Note 1: This is NOT a list of character skills, just a list of xianxia terms in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (GDC) aka Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) that are likely to come up in tags, so I might as well give a brief explanation of them.
Note 2: This is by no means a full list of what goes on in canon, just a primer I slapped together from reading the GDC book-- the novels published by Seven Seas have glossaries at the back-- and other xianxia novels and comics, and a bit of extra research to fill in some gaps. There are people who have done even deeper dives into the genre, like whoever runs the Immortal Mountain site. If I made a mistake somewhere or the official translations contradict anything I've already written, I'll make the necessary edits.
Note 3: I'm a Southeast Asian of Chinese descent living in a Southeast Asian country with close historical and cultural ties to China. Some of the Chinese culture prevalent in this region has changed over time and distance, but the roots are still the same, so I try to write what knowledge I do have in ways I understand them to make them more accessible.
Outside of governing people, one of the more prominent duties of GDC's sects is handling ghosts, undead, monsters, and basically anything supernatural that would threaten humans. They would regularly go out to investigate odd happenings in their territory in case of hauntings and the like with the goal of solving them and vanquishing the monster. Of course, I say "sects", but rogue cultivators also go night hunting.
In any case, all of this means that GDC's cultivators are more like exorcists, and are usually not expected to fight other cultivators like in other wuxia and xianxia stories, wherein the entire goal is to get stronger, fight each other, and get even stronger. In fact, this novel has a number of story arcs that can be considered case fics because the setting is rife with weird spooky situations to be solved.
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night hunting
In any case, all of this means that GDC's cultivators are more like exorcists, and are usually not expected to fight other cultivators like in other wuxia and xianxia stories, wherein the entire goal is to get stronger, fight each other, and get even stronger. In fact, this novel has a number of story arcs that can be considered case fics because the setting is rife with weird spooky situations to be solved.