History of Wuxia & Xianxia Cultivation Trope Explained with Brandon Sanderson’s Magic System

If you’re a writer or just someone who likes to explore new ideas, then you should check out the classic Wuxia & Xianxia movies. There are plenty of stuff you can borrow for your own project.

Bernhard Ridges

Can someone tell me the title of this one Chinese drama? I don’t remember much about it, except the fact that the mc is a one handed guy using a big dull blade. He has a giant eagle as his companion, and his wife is his sensei. He starts learning new martial art specializing in using the big dull blade after he fell off the cliff. Before that, he’s a disciple of a sect that only takes in female disciple. He cultivates on an ice bed. And his sensei has a rivalry with her senior sister. I remember that there is also a TVB adaptation of it. In the Chinese one, the senior sister of his sensei is evil. I remember that she’s usually seen in purple Hanfu.

As a long-time reader of wuxia and xianxia and aspiring to create a xianxia novel, I think Sanderson's second law seems less applied in xianxia. Limits and weaknesses in xianxia are apparent during the early stages of the cultivator's development. However, I am more interested in knowing the powers that the cultivators can study, learn, apply and even become an expert after hours, months and years of diligent practice. In xianxia or even wuxia, cultivators and martial artists can learn other artists' or cultivators' techniques and powers. But there are also limitations like the characters' body consitution in which a cultivator can't attune in learning and applying certain cultivation techniques because of constitution requirements.

When the cultivators progress in their path of progression they have become overpowered compared to other cultivators. Most especially when they reach the stages of immortality.

I honestly find the cultivation progression more interesting and logical compared to the Western styles of explaining magic.

Anyway, I would also like to point out that the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism schools are incorporated in xianxia/wuxia. But the Vajrayan Buddhism school is more mystical. It really provides magic/mystical materials to its students. The concept of progression in realms may have also been originated from Vajrayana Buddhism. As a student, I have learned ways and techniques to progress in realms though I am not a monk, but a pragmatic student. When I stumbled upon xianxia novels in 2010's, I felt like asking how did they have these progression in realm terms when they should only be known to students in mystic arts. However, the terms of the realms are completely different though. But I find the terms in cultivation realms to be more logical and practical.

Wuxia: martial art heroes stories
Xianxia: divine/supernatural heroes stories

我欲修仙，法力无边

The Great Eagles of LotR are laughing now

Hmm I love Cultivation fiction can a non Asian person write a Cultivation ya think?

puta este video esta en chino...

I watched a show with magic where everyone kept worrying about the cultivators showing up. I kept wondering if they were using illegal farming methods or something. My lack of understanding of the term rendered the entire show completely incomprehensible.!

I combined sword & sorcery and wuxia, this most crazy (im good way) ttrpg i have played im my life, so good...

Swallowed star is one of the best in my Playlist, don't know who wrote or who translated but it was definitely incredible art 👌

It's very detailed.

Big fan of BrandoSando

I see your a hidden master

I don't think Guo Jing is a good example when it comes to learning martial arts. The guy is average (not dumb, but he thinks he's dumb) when it comes to intelligence. But, when it comes to kung fu, he's a freaking genius. How many reached his level? He improved more rapidly than pretty much everyone in LOCH or ROCH (minus Yang Guo).

Honestly, Guo Jing had 7 bad teachers to start off as they were confusing him by teaching him all these different concepts. When it came to his beggar teacher, the beggar teacher had to change his teaching method/philosophy later on in order for Guo Jing to understand what his teacher was telling him. It's kind of like how Sifu from Kung Fu Panda had to change his teaching method to Poe in order for Poe to pick up Kung Fu quickly after that.

I'd just like to plug MJTI - A Mortal's Journey to Immortality. My personal favorite progression & Xianxia cultivation novel. The quality drops around chapter 1200, but that's still a lot of material to read. It stays away from the worst cliches (face slapping young masters, r@p3 harems, etc), and while the MC gets a really good cheat at the beginning of the story, its basically his only "freebee" and he still has to do all the work, training, planning, crafting, buying/selling, trading favors, etc, etc to progress.

More Murim Manwha Lore!

a boom in interactive fictions lately

I'll be honest, I may have tried to copy the Dempsey Roll once or twice...

