Literature / Ave Xia Rem Y

a very cliche Xianxia Story

A Very Cliche Xianxia Harem Story!

"Ave Xia Rem Y" is an original work made by Mat Haz (otherwise known as Red Hazard), and is Exactly What It Says on the Tin (well, almost). It can be found on SpaceBattles.com (here), and is also on Royal Road (here). Mat Haz also has a Patreon for the story, where he releases chapters early (along with some other stuff).

This story also has a Wiki and a Discord.

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This work provides examples of:

• Absurd Cutting Power: The Severing Palm of the Yun sect at high levels can be used to cut space apart.
• Abusive Parents: Yun Peng used to be a wise and patient man, but he’s been in the Renegade Realm for the entirety of Yun Han’s life and Yun Han has known nothing but cruelty from him. When Yun Han loses the Eastern Port City Tournament, Yun Peng savagely beats him and has him chained to the wall in the Yun Sect’s cells for months, in total isolation.
• The Ace: Xiao Nan is the greatest prodigy of the Xiao Sect and Eastern Port City as a whole. Xiao Fang imagines that things like worries or mistakes are foreign concepts to him.
  • Feng Zhou is the ace of the young generation of the Eternal Flame clan, a person that has achieved Heaven 5th Realm at the young age of 24. He makes his cousin Feng Zhi feel so inadequate that for him and his family it is shameful.
  • Jin himself has over the course of the story into an ace himself. Though he always was amazing at the medical field now he is respected/worshipped by quite a lot of people.
  • In general you can count on anyone in the emperor realm to be an ace of some kind, especially the high level emperors. not to mention the divine realm cultivators.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Old Jiang repeatedly feeds Liu Jin progressively stronger poisons and teaches him to isolate and expel them from his body, to prepare him to handle the venom of the Nine-Headed Snake God. After spending three years with that continuously pumping into him, there’s probably no poison in the world that would harm Liu Jin.
  • Jin has started to teach Lu Mei that very same technique. We still don't know to what degree she can use it though.
• Action Girl: We have several examples of such from Our Mei to Fan Bingbing and more.
• Affair? Blame the Bastard: Lu Mei did not have an easy upbringing. Her mother conceived her as part of a divorce scheme that didn’t pan out, so neither of her parents wanted her anywhere near them, but due to Mei’s Feng blood she was too valuable to get rid of.
• Aloof Big Brother: Feng Zhi towards Feng Hao. Feng Zhi is actually very protective of his half-brother but can’t show it or spend time with him due to the tensions within their family.
  • Xiao Nan is an aversion to this, he isn't aloof at all to his cousin Fang and Jin.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The Four Great Sects are utterly without peer in the Crimson Cloud Empire and its neighbouring nations but on the other side of the Dead Plains there are three factions that none of the sects would stand a chance against. Outside of the barrier protecting the Vermillion Continent there are even greater dangers.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Averted with demons. They may usually be hostile to humans, but they are fully sapient creatures, capable of understanding right and wrong and don’t have a natural inclination to be evil. Heart Devils on the other hand, are negative emotions given form and cannot feel or do anything else.
• Always Second Best: The Yun Sect to the Xiao Sect in absolutely everything. Power, wealth and influence. Exemplified in Yun Han, who has never once beaten Xiao Fang in anything, for their entire lives.
  • Feng Zhi to his cousin Feng Zhou and his little brother Feng Hao. As both of them are much, much more talented than him. (Even if Hao isn't currently on Zhi's level).
• Amazon Brigade: The leadership of the Divine Frozen Palace and the majority of its disciples are comprised of women. Men are allowed to join the sect and many try to for obvious reasons but they never rise very high.
• An Ice Person: One of the four great sects of the Crimson Cloud Empire is a female-only sect that uses ice and snow. The sect is called the Divine Frozen Palace and is home to characters such as Meng Yue and Xiao Shuang.
• Anti-Regeneration: Guo Xuesheng deals with a captive Xi Mou’s regeneration in the rather direct way of re-snapping his spine, the instant Xi Mou shows a hint of recovery.
• Appropriated Appellation: Elder Xun once told a disciple "You are mud." Mud has gone by that name for 200 years in the hopes that one day, like mud, something good will grow from him.
• Arranged Marriage: Liu Jin and Xiao Shuang have been in one for almost their entire lives, much to Liu Jin’s surprise. The wedding was supposed to occur when they were older but Meng Yue discovering Shuang forced them to move the schedule forward as quickly as they could, so the Divine Frozen Palace couldn’t just take Shuang immediately and later marry her off for their own purposes.
  • Haung Shing and Yi Jiao were to be married. As the match was because of their families and a union of their clans and both of them were friends it should have worked out. But Feng Zhi came in and took Yi Jiao away leading Shing to chase after him. we find out later in story that jlJiao has never wanted to be married to Shing and that her getting kidnapped by Zhi was by choice. Also Jiao is in a romantic relationship with Zhi now.
• Artificial Gravity: In the Eternal Flame Clans Selection Exam, the gravity gradually increases the further the applicants travel along the Ash Road.
  • The curse of the Earth Realm massively increases the effect of gravity upon cultivators, to such a degree that after reaching the first level, some cultivators are rendered unable to move for several days, until they acclimate and relearn how to walk. The effect gets worse and worse the further you advance.
• Artificial Limbs: Lei Kong has a prosthetic arm made of steel that he can manipulate with his Qi. Now averted because he has been healed of this condition by Jin.
• Asian Fox Spirit: Su An is possessed by a fox spirit named Daji. Similar to the original Daji she makes her way to the Storm Dragon Emperor’s palace and effortlessly seduces the prince. Though she refuses to let him marry her as the remnants of Su An see the prince as an inferior version of Liu Jin.
• Astral Projection: Xiao Nan can remove a piece of his soul and give it the form of a ghostly bird, which he can use to scout ahead. This is a common skill for people who have reached the Earth Realm.
  • Liu Jin figures out how to do it in the Spirit Realm, when he needs to communicate with Qu Rou from a safe distance. The process is incredibly painful at that early stage of soul awareness.
• At Least I Admit It: In Xiao Nan’s opinion, the world is a cruel place and it’s a mistake to always try and do the right thing, because you never can; and deluding yourself about that fact will only make you a monster.
