🏁 Endings Guide
The Weeping Swan — All Endings Guide
The Weeping Swan: Ten Days of the City's Fall has five distinct conclusions: three main endings determined by your permanent choices, one bad ending triggered by Sanity collapse, and a bonus chapter for fans of The Hungry Lamb. This guide covers the requirements, fail conditions, and emotional meaning of each — with full spoilers.
🗺️ Endings Overview — The Four Permanent Choice Gates
Before diving into individual ending requirements, understand that all three main endings are gated by a small number of permanent, early-game choices. Missing any of these on the wrong side locks that ending for the current playthrough. The four gates are:
🔴 The Four Permanent Choice Gates
Pick up from scholar's study. Required for Ending C (via Day 3 Lin Pianpian choice). Also usable in Day 7 ritual for +15 Sanity.
Locks: Ending C if missedHelp or abandon Wang's family during Day 2. This is the single most consequential binary choice in the game.
Locks: Ending B if you abandon themShare with Lin Pianpian at the evening gathering. Requires flask from Day 1. Begins her trust path.
Locks: Ending C if you keep the flask or don't have itUpon learning Little Yan's true nature, you can accept it or betray her to Madam Qionghua. This is the only gate for Ending A.
Locks: Ending A (True Ending) if you betray herEnding A — The Truth of the Drowned Swan
The True Ending. All memory fragments collected. The mystery of Su Lianyan's death fully resolved.
Ending A is the game's definitive conclusion — the one the developers intended players to eventually reach after multiple runs. It requires the highest investment: all 7 Memory Fragments, Sanity above 60% at Day 10, and a specific sequence of choices that avoids betraying Little Yan in Day 8. The ending resolves the central mystery: the full, unvarnished truth of how and why Su Lianyan died, and what this truth means for Fang Zhiyou's identity. Whether Fang leaves Lion Camel Kingdom is deliberately ambiguous — but the peace he achieves in the final scene is not. This ending contains the game's most powerful cinematic sequence: a conversation across time between Fang and Su Lianyan that can only happen when the player has gathered all the evidence. It recontextualizes the entire narrative and several choices that seemed minor in earlier playthroughs.
✅ Requirements
- Complete all 10 days
- Collect all 7 Memory Fragments
- Sanity above 60% at end of Day 10
- Do NOT betray Little Yan in the Day 8 choice
- At least one conversation with every named NPC in the game
❌ Fail Conditions
- Sanity drops to 0 at any point
- Betraying Little Yan on Day 8
- Missing Memory Fragment #3 (requires Merchant's Seal from Day 1)
- Missing Memory Fragment #6 (requires Lin Pianpian's trust path)
Ending B — Scholar Wang's Sacrifice
Help Scholar Wang's family. Watch a friend choose duty over self. Escape with broken hearts and gratitude.
Ending B is the 'friendship ending' — the conclusion reached by players who prioritize the people around Fang over his obsessive pursuit of Su Lianyan's truth. It is more emotionally accessible than Ending A and often the first 'complete' ending new players reach. Scholar Wang's sacrifice in this ending is one of the most discussed scenes in The Weeping Swan's community. It is neither sudden nor cheap — it is the result of a man making a very deliberate choice over several days, and Fang's understanding of why Wang made that choice forms the emotional core of the conclusion. The ending does not resolve the mystery of Su Lianyan. Fang leaves Lion Camel Kingdom with the question still unanswered — but with a new understanding that some questions matter less than the living people in front of you.
✅ Requirements
- Help Scholar Wang's family on Day 2 (major fork — permanent)
- Keep Scholar Wang alive through Day 9
- Complete Day 10
- Sanity above 30% at end of Day 10
❌ Fail Conditions
- Choosing not to help Wang's family on Day 2 (permanent lock)
- Scholar Wang dying before Day 9
- Sanity drops to 0
Ending C — The Red Courtesan's Path
Trust Lin Pianpian completely. Follow her through passages no one else knows. Discover what she has been protecting all along.
Ending C centers on Lin Pianpian and the revelation of her hidden depths. Players who invest in her trust track — beginning with the wine flask choice on Day 3 — are gradually shown a Lin Pianpian very different from her pragmatic, occasionally cold exterior. The escape route she leads in this ending involves sections of Yangzhou that existed before the game's present — places she has known since childhood poverty, passages that the wealthy patrons of Twenty-four Bridges never thought to ask about. This journey doubles as a biography of who Lin Pianpian really is. The ending raises direct questions about what 'survival' costs and whether the people who survive difficult circumstances should be judged by what they did to survive. It is the most thematically complex of the three main endings.
✅ Requirements
- Share the wine flask with Lin Pianpian on Day 3 (permanent — requires wine flask from Day 1)
- Visit Twenty-four Bridges with Lin Pianpian on Day 6
- Lin Pianpian must be alive at Day 10
- Lin Pianpian Trust above 70 at Day 9
❌ Fail Conditions
- Missing the wine flask on Day 1
- Not sharing the flask on Day 3
- Lin Pianpian's trust falling below 40 at any point
- Certain dialogue choices on Days 4-5 that Lin Pianpian interprets as Fang using her
Ending D — Devoured by the Kingdom
Sanity reaches zero. Fang cannot tell the novel from reality. He stops trying to leave.
Ending D is triggered when Fang's Sanity (清醒值) reaches zero. It is not a sudden collapse — the game's narration has been growing unreliable for some time before the ending triggers. Characters have been shifting faces, locations have been doubling, dialogue options have been quietly lying. In the final scene, Fang sits down in a teahouse that looks exactly like his Yangzhou study. Little Yan brings him tea. He is home. He is satisfied. He is never leaving. It is one of the most quietly terrifying endings in recent visual novel history. There is no dramatic death, no monster victory — just a man who has found a version of reality he prefers, and has stopped resisting it. The last line of the game in this ending is a chapter opening from 'Lion Camel Kingdom', written in Fang's own hand.
✅ Requirements
- Let Sanity drop to 0
- This can happen at any point from Day 3 onwards
- Specific choice sequences on Days 5-6 can accelerate this
Ending E — The Hungry Lamb: Liang and Sui
A bonus chapter for fans of The Hungry Lamb. Liang and Sui return in two new story threads.
Ending E is not a true ending — it is a bonus chapter unlocked after completing any of the three main endings (A, B, or C). It is specifically designed for players who played The Hungry Lamb, Zerocreation Games' previous title. The bonus chapter follows Liang and Sui in two parallel threads set after the events of The Hungry Lamb. It answers several questions left open by that game while deliberately leaving others open. It is not necessary for understanding The Weeping Swan — it is a gift to the existing fanbase. Players who have not played The Hungry Lamb can still access the chapter, but some of its emotional resonance will be reduced. The chapter takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete.
✅ Requirements
- Complete any of Endings A, B, or C at least once
- The chapter select screen unlocks automatically after completion
❓ Endings FAQ — The Weeping Swan
What's the most important single choice in the game?
The Day 2 Scholar Wang choice is the most branching. Whether you help his family or press forward alone permanently determines Ending B availability and shapes Fang's character arc significantly. The second most important is the Day 1 wine flask — which doesn't look like a major choice at the time, but gates Ending C entirely.
How do I get the True Ending (Ending A)?
Ending A requires: (1) all 7 Memory Fragments collected, (2) Sanity above 60% at Day 10 end, (3) not betraying Little Yan in Day 8, and (4) having spoken with every named NPC at least once. Memory Fragment #3 requires the Merchant's Seal from Day 1, and Fragment #6 requires Lin Pianpian's trust path. Plan your first Ending-A run carefully — it's designed to be the third or fourth playthrough for most players.