts. Her entire body grows massively, with her limbs outstretched far longer than her typical form. The animals that her body morphs into correlate to each of the Heishou Pack Branches.
Further deformed in her Distorted form, Jia Mu becomes quadrupedal and animalistic, her neck stretched further beyond what is normal. Her mutations tear her clothes, and she has a shrine-like palanquin, composed of dark wood, emerging from her back. Whilst pierced by the Golden Bough, the limbs of the bough stretch through her entire body and pierce the palanquin. Inside the palanquin, the Xianhuang Anamnaworm rests, peeking out from the window of the grotesque vehicle.
Personality
In her many years of living, Jia Mu has accrued a wealth of knowledge, displaying it in her wise and venerated way of living. She displays a particular interest in Hong Lu experiencing as much as possible in his life, having led to him leaving Daguanyuan in the first place. Despite this air of veneration, Jia Mu is a scheming woman with dark plans to enact her vendetta against others. She is cutthroat and uncaring to the deaths of others, supposedly keeping Hongyuan's best interest in mind, making such a note to even have Jia Baoyu witness brutality and deaths through means such as the massacre of the Kong family for the Elders' entertainment.
In the throes of her madness, exacerbated by the Heixian Bolus, Jia Mu becomes desperately frantic, attempting to honor the venerated Xianren while in a haze of delusions. She speaks of herself by her past name, Shi Miyin, referring to herself as a 'little girl'.
Story
Prior to Limbus Company
Jia Mu would inherit the role of H Corp. Chief Executive Director sometime in the past, which she would use to cause a great rise in the power of the Jia Family, establishing an age of incredible scientific prowess. Utilizing sciences developed by the Kong family, Jia Mu worked closely alongside Kong Youjin and Sihui. Under the guise of creating a Bolus that would be used to create a new, powerful, thirteenth branch of the Heishou Packs, Jia Mu was given the family's unrestricted support for her efforts. In reality, Jia Mu aimed to create a Bolus which would propagate a species of monsters from the Outskirts, the Jiajia-ren. The emergence of an unrestricted external creature would violate a taboo established by the Head, who Jia Mu knew would come and destroy the Kong family, while allowing her to cover up the event as a scene of hubris. Throughout the entire process of deceiving the Kong family, Jia Mu insisted that Jia Baoyu accompany her, acting as a witness to all that happened.
Jia Mu had young Jia Baoyu witness grim sights he never wished to watch, such as the condemnation of prisoners and the unethical experiments performed on them. This would culminate on the day of the Kong family's presentation of Jia Mu's supposed new Heishou Pack Bolus, where Jia Baoyu was forced to witness the massacre of the whole family. Once the pregnant Kong Sihui's unborn child burst from her as a Jiajia-ren a slow descent began as havoc erupts, the arrival of the Head punctuating this. According to her plan, Jia Mu and Baoyu left untouched, even when an Arbiter was face-to-face with the two. Her plan had been a massive success, leaving almost none of the Kong family remaining.
Later, Jia Mu sent Hong Lu to witness as much of life across the City as he can, only to return once he has done so.
Canto VIII: The Surrendered Witnessing
During Hong Lu's return to the estate, she briefly met with him. Accompanying his parents, she would stress the importance of him witnessing all that he could and that he should leave as soon as possible. However, Hong Lu, acting on the behalf of the wills of Limbus Company, refused to follow through with her request, where he then participates within the Family Hierarch Evaluations instead. In round one of the evaluations, she, Jia Zheng, and Jia Yuanchun acted as the judges, the three of them determining the authenticity of the many forms of immortality each participant had brought. Reminding Jia Yuanchun to be patient during Hong Lu's demonstration of his respective form of immortality, she passed her grandson onto the next round of the evaluations.
Within the second round of the Family Hierarch Evaluations, her machinations were revealed to the Sinners and Lin Daiyu due to the resonance of the nearby Golden Bough.
Following Xichun's successful acquisition of Hierarch status, she traveled to the Tiekan Temple to meet with the Xianren and claim the role of hierarch, which Jia Mu attended. As Hong Lu arrived to find a panicked Jia Xichun and the disfigured elders welcoming him back, Jia Mu presented the Xianhuang Anamnaworm used to inherit the past hierarchs when they relinquish their roles. She likewise presented a gift to Hong Lu: the Golden Bough. Despite the offer, Hong Lu rejects, not wishing for Jia Xichun to fall victim to the same gruesome fate as the Xianren, causing Jia Mu to become angered at his insubordination. Piercing herself with the Golden Bough and ingesting the forbidden Bolus, she battled the Sinners in anger over her control of Hong Lu slipping through her fingers, even Distorting partway through the fight. At the summit of the battle, Hong Lu experiences a massive growth to his E.G.O, allowing him to summon a torrent of flooding water that would smash against the elders, the water knocking the Golden Bough from Jia Mu's shoulder. In a fit of rage, she shouted hate at Hong Lu, who simply chose to leave the chamber. As the doors close, the Tiekan Temple is left isolated with the water severing a proper connection to the rest of Hongyuan, trapping Jia Mu alongside the elders inside.
While they were left alive, the group would be trapped in the area without any food, supplies, or entertainment. Due to their modified forms of pseudo-immortality, they would likely die at a slower rate than others, though they would one day die nonetheless.
Observation Logs
Log Writer: Hong Lu
Gallery
Story Log Portrait
Story Log Portrait (Past)
Story Log Portrait (Distorted)
Featured in the background
Featured in the background
Trivia
- Jia Mu is based on the character Grandmother Jia (賈母，Pinyin: Jiǎ Mǔ), from Cao Xueqin's novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
- In Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Mu is the eldest of the Jia family and a respected authority figure to the family that enjoys spending time with her grandchildren. She is the mother of Jia Zheng and paternal grandmother of Jia Baoyu, and played a large part in helping Baoyu grow close to Lin Daiyu.
- Jia Mu literally translates to "Mother Jia". In Limbus Company, while Jia Mu is referred to with this title throughout the story, her real name is later revealed to be Shi Miyin, having supposedly married into the Jia family much like her literary basis.
- Jia Mu is stated to have a fondness for collecting unique creatures and specimen for a personal collection.
- Among all of Hongyuan, Jia Mu is the most educated on the creation of Boluses.
Notes
- ↑ Qiào tóu lǚ are a type of formal Chinese footwear with an upturned toe, meant to prevent the hem of a hanfu from dragging against the ground.
Wiki Navigation
#1 
#2 
#3 
#4 
#5 
#6 
#7 
#8 
#9 
#10 
#11 
#12 
#13
| ||
|