• The Atoner: Liu Jianguo after his Heel Realization, destroyed his cultivation and dedicated the rest of his life to being an Actual Pacifist doctor, helping anyone who needed him.
  • Lei Kong becomes this to Liu Jin after Jin saves his life and Lei Kong is forced to lead Murong Bang to destroy Jin’s home. Lei Kong knows that he can never truly atone for this and dedicates his life to serving Liu Jin in any way he can.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Feng Shang and Feng Gui directly fighting one another, forces their father to finally get involved in their civil war. Patriarch Feng immediately stops their fight, tells them how disappointed he is in their conduct and makes them participate in a contest to settle which of them will succeed him.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The dragon blood poison Old Jiang feeds to Liu Jin has no antidote and will kill anyone who ingests it in seven seconds unless they isolate and purge the poison from their body immediately, which is a skill very few people have. However, the poison is incredibly hard to make, becomes inert very quickly and the blood must come from a dragon on the same level of strength as the victim, so it’s usually easier to just murder the victim in a fight.
• Awesomeness Is a Force: Cultivators are able to flare their Qi to cow lesser opponents. In Old Jiang’s presence even Xiao Nan is forced to his knees and rendered unable to so much as speak.
• Backstab Backfire: Yuan Yi tries to attack Liu Jin from behind after they break out of the All-Devouring Worm. Liu Jin kills him instantly.
• Bad Boss: Ruan Goutin tests Liu Jin’s ability as a doctor by crippling one of his core disciples and telling Liu Jin to fix it or die. It isn’t the first time he’s done this, and most of the other disciples weren’t as lucky as the one Jin healed.
  • One of the three Heavenly Generals of the Storm Dragon Empire, Murong Bang, is this as well, killing everyone that has failed him in his army with no second thought.
  • Neither Feng Shang nor Feng Gui show the slightest concern for their subordinates. They don’t care how many disciples die fighting for them and when they’re provoked into an actual fight with each other, they don’t even seem to notice that their auras are accidentally incinerating their servants.
    • When punishing his sons, Patriarch Feng decides that since they’ve been so cavalier with the lives of the sect’s disciples, his successor will be decided by which set of disciples from each brother’s faction can best complete a mission, with the brothers unable to interfere. This is due to the Patriarch wanting the punishment to be ironic rather than any sense of morality, especially since the mission is to the Dead Plains, which for most Inner Disciples is as good as a Suicide Mission.
• The Bait: The Divine Storm Dragon knows exactly what Su Daji is, but it allows her to stay in the palace because the dragon wants Liu Jin to come to the palace and Daji’s presence guarantees he will, when he learns of her.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Xiao Nan intercepts the poisoned knife meant to assassinate Xiao Ding by grabbing it bare-handed. The knife can’t even break his skin and snaps.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: When exploring his own soul, in search of Old Jiang’s manual, Liu Jin finds a burning replica of Eastern Port City being attacked by faceless soldiers from Murong Bang’s Army. Liu Jin slaughters dozens of them in a rage, while fighting his way through the city to the Xiao Sect compound.
• Big Brother Instinct: When hunting down the Black Bear Bandits after they try to assassinate Liu Jin, Xiao Nan tears through them with great brutality and has to remind himself not to start enjoying acts like this. Xiao Nan would actually much rather be comforting Liu Jin than killing the bandits though.
  • When Feng Zhi thinks that Liu Jin is manipulating Feng Hao on behalf of Elder Xue, it’s only the knowledge that Feng Hao would be upset with him, that prevents Feng Zhi from immolating Jin on the spot with the Eternal Flame.
• Big Brother Mentor: Xiao Nan isn’t related to Liu Jin but they refer to each other as brothers, and protecting and encouraging Jin’s growth is one of Nan’s highest priorities. Xiao Nan acts in a similar manner to his cousin Xiao Fang.
  • Liu Jin takes on a similar role to Feng Hao, with Jin noticing that Feng Hao is asking him the same sorts of questions about the world that Jin once asked Xiao Nan. Feng Hao admires and seeks to emulate Jin more than he does his actual brother, Feng Zhi.
• Big Damn Heroes: Mud makes a habit of doing these in a rather understated way. Mud appears out of nowhere, stops whatever terrible thing Xun Huwen was about to do and apologizes to everyone for the inconvenience.
  • There are multiple instances in the Dead Plains. Huang Shing saves Feng Hao by obliterating one of the undead spirit beasts chasing him. Liu Jin then saves them from the traitorous Core Disciples. The Duke and Lei Kong arrive in the nick of time to save Liu Jin and the others from Xun Huwen and force him to leave for the other side of the Dead Plains.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Five Blessings Auction House has far more room inside it than its three-story exterior would suggest.
  • This is the case for the major buildings in the Eternal Flame Clan, despite the buildings being miles apart from each other and the sect compound having vast amounts of empty space.
  • Making such things is an actual job and art practiced by those that call themselves spatial artists.
  • The Sacred Bottomless Pearl is a multitude above everything we have seen from the rest. Being compared by the author to be Ph D math to the rest of middle school math.
• Biomanipulation: Members of the Death Fashioning Scripture can freely manipulate the corpses they control. Doing anything from knitting nearly destroyed bodies back together, growing extra limbs and head for surprise attacks or fusing two bodies together.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: There’s no indication she’s doing anything more malicious than what’s best for her clan, but Hu Meili isn’t the modest, loving fiancée she presents herself to be. Liu Jin tells Xiao Heng that if he’s going to marry her, he must promise to never trust her.
• Blessed with Suck: A Body of Extreme Yin makes a woman an incredibly talented cultivator, but unless they happen to live in an area with incredibly high ambient Yang Qi they will inevitably die in infancy. If they manage to survive, then countless people will either try to use them as a Breeding Slave or rape them to increase their power.
• Blinded by Rage: Qu Rou is so laser-focused on murdering Liu Jin for his (very indirect) role in Qu Rou’s brother’s death that he fails to notice every trap in the temple and doesn’t even realise that he can’t breathe. Liu Jin’s plan to kill him works perfectly and Qu Rou can’t lay a hand on him until Jin deals the final blow.
• Blood Knight: Murong Bang is, in the words of his own men, “addicted to violence” and despises other Emperor-level cultivators for wasting time on politics, rather than actually using their power to fight one another. He destroyed Eastern Port City because it was there, as much as it was to steal Jin’s Purple-Veined Empyrean Crystal. Murong Bang states that he will keep on killing whoever he pleases, until he encounters someone with the strength and will to kill him.
