SID Timeline

[rheasilvia]

From what I can tell, Guardian approaches time the same way epic poetry does - that is, it almost always seems to be measured in numbers more notable for dramatic value than likelihood (ten thousand years! a thousand years! ten years! NOW!).

Even so, I've put together a timeline of the Special Investigation Department's history. Please be aware that it contains spoilers for the entire series.



BGS – Before Guardian Series
ABS – After Beginning of Series
? – date uncertain; estimated based on corroborating evidence


SID Timeline


10,000-9,920 BGS*
- Ma Gui becomes first Guardian of Haixing in spirit (ep 38) through peace treaty ratified by Ma Gui, Fu You and Nameless Dixingian Second-in-Command (ep 35)
* Note: Ma Gui is Zhang Shi's teacher, so 9,920 BGS (or later) is probably more accurate, given human lifespans.

9,900 BGS
- Zhang Shi born; remains on Haixing as only Dixingian after others leave (ep 38)

? 40-30 BGS*
- Hallows are lost; more and more Dixingians escape to Haixing because of resulting lack of ressources (ep 35)
- Haixing’s Supervisory Department allows Dixing’s rulers to send people to Haixing to find out what’s happening (ep 35)
- Black-Cloaked Envoy is found in Haixing by Dixingian envoy Dingdun (ep 35)**
* Note: In ep 36, Zhang Shi says the Hallows were lost 10 years ago, but this doesn’t match up with the rest of the timeline. Also, in ep 2 Shen Wei says the Hallows were scattered 10,000 years ago, which doesn't match the rest of the timeline unless "scattered" is not synonymous with "lost" here.
** Note: The Black-Cloaked Envoy is awake to send an expedition to Haixing around 30 BGS or earlier (ep 5).

? 40-30 BGS
- Black-Cloaked Envoy expresses wish to go to Haixing; Justiciar asks Haixing contacts for cover identity (ep 35)

20 BGS
- Rumors of new department being planned to deal with Dixingians reach cops Zhao Xinci and Gao Jingfeng (ep 31)
- Zhao Xinci possessed by Zhang Shi; begins to rise rapidly through the ranks (ep 31)

? 19-18 BGS
- SID established at 4 Guangming Road under authority of Department of Supervision; purpose: arrest criminal Dixingians in Haixing (ep 13)
- Zhao Xinci becomes first chief of the SID (ep 31)

10 BGS
- Homeless man (?) Li Hongchun hits Da Qing with a stick (ep 27)

? 10-9 BGS
- Da Qing joins SID under Chief Zhao Xinci (ep 27)

? 9-8 BGS
- Li Hongchun joins SID as custodian (ep 27)

? 8-5 BGS
- Zhao Xinci promoted out of SID, new position unknown (ep 16)*
- Unknown Chief becomes second chief of the SID (ep 16)*
* Note: Zhao Yunlan is termed the „third-generation Chief of the SID“ in ep 16.

3 BGS
- Zhao Yunlan becomes third chief of the SID (ep 34)

3 BGS
- Lin Jing joins SID as Professor Ouyang’s spy (ep 30)

3 BGS
- Chu Shuzhi transferred to SID by Black-Cloaked Envoy (eps 18 / 32)

? 3-2 BGS
- Wang Zheng found by Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing; joins SID

? 3-2 BGS
- Zhu Hong joins SID

? 2-0 months BGS
- Zhao Xinci promoted again to Head of the Xingdu Bureau (ep 14)*
* Note: This presumably takes place no more than a few weeks before ep 14, since at that point Zhao Yunlan has not yet been informed of a personnel change that concerns an important superior.

