@NightningMoon Probably the most influential retelling of the Nezha story in the last 100 years until recently, if the first thing that came to you mind about Nezha-Ao Bing relationship is Nezha killed him and ripped out his tendon you probably directly or indirectly got the idea from this...

...cartoon as opposed to the original 16th century novel.

A difference from the novel is in order to make Nezha's disembowelling of Aobing less questionable the cartoon added an aspect that Ao Guang demanded sacrifice of boy and girl for eating in order to grant rain, and Ao Bing took part in it. Therefore their conflict unavoidable

Naturally after Ao Bing is dead a furious Ao Guang threatened to flood Chengtang Pass in revenge. In order to spare everyone else Nezha committed suicide and is later resurrected by his master Taiyi with lotus.

The first FCU Nezha movie came out in 2019 and very quickly the #Oubing shipping trend exploded. Shangmei which produced and owned the rights to 1979 cartoon must have figured they could cash in on this pairing and produced the infamous ad: https://www.bilibili.com/video... (3:13 min in)

The 2020 ad depicts a post Investiture of the Gods heaven where Nezha is now Marshal of the Central Altar and Ao Bing resurrected and deified as Huagai Star God. Uniquely becoming a star god did not heal the wounds that Nezha inflected on Ao Bing and he's a paraplegic.

At some point Nezha must have decided to take care of Ao Bing and made a wheelchair out of Huntianjing. They live together, jointly opened a seafood store, call each other pet names and all round "appear" to have a warm relationship yet Ao Bing seems unhappy and not willing.

This ad remained relatively obscure in 2020 and was only recently unearthed post Nezha 2's popularity to kick off the "Shangmei Oubing" pairing depicting the two as in a toxic relationship where Nezha is entirely in control and obsessive about Ao Bing while Ao Bing...

meekly playing along terrified of Nezha. It was originally unearthed as a rhetorical weapon against the argument that FCU Nezha and Nezha 2 disrespects earlier work by shipping Nezha and Ao Bing, the fact that Shangmei Oubing even exists is a big "no you guys did it too".

Shangmei Oubing quickly grew beyond just a rhetorical weapon for online debate. It's success closely linked to Nezha 2 oubing shipping because it provides a powerful juxtaposition against the happy couple depicted in Nezha 2 to show just how "bad things could have been"...

if in the first movie Nezha wasn't stopped by Ao Bing when he flipped out and was about to kill his parents, or alternatively Ao Bing being stopped by Nezha when he tried to bury Chengtang Pass under ice.

Had each not pulled the other back from the brink things could have easily ended up in a "Shangmei Oubing" type situation.

Since Nezha and Nezha 2 deals with mastering one's own fate against heaven, Nezha 1979 and Shangmei Oubing is seen as "baseline story" due to the strong influence of the 1979 cartoon which then allows FCU plotline to be considered "altered fate".

It happens to work well on a meta level with the setup of FCU Nezha since the premise is this time around Ao Bing is the spirit pearl and Nezha is demon orb and their fate are inverted. Even so they very nearly went down the same path if they didn't mutually save each other

The vastly different outcome paints a greater "across space and time" narrative about how Nezha and Ao Bing's depictions change across different retellings and what it takes for the two of them to have a happy ending, with crossover fan works popular: https://www.bilibili.com/video...

Another intriguing aspect of Shangmei Oubing is its one of the very few works that deal with Nezha's loss of human identity post-resurrection. His death and rebirth and later deification moves him further and further away from his human origin, yet his lotus body locks him...

into a child like form and prevents further growth into an adult. Even amongst other immortals his propensity for violence prevents friendship and ironically the one being who had a similar experience and would understand him is also the very being that he killed...

and is terrified of him. This leads to works like this: https://www.bilibili.com/video... where during thunderstorms Nezha would seek out Ao Bing to hold him for comfort as both of them originally died in midst of storms.

They're like two hedgehogs who want to embrace for warmth, yet would inevitably lead to being wounded due to their spines.

There is one other work that I know of that deals with Nezha becoming numb to the world post resurrection, it's called Feirenzai and I'll talk about it next time