• Blow You Away: Lu Mei uses Wind Qi to do things like increase her agility to dodge attacks, cut people apart with Razor Wind and fly on her Magic Carpet.
• Bold Explorer: Fan Bingbing and the rest of the Eternal Flame Clan’s Exploration Division are this. Sending expeditions to uncharted regions like the Dead Plains and exploring ancient tombs in search of treasure. Feng Shang’s insular policies would limit them from doing this, so the division sides with Feng Gui in the civil war.
• Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: Xiao Nan is last seen during the destruction of Eastern Port City, facing down three Heaven Realm Cultivators having only just broken through to the Heaven Realm himself mid-fight. This would be certain death for people who aren’t Xiao Nan. One of the people Xiao Nan was fighting is later seen badly burned and having lost all his limbs and one of the others saying Xiao Nan was too dangerous to hold back against and none of his body was left.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Reaching the Heaven Realm cause the Heavens to try and kill you with Tribulation Lightning. The number of bolts increases by a factor of ten for every level, so reaching the final level brings 100 million bolts. Cultivators are ordered to go outside cities when they need to ascend anywhere past the first level.
• Boom, Headshot!: The bald disciple gets an arrow to the head, courtesy of Qu Rou. The arrow is flying far too fast and hard for any of the other disciples to stop it and all they can do is run for dear life into the temple.
• Breaking Speech: Xun Huwen’s Dao even extends to destroying people emotionally. He can just look at a person and know exactly what the most damaging words to say to them will be.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Liu Jin and his friends end up on opposite sides during the Eternal Flame Clan’s civil war. Jin sides with Feng Gui and inadvertently forces Lu Mei to do the same. Huang Shing refuses to fight on the same side as Feng Zhi and joins Feng Shang and Bei Hong does the same so Huang Shing won’t have to be alone.
• Brought Down to Normal: Liu Jianguo crippled his meridians, removing his ability to use Qi, as part of his penance. Although, in this world, that’s very abnormal.
  • Ruan Goutin sustained an injury to his soul that caused his cultivation to slowly deteriorate. Liu Jin decided it would be best to hasten the process along and fed Ruan Goutin medicine that was actually a hallucinogenic that tricked him into thinking he was being healed. When Ruan Goutin thought he no longer needed to hold back the degradation he was left completely powerless.
• Can't Catch Up: Despite all the training and adventures Huang Shing has done, he’s still about as threatening as an ant to Feng Zhi. It’s not just strength either, Huang Shing also feels deeply inadequate when he sees Feng Zhi’s unshakeable confidence and competence, whereas all the mysteries and intrigue in the Bright Phantasm Sect left Shing feeling completely lost. Huang Shing feels a similar way about his friends, lacking their wider arrays of skills and only being able to follow their lead if they need to do anything more complicated than hitting things, which he isn’t even better than them at doing.
• Career-Ending Injury: Yun Han crushes Cui Tian’s lower dantian, intentionally destroying his ability to cultivate. However, Liu Jin tells Cui Tian’s school how to fix the injury and cashes in a favour to help them get it. Cui Tian manages to make a full recovery.
• The Chain of Harm: The older outer disciples of the Xiao sect bully the newer ones and force them to do their chores for them. The newer disciples take out their frustrations on the disciples who come after them. Liu Jin is spared from having to go through this by Xiao Nan’s intervention.
• Charm Person: Lu Mei is highly proficient at Charm Techniques and can wrap men around her finger almost instantly. If men fight her, they become more concerned with their skills impressing her than they do with winning.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: The Yun Sect and Doctor Wu’s plan to cheat in the Eastern Port City Tournament backfires massively. They are publicly humiliated when the scheme is exposed, lose their spy in the Xiao Sect, are made to give up territory, and Doctor Wu is killed when he tries to flee the city.
• Child Prodigy: Most of the major characters were this at one point, but Feng Hao’s talent leaves even Xiao Nan in the dust.
• Chocolate Baby: Lu Mei’s hair and eyes don’t come from either of her supposed parents. Though her father being in isolated cultivation well before the conception and after the birth was a bigger giveaway.
• Chrome Champion: Bei Hong’s Goldforged Body technique coats his entire body in gold, making him almost indestructible. This isn’t actually what the technique is for, but Bei Hong doesn’t care.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Liu Jin is well aware that associating with Feng Hao is incredibly dangerous for him and making him a lot of powerful enemies, but Jin can’t bring himself to turn his back on a child who needs a friend.
  • Bai Wen’s mission into the Storm Dragon Empire is to investigate the major factions there, but Bai Wen finds herself saving every village she comes across from the endless bandit gangs, despite this drawing attention to her and making her mission more difficult. She’s aware of this, but proudly declares that that’s just the kind of person she is.
• Cock Fight: Lu Mei engineers one between Liu Jin and Pan Qiu, much to Jin’s annoyance. When she sees that Liu Jin is trying to fly under people’s radar, Lu Mei kisses him in front of the horde of admirers she’s gathered, prompting them to try and fight him to try and impress her.
• Comforting the Widow: Xiao Heng absolutely dives on the opportunity to marry Hu Meili after his brother is murdered. Liu Jin does not think highly of this and lets Xiao Heng know it.
• Compelling Voice: When Elder Xue asks Liu Jin which Feng brother he’d support to be the next Patriarch, Liu Jin is completely unable to stop himself from admitting it depends on their stances towards the Storm Dragon Empire. Jin could tell Xue was doing something to him but could do nothing about it.
• The Confidant: When Liu Jin helps Lu Mei get her Eternal Flame under control, she lets him in on the secret of her heritage. Jin decides to return the favour and tells her about his backstory and goals. Except the bit about his own heritage.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Liu Jin’s punishment for going to seek advice from Elder Xun is being made to tend the Odious Crown Imperials. Jin had to turn off his sense of smell and taste quite quickly. The flowers aren’t even useful, they’re just an ingredient in magical Viagra.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: The Eternal Flame is an ability exclusive to the Feng Clan and carefully chosen members of the Eternal Flame Clan. Lu Mei is very careful about keeping her ability to use it a secret.
