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.
A GDC-only mechanic developed by Wei Wuxian, the story's protagonist. Also called gui dao, this cultivation practice uses qi from dead humans to cast spells, and is considered unorthodox.
Qi that comes from the dead is called resentful energy or resentment due to it being generated by/from negative feelings, unjust deaths, grudges, unresolved problems, and accumulated bad karma, to name a few. A dead person can also develop resentful energy if they were disrespected in death, such as not being buried properly, their killer remaining unpunished, or having their remains desecrated. In all cases, the dead person can linger as a spirit, who can then either haunt the area or the living, or transform into a more violent ghost or monster. Meanwhile, the bodies can become undead, and become a danger to cultivators and civilians alike.
Cultivators of this path can speak to spirits directly, and commandeer human corpses like puppets, regardless of if there's a spirit inside it. If you're reading this and saying "hey, that sounds like necromancy!"... Yeah, it's necromancy, just through a Taoist lens.
This cultivation is more accessible than orthodox practices because a golden core is not needed to practice it, the qi is from external sources after all. There's just one issue: resentful energy, no matter where it comes from, corrupts anyone manipulating it, making them irrational and violent... or offers them an outlet for their darker tendencies, if they were already inclined that way. It's also not uncommon for cultivators to die violently from prolonged practice (see: Qi deviation). If someone has been cultivating with resentful energy, reversing the problems is nigh impossible without outside help, which is one of the reasons it's considered unorthodox. Of course, the main reason why it's unorthodox is because it involves desecrating the dead.
The ghost path is usually conflated with demonic cultivation or mo dao, especially to discredit and/or demonize Wei Wuxian, so without clarifying that someone means a certain cultivation path specifically, both terms are interchangeable for most people in GDC. It doesn't help that later on, fans of Wei Wuxian emerge using actual demonic cultivation (using resentment harvested from living humans, or living humans that turned into demons) and can perform the same things he does, which further muddies the waters. This is also why the title of the story is what it is.
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ghost path & demonic cultivation
Qi that comes from the dead is called resentful energy or resentment due to it being generated by/from negative feelings, unjust deaths, grudges, unresolved problems, and accumulated bad karma, to name a few. A dead person can also develop resentful energy if they were disrespected in death, such as not being buried properly, their killer remaining unpunished, or having their remains desecrated. In all cases, the dead person can linger as a spirit, who can then either haunt the area or the living, or transform into a more violent ghost or monster. Meanwhile, the bodies can become undead, and become a danger to cultivators and civilians alike.
Cultivators of this path can speak to spirits directly, and commandeer human corpses like puppets, regardless of if there's a spirit inside it. If you're reading this and saying "hey, that sounds like necromancy!"... Yeah, it's necromancy, just through a Taoist lens.
This cultivation is more accessible than orthodox practices because a golden core is not needed to practice it, the qi is from external sources after all. There's just one issue: resentful energy, no matter where it comes from, corrupts anyone manipulating it, making them irrational and violent... or offers them an outlet for their darker tendencies, if they were already inclined that way. It's also not uncommon for cultivators to die violently from prolonged practice (see: Qi deviation). If someone has been cultivating with resentful energy, reversing the problems is nigh impossible without outside help, which is one of the reasons it's considered unorthodox. Of course, the main reason why it's unorthodox is because it involves desecrating the dead.
The ghost path is usually conflated with demonic cultivation or mo dao, especially to discredit and/or demonize Wei Wuxian, so without clarifying that someone means a certain cultivation path specifically, both terms are interchangeable for most people in GDC. It doesn't help that later on, fans of Wei Wuxian emerge using actual demonic cultivation (using resentment harvested from living humans, or living humans that turned into demons) and can perform the same things he does, which further muddies the waters. This is also why the title of the story is what it is.