? 2-0 months BGS
- Dixingians „suddenly“ appear on Haixing with increased frequency (Da Qing in ep 1 / Shen Wei in ep 2)


0 (Guardian Series Begins)


0 ABS
- Guo Changcheng assigned to SID by Zhang Shi posing as Zhao Xinci (ep 16)

0 ABS
- Black-Cloaked Envoy meets Chief Zhao Yunlan and contacts Ex-Chief Zhao Xinci for information on him (eps 1 / 27)

?? ABS
- Sang Zan joins SID as librarian (ep 11)

?? ABS
- Professor Shen Wei becomes official consultant of the SID (ep 14)

?? ABS
- Zhang Shi becomes de facto chief of the SID (ep 40)

+1 / ?? ABS
- SID is considerably expanded and highly respected
- Guo Ying is Minister
- Zhao Xinci is Director of the Xingdu Bureau*
- Li Qian is Science Institute Director
* Note: Zhao Xinci has been promoted again, so Director of the Xingdu Bureau is a higher position than Head of the Xingdu Bureau.



If you have any additions or I got something wrong, please let me know! I'd be very grateful for input on how much time passes between the SID-relevant events of the series itself, for one thing.

Alternately, tell me about your SID feels! :-)

Comments

[china_shop]

Ooh, this is awesome! \o/

Some data points:

In ep 2 (37:21), Shen Wei says, "After the war 10,000 years ago, the Holy Tools were scattered."

In the first ep with Butler Wu (ep 4?), there's a reference to Shen Wei sending a team of Dixingren to Haixing in search of the Hallows.

Ep 22, Li Qian starts working at the institute lab.

[rheasilvia]

I wanted to straighten out some things for my own reference - time is confusing and tangled in Dixing. Or Haixing. Or the entire planet, clearly. ;-)

Yeah, the Hallows were scattered and lost lots of different times, to listen to people. ;-) I am tentatively interpreting "scattered" and "lost" as different things, because: It is only when the Guardian Lantern is extinguished and the Hallows are "lost" (as said in ep 35) that Dixing's ressources dwindle. The resulting increased escape of Dixingians then becomes a problem, and so on...

If the Dixingians had been without the Hallows all along, why the change in status just before the Black-Cloaked Envoy is found...? And why did nobody look for them before Shen Wei sends off the search team?

Alternately, maybe the Hallows were scattered AND lost 10k years ago, but the Guardian Lantern was only extinguished 30 (or so) years ago. But that is even further removed from the various statements in the series.

Time is malleable around the Hallows. There is no other explanation.

In the first ep with Butler Wu (ep 4?), there's a reference to Shen Wei sending a team of Dixingren to Haixing in search of the Hallows.

Yep, but this timeline is just for the SID itself. Some of the rest - most certainly including this failed expedition - may appear in future posts. ;-)

(I debated putting Li Qian on there at all, since the lab is only peripherally connected to the SID, but hey. She is cool. So. ;-) )

[extrapenguin]

Yup, Shen wei sent a team upstairs to search for things - and he says it was 20 years go, so 20 BGS, not 40-30.

Also, I think there was something in eps 19-20 about Zhu Jiu having been a PITA for 6 months.

[kurosakiami01]

Oh, nice!! This is the first actual timeline I've seen of the series so far (and now I know I had so many things wrong in that respect in my head lmao).

Thank you! <3

[rheasilvia]

Yay, I'm glad you think it's helpful! :-)

I really needed to get the timeline sorted in my own head, because it ss CONFUSING. Somehow I started out with the assumption that the SID had been around for centuries... but no, sadly not (which I kind of regret, for fanfic-writing purposes).

[abyss_valkyrie]

Heeey!Thanks for all the research and observation. :D

[rheasilvia]

You're very welcome, I hope you find it at least a little bit helpful! I pretty much had to write all of this down in order to make sense of it in my head - it is all a tiny bit tangled, shall we say. ;-)

[trobadora]

This is awesome!

Ma Gui commissions magical portrait (as seen in Minister Gao Jingfeng’s office)

I have questions about this - in what way is the portrait magical? And what's the source for Ma Gui commissioning it?

[rheasilvia]

Heee, yes, I should probably clarify that, or take it out entirely. ;-) It's just a joke, since the man lived 10k years ago, yet somehow there is a portrait of him that is perfect down to the tiniest detail of his clothes hanging in Minister Gao's office today.

