i keep seeing a lot of people say that they're put off by the age difference and the fact that mo ran is 16, which i think is pretty interesting bc that's... really not what makes their relationship that scandalous in c-media 😂 in fact i hardly paid it any attention beyond some initial surprise HAHA

so the thing you have to know about 师徒恋 / master-disciple romances is that they are unequivocally taboo and forbidden across the board. it doesn't matter how big their age difference is, or how old either of them are when they first start having feelings for each other or get together or have sex or any of that. just the idea of a master and a disciple being in love and in a relationship together is taboo in and of itself. as the saying goes, 一日为师，终生为父 / he who is your teacher for a day is your father for a lifetime. from the moment you take someone on as your teacher/master/shifu/shizun, they are automatically part of your parents' generation; not only that, but they are directly related to you through the master-disciple lineage. there's a reason you would address your fellow disciples as well as your shifu's children as martial siblings. that's because they effectively are your siblings through your shifu.

anyway, the idea is that if you begin a romantic/sexual relationship with someone in your father's generation you're related to (yes, including your shifu), that's incest. (romances between martial siblings are perfectly normal though.) you're essentially defying the traditional hierarchy of relationships, which is a huge scandal. in fact, defying the traditional hierarchy in any way generally causes some outrage lmao. c-netizens were laughing about the fact that this one character in a wuxia drama a few years back ended up taking on someone in the same generation as himself as his disciple (not naming the drama bc this counts as a spoiler). but yeah, the generational divide is what makes ranwan's relationship really taboo, not so much their age difference