I have so many feelings about this episode, but I haven't done my rewatch yet so I'll come back to it later! It is definitely one of my favorites.

I was skimming parts of it recently for writing purposes and one thing that I didn't really catch initially is that ZZS is at least somewhat self-aware enough to realize that all these outside parties were actively predatory towards him as a teenage sect leader in one way or another. Jin-wang was at least a variable he thought he knew (he didn't, obviously). All of the subsequent trauma and Jin-wang's manipulations would have fucked with his perception of the past, though.