It seems pretty magical, is all. ;-)

[likealeafonthewind]

Oh, this is awesome! I was just about to post a link to one that I've put together here but I like how you split it off into different time periods. What I have for additions are things that happened 10,000 years ago:

+ Over 10,000 years before the start of the show, a spaceship lands on Haixing; the aliens on board either intermingle with humans and create two new species (Yashou and Dixingren) in addition to humans (01) or the aliens already belonged to two different species and decide to live peacefully alongside humans (34)
- I would assume that several years, if not a couple of generations pass before they settle on living peacefully together; and definitely if we're going with the first explanation about them evolving into new species
+ A meteor hits Haixing and destroys the ecosystem of the planet, resulting in a depletion of resources in Dixing (34)
+ An extremist Dixing Chieftain forms a rebel force because of the lack of resources and starts a war trying to take over Haixing. (34)
+ The Yashou (under Fu You), Haixing people (under Ma Gui), and Dixing people form an allied coalition. They plan to recruit Kunlun, but he's killed by the rebels before they can. (34)
- ? how much time passes between the meteor hitting, the rebels attacking Yashou and Haixing people and then an opposing force allying together
+ Fu You and Ma Gui create the holy tools out of fragments of the meteor (34)
- I would assume that they fought the war for some time before 1) deciding to make the holy tools and 2) figuring out how to make the holy tools
+ The holy tools are stolen by the rebels (34)
+ Zhao Yunlan is dropped off by a wormhole and saves the Black Cloaked Envoy during a battle against the rebel forces. Zhao Yunlan is asked to assume the identity of Kunlun, as his death had been kept secret for the sake of morale. (34)
- It's been debated before but ? how much time Zhao Yunlan stays in the past; probably at most just a couple of months, I'm thinking
+ Ye Zun kills the rebel leader and takes over, the rebels declare outright war against the allied forces, Black Cloaked Envoy and Zhao Yunlan ambush the rebels in a forest and steal back the holy tools, and the holy tools are activated during a battle which results in Kunlan/Zhao Yunlan being pulled into a wormhole in the sky, Ye Zun getting trapped in a pillar, and Black Cloaked Envoy being buried underground. (35)

And then since Black Cloaked Envoy woke up:
+ Dingdun steals the Dijun booklet (15)
- In episode 15, we see the Justiciar giving Black Cloaked Envoy the booklet to review, so it couldn't have been lost until after BCE woke up from his very long dirt nap

In episode 5 with Butler Wu and his son, we're told that it's been 20 years since they've seen each other and his son was maybe around 8 when he was first abandoned and left for dead by Huang Chaoyang. I would guess that a few years passed between Butler Wu surviving whatever killed the rest of his expedition and him having a son, so it's probably been over 30 years since Black Cloaked Envoy's woken up.

I'm chalking this one up to a mistake on the writer's part or a drastic change in plot later in the series, but in episode 2, Shen Wei thinks to himself that he's been searching for Zhao Yunlan for 10,000 years.

[rheasilvia]

Oooh, your timeline is awesome! So much useful information. *bookmarks* <3

In episode 5 with Butler Wu and his son, we're told that it's been 20 years since they've seen each other and his son was maybe around 8 when he was first abandoned and left for dead by Huang Chaoyang. I would guess that a few years passed between Butler Wu surviving whatever killed the rest of his expedition and him having a son, so it's probably been over 30 years since Black Cloaked Envoy's woken up

This is a very good point. I will up the time period on the loss of the Hallows and the BCE's awakening - I completely forgot that there was a mention of how long the butler and his son hadn't seen each other! And 30+ years does fit in better with some related facts about Shen Wei, IMO. This is very helpful, thank you!

This particular timeline tracks only the history of the SID, but your data with the earlier events might make another timeline post to the comm - maybe specifically for the early history of Dixingians and the war?

I'm chalking this one up to a mistake on the writer's part or a drastic change in plot later in the series, but in episode 2, Shen Wei thinks to himself that he's been searching for Zhao Yunlan for 10,000 years.