• Cruel Mercy: Liu Jin decides not to kill Ruan Goutin after he renders him powerless. Instead, Jin offers Ruan the choice of fleeing through his secret escape route to live the rest of his life as a powerless beggar or stay and be executed by the Eternal Raging Valley’s vengeful disciples.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: In a spar with Xiao Nan, Liu Jin and Xiao Fang perform a successful combo that gives Xiao Nan a small cut on the cheek. Xiao Nan then decides they’re strong enough for him to hold back slightly less.
• Cuteness Proximity: Liu Jin’s newly hatched eagle inspires this in the other apothecary disciples, despite them usually being a serious and diligent bunch. The eagle also inspires laughter as it’s sitting in a nest it built on Jin’s head.
• Deader than Dead: The poison killing Old Jiang is so powerful that when he can no longer hold it back, it will destroy his soul along with his body.
• Dead Guy Junior: Liu Jin is named after his murdered grandfather.
• Deadly Doctor: Liu Jin. As is the case for every apprentice of Old Jiang. Jiang tried to avert it with Liu Jianguo and made him swear an oath to never use the knowledge Jiang taught him to harm others, but Jianguo never had the slightest intention of keeping it.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Liu Jin can’t defeat Yun Han in a straight fight so attempts to win by launching hundreds of easily blocked strikes that inject a tiny amount of poison with each hit. When Yun Han realises what’s happening, Liu Jin surrenders, much to Yun Han’s fury.
  • Liu Jin’s plan to kill Qu Rou is to drown him in a tidal wave of spirit beasts while he and his companions destroy the oxygen in the upper levels of the temple with fire techniques, so he can’t breathe. This causes Qu Rou to be constantly suffering and regenerating from more damage than he thought, rapidly draining his Qi reserves, and exhausting his soul. Leaving him weakened enough for Liu Jin to finish him off with one of his poisoned dragon bone needles.
• Death of the Old Gods: There was a war between the three continents thousands of years ago that was destructive enough to even kill entities like the Nine-Headed Snake God.
• Deity of Human Origin: The highest level of the world's cultivators are in what is called the Divine Realms of cultivation. Very few people have achieved this (the highest estimate is stated to be ten people), while the rest of the continent is on the human realms of cultivation.
• Demonic Possession: When Su An makes her escape from Murong Bang’s soldiers she encounters an entity called Daji that takes over her body.
• Didn't Think This Through: In an attempt to show off for the main branch representatives, Xiao Dong challenges Liu Jin to a fight. However, he didn’t check how young Liu Jin was, so Xiao Dong puts himself in a situation where his only options are to beat or by beaten by a 10-year-old. Neither which is anything to boast about.
  • When Bei Hong joins up with Liu Jin’s group at the temple in the Dead Plains, he happily prepares to fight everybody there. Jin offers him the alternative of a one-on-one fight with Bei Duyi, where Bei Hong will submit to being their prisoner if he loses. Bei Hong happily accepts and Bei Duyi yells at him for his idiocy and points out that Bei Hong forgot to set any terms for his victory. Bei Hong ponders this for a moment, then turns and compliments Liu Jin on his cunning.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Liu Jin finds his father, just after Jianguo engulfed himself and a group of enemy soldiers in a cloud of poison, buying their neighbours time to escape. Jianguo is extremely happy that he got to die being held by his son.
• Disappointed in You: Patriarch Feng Zhang tells his sons that he is not impressed by their inability to resolve which one of him will be his successor. The Patriarch is disappointed in Feng Shang for trying to have Feng Hao killed and in Feng Gui for attacking Shang for this, as that implies Gui thought the Patriarch wouldn’t intervene at that point. The Patriarch finds this lack of faith almost as bad as the attempted child murder.
• Dissonant Serenity: The normally Hot-Blooded Huang Shing is completely calm and emotionless when he challenges Liu Jin to a fight, the first time they meet each other after picking opposing sides in the Eternal Flame Clan’s civil war. Jin finds it rather unsettling.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Liu Jin denies wanting to take over the Storm Dragon Empire. Lu Mei asks him how his plan of overthrowing the Empire’s current leadership and reshaping the country to his liking has any practical differences to taking it over. Jin admits it doesn’t.
• Doomed Hometown: Eastern Port City, though the doom takes its time.
• Doppelgänger Spin: The third step of the Art of the Roaming Thief leaves behind an illusory copy of the user to take an attack while the user hides by blending their Qi into the environment.
• Double Knockout: Bei Hong and Bei Duyi’s fight ends in them agreeing to call it a draw and passing out. This was after several hours of determinedly beating the living daylights out of each other and for the last hour they both barely had the strength to lift their arms.
• The Dragonslayer: Huang Shing’s Nine Dragon Slaying Palms are well named. He manages to kill a dragon that’s more than an entire Realm stronger than he is, which is a power gap that no amount of skill can overcome and a fight that should have ended in a few seconds.
• Driven to Suicide: Hu Meili claims she tried to slit her wrists after hearing of Xiao Dong’s death, but the cuts are too shallow to kill her and were made too recently. The Xiao Sect elders can tell she’s lying but play along as it suits their purposes.
• Dr. Jerk: Doctor Wu is the second-best doctor in Eastern Port City but charges exorbitant fees for his services and spreads Malicious Slander against Liu Jianguo to try and remove his competition. He’s also involved in at least one murder conspiracy.
• Droit du Seigneur: Feng Zhi takes a liking to Huang Shing’s fiancée, Yi Jiao, and decides to take her for himself. This isn’t so much Feng Zhi’s explicit right as it is something nobody would dare, or even could, stop him doing. Huang Shing does try, but it doesn’t go well for him.
• Dye or Die: Liu Jin dyes his hair red when he joins the Eternal Flame Clan to make himself harder to recognize. Though it’s doubtful the Eternal Flame Clan would care that much if they learned who he was.
• Elemental Punch: Liu Jin’s White Venom Fist injects whatever he strikes with deadly poison, strong enough to melt metal and people.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Mud has a Dao that perfectly counters Xun Huwen’s type of Destruction Dao. Xun Huwen repeatedly tries to punch Mud and is incapable of connecting.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Feng Zhi is not pleased about needing to be saved from his fight with Xi Mou. Four separate people, including a still alive Xi Mou, knowing it happened makes it even worse.
• Emotionless Girl: Fan Bingbing is a tiny, doll-like girl who’s even more stoic than Liu Jin. The only thing that seems to excite her is exploring dangerous, ancient ruins.
