Glossary of Canon Jargon (that may show up in RP)

[dieva]

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.

Comments

qi deviation

[dieva]

The state in which someone's qi becomes so unstable that it can outright destroy their body, which almost always leads to death unless there's a specialized healer on hand. There's almost no way to anticipate a qi deviation until it's almost too late, when the cultivator starts to bleed from all the orifices on their face. The most common causes of qi deviation are poisoning, curses, exposure to dangerous qi (like resentful energy), poor physical condition or illness, and flawed or incomplete techniques.

Other xianxia works also state that extreme emotional distress or shock can cause qi deviation, though that's not the case for GDC (even if it's a common meme in the fandom because our protagonist is a gremlin, there's a reason why the live action is called "The Untamed").