I think it's poetic license on Shen Wei's part. ;-) As in, it's true in spirit: Shen Wei might have been asleep during a large chunk of those 10k years, but it *has* been 10k years, and Shen Wei has been searching for Zhao Yunlan every second since losing him, *so*... ;-)

[riventhorn]

Thank you for this!! I'll be bookmarking for future reference.

I can see that on my third rewatch, I really need to pay attention to things besides Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei flirting. The whole thing about the establishment of the SID went right by me.

[rheasilvia]

I am glad it seems helpful! :-) I really needed to put this into some kind of order in my own head. It still isn't entirely ordered, but...

I can see that on my third rewatch, I really need to pay attention to things besides Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei flirting.

Heee, I know that problem! Those two are so distracting - and I confess I kind of look forward to having all of the pesky facts straightened out so I can return to concentrating on those two making eyes at each other. ;-)

[lynndyre]

This is fantastic!

I'd somehow not connected it that the Hallows weren't just keeping Dixing and Haixing separate, they were also keeping Shen Wei buried alive. I wonder why- just to keep him in reserve for later, when the other half of their time-crossed favourites would exist? Or something else?

[extrapenguin]

Crack theory: they were concerned he might try to bust Ye Zun out of prison. After all, they're related!

(There's also that scene in ep 23 where Shen Wei says his awakening was a cruel joke at his expense, and Ye Zun implies that Shen Wei waking up was related to him. Either he did it by accident, or he really hoped that gege might bust him out.)

[likealeafonthewind]

Fu You said that the hallows were meant to help "all of Haixing" so I think one of those intended functions was to create peace on Haixing (i.e., end the war). So when they activated, they separated the major participants in the battle in order to stop the fighting. Zhao Yunlan was easy - he doesn't belong in that time period so he's sent back through the wormhole. Ye Zun and Shen Wei are isolated and confined separately, but it looks like it was kind of random which one got which form of stasis. I would guess that the awl is responsible for the pillar and maybe the longevity dial for Shen Wei's sleep?

[rheasilvia]

I hope you find it helpful! :-) Time is a complex phenomenon on this planet. ;-)

I'd somehow not connected it that the Hallows weren't just keeping Dixing and Haixing separate, they were also keeping Shen Wei buried alive.

But do we know for certain that this is the case?

I mean, it does definitely seem like a strong possibility that Shen Wei was caught in the seal that locked away Ye Zun - but then I wouldn't assume real intent on the Hallows' part (ack, semi-sentient artefacts, always a joy), but would just assume it happened because they were so close together, and Shen Wei more or less let himself fall into the pit when the seal formed.

But there are also other options. Shen Wei's own power could have granted him the subconscious wish to sleep until Kunlun returned, for example (not that I think this is very likely, it's just what first occurred to me as an example!)...

And he might have woken up simply because the massive power fluctuation caused by the change in the Hallows shocked him awake.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

One of the things I had been meaning to reference was figuring out who were the new members and who were the old ones under Zhao Xinci, so this was super helpful. Thank you!

[rheasilvia]

:-) I am glad it is helpful!

Employee retention really sucks at the SID - Da Qing is the only one still hanging in there. ;-) And honestly, I'm surprised that Zhao Xinci hired him in the first place. Maybe some higher-up forced him to take on a Yashou for political reasons?

Zhao Yunlan renewed the entire department, which isn't surprising to me at all. He would definitely not have wanted anyone around who worked under his father, and who knows what the second chief was like...

[maggie33]

This is fantastic and very helpful. *bookmarks* It’s great to have all of it in one post, so now I don’t have to riffle through my very disorganized notes every time I want to check something. :)

[rheasilvia]

Having it all in one place was my motive for compiling the timeline! :-) Time in Guardian is... twisty and confusing, shall we say. ;-)

I am very glad you find it helpful! :-)

[asya_ana]

Thank you for another stellar resource to help us navigate canon!