• Encounter Bait: The first trap Liu Jin lures Qu Rou into inside the temple was a wave of acid, laced with a scent to attract the spiders infesting the temple. Qu Rou thought it was normal acid, that was insufficient to harm him and so let himself get covered in it.
• Endless Game: The Selection Exam for the Eternal Flame Clan is to travel along the Ash Road, fending off attacks from hundreds of Spirit Beasts while the gravity increases for every gate the applicant crosses. The road is essentially endless, but the applicant only needs to get past the fiftieth gate to pass.
• Enemy Civil War: Qing Jianguo fomented several in the Storm Dragon Empire by poisoning people and provoking old grudges to get his enemies to weaken themselves before he struck.
• Engagement Challenge: On his wedding day to Xiao Shuang, Liu Jin has to find her shoes, which have been hidden on the roof of Shuang’s massive house before the ceremony can occur. Jin thinks the whole tradition is idiotic.
• "Eureka!" Moment: While investigating the Medical Pavilion for signs of how the Internal Force are shutting down the bracelets, Khong Hu has an epiphany that the Internal Force has the ability to manipulate the defensive barrier around the Sect compound and create blind spots in it. He decides to wait until morning Elder Xue about it, since running off immediately is the kind of situation that would end with him getting assassinated.
• Everyone Is a Super: Absolutely everyone cultivates and not being able to is considered a disability on par with being blind or paralyzed.
• The Evil Prince: Jianguo’s elder brother poisoned their parents and framed Jianguo for the crime, to usurp control of the Storm Dragon Empire. Jianguo became one too, in his quest for vengeance.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Once he realises the truth about himself, Wong Shou’s Heart Devil creates a tower around himself that appears to be made of a combination of crystal and flesh and is surrounded by an army of Heart Devils.
• Extra-ore-dinary: Cui Tian uses Metal Qi to make his skin as tough as iron, during his fight with Yun Han. It does nothing to help him.
• Eyes Always Shut: Elder Xun opens his eyes so rarely that many people think he’s gone blind. Of course, since Xun is at the peak of the Emperor Realm, it’s not like he needs them.
• Failed a Spot Check: The Divine Frozen Palace don’t notice that Eastern Port City and the Xiao Sect have been destroyed until Song Daiyu turns up to tell them about it, weeks after it happened. This is deeply embarrassing for the Divine Frozen Palace as they were allies with the Xiao Sect and protecting them was one of their duties.
• Fantastic Rank System: The Power Levels are often divided into this, referred to as realms, and there are up to around 9 sub ranks within these realms. The 9 realms in the story are: the Foundation realm, the Inner realm, the Nascent realm, the Spirit realm, the True realm, the Earth realm, the Heaven realm, the Renegade realm, and the Emperor realm.
• Fate Worse than Death: Lei Kong will let Liu Jin cut his throat without a hint of fear or resistance. Repeatedly outbidding Ruan Goutin at an auction, however, causes Lei Kong to nearly faint and collapse in the nearest chair from sheer terror.
• Faux Flame: The blue fireballs that Wong Shou’s shades use is actually a Yin Qi technique that rapidly pulls the Yang Qi out of whatever it strikes, causing it to become burnt. The techniques weakness is that the flames are therefore incapable of spreading and can be blocked by a single leaf.
• Feed the Mole: Feng Zhi’s plan to catch the traitor in the Bright Phantasm Sect is to publicly move the sect’s resources to a new location while giving the suspects conflicting information about the route that would be taken. The shades attack Liu Jin and Wong Shou on the route that only Wong Shou and his father were told about. The culprit becomes clear when the shades have the same Qi signature and voice as Wong Shou. No one was more surprised about this than him.
• Finger Poke of Doom: When Xun Huwen gets bored of talking to Liu Jin, he flicks him with his finger. If Jin hadn’t perfectly blocked the strike with his Qi snakes, he’d have been killed instantly. Instead he's just knocked unconscious with severe internal damage.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Liu Jin muses on how effective beating people up together is, as a means of bonding, when he sees Huang Shing and Bei Hong quickly get over their poor first impressions of each other as they curbstomp Inner Disciples.
• Flash Step: Almost every Sect has their own movement technique that lets them perform variants of this. The first level of the Art of the Roaming Thief allows Jin to slip through his opponent’s blind spot rather than actually increasing his speed, like most other techniques.
• Flight: When a cultivator enters the Heaven Realm, they gain the ability to fly under their own power.
• For the Evulz: Xun Huwen possesses the Dao of Destruction, specifically destruction for its own sake. Xun Huwen has no motives except to cause the biggest mess he can, even if it will inevitably lead to his death.
• A Friend in Need: Bei Hong joins Feng Shang’s faction despite Feng Gui having a clear advantage because he knew that Huang Shing would never willingly fight on the same side as Feng Zhi and Bei Hong wasn’t willing to let his friend feel abandoned.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Patriarch Feng gives Feng Gui a guaranteed way to become his successor: let Gui’s favourite son Feng Hao die during the mission to the Dead Plains.
• Gambit Roulette: Lun Shu’s plan could have fallen apart if a single thing hadn’t gone exactly as he needed it to. This was intentional on Lun Shu’s part. In all the stories, cultivators from humble origins don’t succeed through clever plans but through getting ridiculously lucky. He might have won if it weren’t for Liu Jin and Xiao Nan.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Only women can have a Body of Extreme Yin. Presumably there’s a Body of Extreme Yang that’s exclusive to men.
• General Ripper: Murong Bang, one of the Three Heavenly Generals of the Storm Dragon Empire. A psychotic Blood Knight who is essentially at war with the entire world. He destroys Eastern Port City and openly welcomes the chance to fight those who will seek retribution against him, mocking the Crimson Cloud Empire as too scared of consequences to risk open war.
• Gentleman Snarker: Liu Jin is always unfailingly polite and respectful, no matter how antagonistic he’s trying to be.
• Genre Savvy: Khong Hu figures out how the Internal Force is shutting down the bracelets and refrains from his initial impulse to immediately run and tell Elder Xue about it since that’s the sort of thing that would see him get mysteriously murdered. He decides to have some tea and wait until morning, bringing a large group of other disciples with him in case of an attack.