In Ramakien, the Thai version of Ramayana, Hanuman seems to be able to do his various magic feats as needed. However, there is a story where one of the giants goes to a private area to meditate in order to create a special weapon, and Hanuman foils this by continually disrupting his meditation. That would seem to be a mixture of the hard and soft, but it's interesting how this division is drawn between the hero/villain camps.

I am still stuck at a bottleneck at orgin core realm! I have been cultivating diligently day & night for the past 3 years yet i cant seem to break-through?

Any advice? And no i cant afford heavenly dragon essence pill.


(How long does it take to reach heavenly divine realm? And become a god?)

This was SOOO cool! and concepts and tropes Ive often wondered about and would love to see even more in-depth study of the topic! Fantastic- gonna binge your history meets literature playlist now!😆🤩🥰

Hard work yes. but let's not forget a lot of these heroes are either 1 Somehow "martial arts genius' (how many have that?) 2. Find a miracle X that somehow makes it seriously easier for them. and 3. Either have a string of amazing coincidences that somehow help them find / master/ some secret. and wealth / status just sorta happens half the time.

You seem to always downplay Western ideas - I like you explaining the eastern ones, but you seriously underestimate the West Man. xD

I.... Am... MENG HAO!!!

I practice a system of life cultivation called Ren Xue, it's about improving health and uplifting life. Also, it has a Qigong system called Yuan Qigong, which is really good. I highly recommend to anyone 😁

牛逼

So what I’m getting from this video is that cultivation is a valid way to transition for trans folks. Gender magic, I love it.

我觉得诡秘之主，这部小说你们看起来会很容易

I have a question about internal alchemy, how are Qi, Jing and Shen related to each other? And how would Jing and Shen fit into Wuxia and Xianxia stories, because they talk a lot about Qi in those, but less about Jing and Shen.

Third Young Master's Sword is probably my favourite wuxia novel of all time.

As you said, in the Legend of Chusen (Noble Aspirations), the main protagonist is a boy who is completely negated for martial arts and ends up cooking in the kitchen: his best skill. However, as the story unfolds, you discover that he is indeed very powerful and by the end of the story he has probably become the most powerful. This was not a consequence of his cultivation but the fact that someone hid something very powerful in him and a magic artifact picked him as his owner.

You forgot one aspect : faith. In your video you show the monk from The Legend of White Snake who is fighting a demon. He has entirely devoted his life to Buddha that's why he is so powerful. He has blind faith. However his blind faith is also his limitation because he views everything either ying or yang in terms of good and evil. By the end of the story he understands that he must trust his heart because even demons cultivate and strive to ascend to immortality.

Pseudoscience? According to quantum physics everything is made of energy (qi) and is regulated/manipulated by consciousness/spirit (shen).
Europe had a long tradition of magic and herbalism but all of that changed due to the holy inquisition which tortured, killed and burnt at the stake whomever was involved or suspected of dealing with magic. As a consequence, herbalism and other holistic approaches disappeared replaced by modern medicine which treats the body like a machine. Interestingly, all those alternative therapies are back all over Europe as modern medicine is very limited. The passage from politheism to monotheism was very bloody!

The "Secret Manual" trope in western form is known as the "Charles Atlas Superpower", named after the bodybuilders manual focusing on Dynamic Tension.

The lore of Wuxia is humans are granted permissions to use superhuman strength/techniques that usually are owned by Gods, via cultivations. It has various types of abilites such as physical power, inner strength power, soundwave power (like the one used by Cia Sun in Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre or used via musical instruments), light body skill, energy waves, finger poke that can stop bloodstream making ppl unable to move, etc.

So, Dragon Ball is wuxia, and Dragon Ball Z is xianxia?

I just love MXTX! :D

To me, only soft magic systems are actual magic. Hard magic is just superpowers and a part of the normal workings of that world. Science by any other name. Soft magic comes from supernatural sources outside of the physical universe. While mortals can control/direct it to a certain extent, it is not wholly controllable or even knowable to mortals. It should also come with serious risks such as spiritual and/or physical corruption. Just my preferences.

Don't show Korean Chinese xianxia drama, Korea is very good at stealing the style of Chinese TV drama.

Makes more sense than the 4 humors ...

I'm glad that they prefer the idea of working hard compared to it being genetically based. It always rankled me that people in fiction settings get their abilities based on genetics rather than working hard.

Me : like I care i want more 3 kingdoms stuffs