[rheasilvia]

<3<3<3

I hope you find it useful!! Time is so twisty in this canon - trying to pin it down requires drastic measures. ;-)

[sam_gardener]

Thank you for this! Helpful resource and generator of discussion.

* Note: In ep 36, Zhang Shi says the Hallows were lost 10 years ago, but this doesn’t match up with the rest of the timeline. Also, in ep 2 Shen Wei says the Hallows were scattered 10,000 years ago, which doesn't match the rest of the timeline unless "scattered" is not synonymous with "lost" here.

Lost track of maybe? Is translation part of the problem? No one was keeping track of them but they were still working as intended? No answers just more questions. :))

[rheasilvia]

Hee, yes, trying to persuade time to behave in an orderly and linear fashion in this canon definitely requires discussion. :-) And I hope you find the timeline helpful!

No one was keeping track of them but they were still working as intended?

That's what I would theorize - it wasn't ideal to have the Hallows scattered, but as long as everything was working, nobody was that panicked about it. But then the Guardian Lantern went out 40-something-years ago (for... reasons...?); the Hallows were truly "lost", the light in Dixing was extinguished, and things rapidly went downhill.

But I have to add that I don't speak Chinese, and so am not certain whether this works at all with what people actually say.

(Alternately, maybe Shen Wei did just get his times mixed up. ;-) He isn't too accurate with that kind of thing, turns out...)

[galaxysoup]

This is super helpful!! (Gosh parts of this canon are such a mess to work with...)

[rheasilvia]

parts of this canon are such a mess to work with

They really are - but I have come to regard that as a kind of fun logic puzzle. ;-) "Try to fit all of these dates into a coherent timeline, we challenge you!!"

I am glad you find this useful! :-)

Zhao Yunlan's mother

[mecurtin]

One important event not yet discussed: the death of Zhao Yunlan's mother.

- how old was ZYL? I'm guessing 12, since she was alive for his primary-school graduation but he clearly hadn't hit puberty yet.

- how old is he at BS? If we assume 34, then she died at 22 BGS.

- did the SID already exist, or was her death one of the reasons it was established?

- in ep.5 Black-Cloak Envoy tells Butler Wu that the leader of his expedition survived the attack by the youshu, stayed in Haixing as a criminal, but was shot before BCE could catch up with him. I think that means the team leader is the Dixingen Zhao Xinci shot, killing ZYL's mom (goddammit I can't remember her name, this fandom needs a wkik) as collateral damage.

So I think that makes Butler Wu's expedition 30 BGS at least, maybe further back.

Re: Zhao Yunlan's mother

[rheasilvia]

It's definitely an important event, but this particular timeline is just for strictly SID-related events. Her death is certainly directly connected to her husband's job, but even so I wouldn't count it as part of the SID's history in the strict sense (I'd also have to include all other SID-related deaths, otherwise).

But:
- how old was ZYL?

I was also wondering that (and asked how old Zhao Yunlan is in the flashbacks here: https://sid-guardian.dreamwidth.org/46907.html). 12 does seem to be the right age, as it fits both his apparent age and the graduation mention.

how old is he at BS?

He is 28 in ep 1. This can be seen (albeit a bit blurrily) in the report about him that Shen Wei studies.

Xi Shen was still alive 20 years ago, when Zhao Yunlan was 8. This was when the rumors about a department to deal with Dixingians about to be established reached Zhao Xinci.

So since Zhao Yunlan was 8 years old 20 years ago, and Xi Shen was killed when he was 12, she died 16 years BS. Zhao Xinci was chief of the SID at that time, and probably had been for 2 to 3 years.

I think that means the team leader is the Dixingen Zhao Xinci shot, killing ZYL's mom

Oh, yes, I like that theory! That ties everything together neatly in just the way that Guardian likes to do things. Well spotted. :-)

And yes, I agree about the timing of the expedition.

[lunabee34]

Thanks for making this resource!

[rheasilvia]

You're very welcome - I hope you find it useful! :-)

[trepkos]

This is so useful!