• Get a Room!: When Liu Jin and Lu Mei are reunited in the Dead Plains she immediately leaps into his arms and starts kissing him. "And keeps kissing him. And kissing him. And kissing him." When they’re done Bei Hong asks if they’d like him to get them a bed roll.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Getting eaten by an All-Devouring Worm is temporarily non-fatal. The worm’s main diet is rocks so being eaten puts you in a massive cave network inside the worm, rather than an acid filled stomach. Eventually the worm’s digestive system will crush the rock tunnels and by extension the person in them.
• Gigantic Adults, Tiny Babies: Liu Jin’s eagle was small enough to comfortably sit on his head when it was newly hatched. In a few months it’s the size of an elephant and nowhere near full grown.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Xiao Fang gives one to Liu Jin while dramatically declaring his opposition to Jin marrying Fang’s sister and his intent to be as obnoxious an in-law as possible.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The colour of lightning Qi changes the more powerful the wielder is, going red->blue->white->gold for normal people. The Storm Dragon Emperors though, have access to an even better colour.
• Good Parents: Liu Jianguo is an unwavering source of support, advice and understanding for Liu Jin. Jin finds the idea that he could ever learn anything that would make him lose respect for his father completely incomprehensible.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: During the Chaotic melee in the Sparring Hall, Liu Jin and Bu Jing throw several of the other disciples at each other to cause distraction or give themselves space.
• Guardian Entity: The Divine Storm Dragon protects the Storm Dragon Emperor’s palace with the Grand Storm where the dragon is practically invincible.
  • Liu Jin’s life is saved from a group of Murong Bang’s soldiers by a fragment of Xiao Nan’s soul that had hidden in Jin’s shadow for over a year.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: All Renegades have this. Everyone who meets the Duke treats him like a bomb that might go off if they so much as breathe the wrong way.
• Handicapped Badass: Lei Kong is missing an arm and has crippled meridians on the right side of his body, destroying his ability to cultivate. He is nevertheless a career soldier in the late stages of the True Realm.
• Hates Being Touched: Liu Jin isn’t good with physical contact. Throughout his life there have been, at most, six people he’s comfortable being hugged by.
• Head Pet: Newly hatched Black-Winged Imperial Eagles build nests on top of their parent’s/owner’s head. Liu Jin initially tried to take the nest off but that made the eagle start crying.
• Healing Factor: Wong Shou’s Heart Devil has a very impressive one. He can immediately recover from having his blood boiled, organs torn out and skull pulverized, with no drawbacks.
  • As a person’s cultivation level increases so do their natural regenerative abilities. For Core Disciples of the Eternal Flame Clan there’s almost nothing that would make it necessary for them to go to the Medical Pavilion for treatment.
• Healing Hands: Liu Jin is capable of drawing poison out of another person through skin contact.
• The Heartless: Heart Devils are entities born from a cultivator’s emotional trauma that they take too long to deal with, the feelings coalesce and come to life, killing the cultivator who made it. Usually.
• Heroic Bastard: Lu Mei is able to use the Eternal Flame. An ability that is exclusive to the Feng Clan. She’s very careful that Feng Zhi isn’t around to see her use it and start asking questions. Lu Mei’s mother wanted to find a better husband so had an affair with Feng Shang and conceived Lu Mei. When her current husband made a breakthrough in his cultivation, divorce stopped being possible and Lu Mei’s parentage was kept as secret as it could.
• Heroic RRoD: Feng Hao temporarily cripples himself the first time he uses the Eternal Flame. The Eternal Flame lingering presence in his body completely overwhelms all other types of fire and causes Feng Hao debilitating pain if he tries to use any techniques.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When he hears Murong Bang’s soldiers approaching, Liu Jianguo draws their attention to himself so his neighbours can make it to the port. As one of the soldiers mortally wounds him, Jianguo releases a cloud of poison, taking the soldiers with him.
• Hero of Another Story: Huang Shing left home on a quest to rescue his stolen fiancée. In pursuit of this he discovered the scroll that taught the Nine Dragon Slaying Palms and before meeting Liu Jin has done things like battling pirates, killing dangerous Spirit Beasts and surviving a fight with a member of the Infinite Mountain Sect.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: When the Fleshcrafter’s army can no longer be held back, Liu Jin touches one of the zombies, severs the controller’s connection and takes the creature over, rebuilding it into a far more efficient form. Jin’s monsters then attack the rest of the horde to create even more of themselves. The Fleshcrafter doesn’t take this well.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Old Jiang left Liu Jin a huge amount of cultivation resources, which Jin could have used to get himself to the Heaven Realm by the time he was 14. Liu Jin has made only very measured uses of them, as rushing his development like that would only weaken him in the long run.
• Hopeless Suitor: Su An is this to Xiao Nan and she becomes Liu Jin’s follower, in hopes of getting herself into Xiao Nan’s good books. Jin is very pessimistic about her chances.
• Human Pincushion: To prevent himself from being killed by the Nine-Headed Snake God’s venom, Liu Jin spends three years with needles stabbed into his pressure points, to alter how his Qi and the venom flows through his body. He needed 27 needles at the start but was able to gradually reduce the number as he got used to processing the venom.
• Human Resources: Elder Cheung is feeding disciples poisons to secretly turn the elixir of life in their dantian into cultivation pills that he can use to help him reach the Emperor Realm. Cultivators consider this to be one of the worst crimes it’s possible to commit.
• Hypocrite: Patriarch Feng is angry at his sons for fighting about Feng Shang trying to kill Feng Gui’s son Feng Hao, saying that there are lines that must never be crossed when it comes to family. As punishment the Patriarch puts Feng Hao on a mission where he’ll be in mortal danger and declares that if Feng Hao dies, Feng Shang’s son will be killed as well.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: When Wong Shou’s Heart Devil reaches its epiphany and the shades become stronger as a result, Liu Jin decides it’s time to enter the Spirit Realm, which he’s been preventing himself from doing for months, to learn all he can about the Nascent Realm.
• I Can Still Fight!: After Feng Zhi is rescued from his fight with Xi Mou, Pan Qiu offers to carry Feng Zhi so he doesn’t aggravate his injuries. Feng Zhi refuses and insists on walking, though he privately admits that this isn’t due to pride but because his wounds are so bad that if he relaxes for an instant, he’ll pass out.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Poison Fang Canyon is a three-mile-deep ravine near Eastern Port City where everything from the air, soil, plants to giant monsters are deadly poisonous. It gets worse the further one goes in, to the point where breathing the air makes the lungs rot.
  • The Dead Plains are much, much worse. A barren wasteland filled with powerful spirit beasts and all attempts to establish settlements have ended in disaster, with everyone vanishing without a trace. The most dangerous part, however, is the cultivators there. The Plains are where failed Renegades go to die.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Cultivation can extend someone’s lifespan up to a millennium, with higher realms living longer. Everyone appears to age normally until they are fully grown, regardless of how strong they are.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: Due to the effects of cultivation, the average human lifespan is far longer than it is on Earth, but people don’t appear to have higher numbers of children. For example, Xiao Zheng has multiple wives and is, presumably, several centuries old, but only has two children, born a year apart. One of the reasons for this is that the more powerful a cultivator is the more talented their children will be, so most people wait until they hit their peak before procreating.
  • A massive aversion is Feng Gui, who has "more illegitimate children than there are stars in the sky”.
• Immune to Fire: Phoenixes thrive in flames and their feathers can be used to make Heartening Phoenix Pills which grant cultivators immense resistance to fire.
• Implausible Deniability: Lu Mei keeps denying everything about her having the Eternal Flame when Feng Hao talks about it, despite having used it in front of him and multiple other witnesses.
• Impossible Task: Elder Xun has many disciples seeking refuge in his Technique Hall so they don’t have to pick a side in the Eternal Flame Clan civil war. Xun decides to only accept those who can write 20 characters on a single grain of rice, without using any Qi. The more determined disciples have been at it for several months.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Xiao Sect uniforms are made from spirit beasts and are impervious to both dirt and sweat. And that’s just what the outer disciples get to wear.
• Imprinting: Black-Winged Imperial Eagles view the first thing they see as their parent, so when Liu Jin hatches his, he makes Lei Kong stare at the wall, so the chick won’t get confused.
• Innocent Innuendo: Meng Yue doesn’t like Feng Gui because “He is a man who cannot satisfy a woman.” By which, of course, she means that Feng Gui wasn’t interested in fighting her for more than a brief spar.
• Innocently Insensitive: There’s no malice in Meng Yue’s actions but she doesn’t even have an intellectual understanding of tact or humbleness. Her fellow elders try to convince to never leave the Divine Frozen Palace, so she won’t embarrass them.
• Innocent Prodigy: Feng Hao may be a genius at cultivation but despite him trying to act with the dignity and maturity his social position demands, he’s clearly still an eight-year-old.
• Instant Expert: It takes disciples of the Death Fashioning Scripture years of dedicated study to create a functional zombie. All Liu Jin needs to do is briefly examines a flesh bud to work how to subvert control of the undead and then he learns how to remake them into far superior monsters on the fly. The Fleshcrafter is equal parts incredulous and livid.
• Interclass Friendship: The friendship between the emperor level cultivator Xiao Zheng and the crippled doctor Liu Jianguo baffles most people, including Zheng’s son. The relationship was formed by Jianguo saving the life of both Zheng and his daughter. Jianguo is actually the higher class one though.
• I Owe You My Life: Xiao Heng to Liu Jin, in the sense that Liu Jin curing him gave Xiao Heng a life that was worth living. Heng swears eternal devotion to Jin and waits on him hand and foot, to Liu Jin’s great annoyance.
  • Lei Kong is this to Liu Jin, even more so. Jin saved Kong’s life and asked for nothing in return, Kong then brought an army that murdered Jin’s father and destroyed his city. Lei Kong admits that there’s nothing he could ever do to make up for this and will do anything Liu Jin asks of him without complaint including letting Liu Jin murder him.
• I Shall Taunt You: Bei Hong and Huang Shing’s incessant boasting when they beat the Inner Disciples, provides a constant stream of opponents, futilely trying to put them in their place. This allows them, Liu Jin and Lu Mei to gain enough points for promotion in a single day, as they don’t need to use their guaranteed challenges to get fights.
• It's All About Me: Huang Shing feels very betrayed by Liu Jin’s decision to join Feng Gui’s side despite Jin knowing about Shing’s feud with Feng Zhi. Jin tells him that the world doesn’t revolve around Shing’s rivalry, and that Jin has his own goals that he wouldn’t try and demand Huang Shing’s support with. Huang Shing acknowledges this, but he doesn’t feel any better about the situation.
• I Was Just Passing Through: Xiao Fang tells Liu Jin that saving him from Yun Han means nothing and that he was just upholding the sect’s honour, though he later admits to Xiao Nan that he was motivated by fear of Old Jiang’s reaction to Jin’s death.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bei Duyi’s antagonism to Bei Hong and his friends was actually Bei Duyi trying to look out for them. Knowing how easily his cousin made enemies, Bei Duyi took a leadership position among the disciples with a grudge against them, so things wouldn’t get out of hand. He had nothing to do with the fight at the Spring of Clear Insight, which was done by disciples who were annoyed at Bei Duyi’s lack of action.
• Just Following Orders: Yuan Yi attempts to backstab Liu Jin, just after they escape the All-Devouring Worm. Yuan Yi knew his chances of success weren’t good, but he and the rest of the disciples from Feng Shang’s faction had been given orders. Liu Jin and his side kill them all in seconds.
• Just Friends: Bei Hong and Lu Mei have been close friends since childhood and have zero romantic interest in each other. Lu Mei thinks Bei Hong is a fight-obsessed idiot and Bei Hong thinks Lu Mei is far too attractive and devious to be worth the headaches of a relationship with her. Bei Hong gives Liu Jin his sincere condolences, when Lu Mei develops an interest in him.
• Kaiju: The Nine-Headed Snake God’s fangs are big enough that a billion-billion blades could be made from each of them. The author states that this is Not Hyperbole. For context, that makes each fang about 5000 times the mass of Mt Everest.
• Kangaroo Court: When his Dao was discovered, Xun Huwen was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first minor crime the Eternal Flame Clan could pin on him. The punishment was disproportionate, but Xun Huwen absolutely deserved it.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: “Not bad, but can you face the Second Commander of the Black Bear Band-gck!” Yes, Xiao Nan could.
• Ki Manipulation: The entire system of cultivation works on the energy of Qi. Refining it is the key to achieving the goal of every cultivator, an eternal soul.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: This is the best way to kill an All-Devouring Worm. They’re far too fast and stealthy to evade and once swallowed you end up in a cave made of the rocks it’s eaten rather than its actual stomach. From there’s it’s possible to break through the rock and escape by swimming through the worm and killing the creatures that live inside it to help its digestion, until you reach the worm’s core.
• Knights and Knaves: Subverted. The Tree of Deceitful Whispers has two faces that give conflicting information about which fruits are poisonous. Lun Shu tells Liu Jin that this trope isn’t in effect and both faces will say whatever’s most likely to get the person eating the fruits killed.
• Lamarck Was Right: The more powerful a cultivator is, the greater their children’s aptitude for cultivation will be. Which is why most cultivators wait so long to have children and why Liu Jin didn’t seem particularly exceptional as a child, despite his royal blood. Jianguo crippling himself prevented Jin from gaining the initial benefits of his heritage.
• Lap Pillow: Su An gives one to Liu Jin when he is recovering from his spar with Xiao Nan.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Wong Shou is incapable of remembering anything that links him to the shades and instantly blanks out Feng Zhi’s attempts to murder him after he heals. Luckily. The amnesia starts failing when Feng Zhi repeatedly forces him to confront the truth by pointing out inconsistencies in his explanations for what’s happening and asking how he can still talk with Feng Zhi’s arm impaled through his chest.
  • Xun Huwen’s techniques destroy even the memories people have of seeing them.
  • Su Daji can remember her past and motivations in very general terms but trying to remember the specific details about anything causes the memories to slip away from her.
• Laser Guided Tyke Bomb: Mud was a washout Outer Disciple who was taken in and trained by Elder Xun for 200 years for the sole purpose of countering Xun Huwen and stopping his rampages. Mud even allowed Elder Xun to impose a Dao on him to counter Xun Huwen’s Dao of Destruction. Mud wasn’t exactly a tyke though, as he was at least in his twenties when he accepted Elder Xun’s deal.
• The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Feng Zhi shrouds his body in fire and stands with his arms crossed as the Heart Devil launches a huge barrage of attacks at him, that are all instantly incinerated.
• Les Collaborateurs: The Lun Clan’s opinion of the Hu Clan. Their original plan was to ally together to drive the Xiao Sect out of New Moon Town, but the Hu clan backed out, to ally with and marry into the Xiao Sect instead. In the end, it doesn’t work out quite as well for the Hu Clan as they’d hoped.
• Lie Detector: The Eternal Flame Clan has a chair, that they use for criminal trials, that forces whoever sits on it to truthfully answer any question asked of them. It can’t prevent the use of Exact Words though, since using too strong a truth-telling compulsion would prevent people from being able to properly articulate answers.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Bai Wen of the Divine Frozen Palace kills a group of bandits who were attacking a village by freezing them in blocks of ice and shattering them into a thousand pieces.
• Living Macguffin: Feng Hao is a Child Prodigy of nearly unprecedented talent and provides one of the best reasons for why Feng Gui should be made the next Patriarch. As a result, Feng Shang’s faction want him dead and Feng Gui’s faction want him protected at all costs. For all of Feng Hao’s talent, he’s still one of the weakest people in the Eternal Flame Clan and completely unable to impact any of this. He absolutely hates it and spends his entire time in the Dead Plains trying to find some way to contribute. He finally finds a way when he discovers the defenses in the temple and helps activate them to destroy the Fleshcrafters army.
• Long-Lived: A person’s lifespan increases along with their level of cultivation. Each Realm seems to grant around an extra century. If a cultivator ascends to the divine realm, they become properly immortal.
• Magic Compass: The petals of a Lovers Crimson Blossom will point towards each other if they are separated. Liu Jin uses one to track down the thieves who stole a shipment of herbs he and Huang Shing were transporting.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Wong Shou’s Heart Devil’s only reaction to Feng Zhi doing things like burning his face off is confusion. This is because the Heart Devil rapidly heals and completely forgets everything but the fact that Feng Zhi did something violent.
  • Liu Jin didn’t realise most of his flesh was annihilated by Xun Huwen’s attack and his body is completely mangled until it was pointed out to him. Jin had no visible reaction and just substituted Qi snakes for muscles, so he could move again.
• Mama Bear: Lady Ling is a very protective mother to Feng Hao and tells Liu Jin she’ll murder him if he ever betrays Feng Hao’s trust. She so protective that Protection turns out to be her Dao. Specifically, the “destroy everything that could be a threat” kind of Protection.
• Man on Fire: Old Jiang isn’t quite hot enough for the air to ignite when Liu Jin first finds him, but the poison has caused his body temperature to rise high enough to cause the grass around his body to turn to ash.
• Master Archer: Qu Rou is an archer capable of hitting targets that are miles away and is completely stunned when he once misses (his bow was damaged). He is insufferably prideful about and is infuriated if he is ever forced to fight in melee.
• Memory Jar: Just before Old Jiang dies, he gives Liu Jin a box of Memory Jades, containing the final lessons he has to teach him.
• Mercy Kill Arrangement: Of a sort. Old Jiang makes Liu Jin promise to harvest his blood and core and thoroughly burn his body when Jiang can no longer hold back the poison that’s killing him. Harvesting a human’s core is an act that cultivators outright call heretical, but if Jin doesn’t do this the remains of Jiang’s poison will be released and kill everything for hundreds of miles.
• Mexican Standoff: When members of the Internal Force are about to start a fight in the Medical Pavilion, Liu Jin creates poison Qi snakes, poised to bite their jugulars. Liu Jin tells them that while he’ll be severely punished if the snakes bite, the disciples will still be dead. The members of the Internal Force decide they don’t care enough about Feng Shang to die for him and back down.
• Might Makes Right: The Crimson Cloud Empire barely appears to have laws at all. Someone strong or well-connected enough can murder people in broad daylight without any need for justification. As Liu Jin puts it: The strong can do what they want, and the weak have no choice but to endure. That is merely the way the world works. After Murong Bang’s attack, Liu Jin decides that this state of affairs has to change.
• Mighty Glacier: Due to the massively increased gravity that Earth Realm Cultivators have to deal with, their speed is greatly reduced. Though this is only in comparison to their strength and toughness, a lower Realm cultivator trying to fight them would still get promptly speed blitzed.
• The Minion Master: Wong Shou has the seemingly unique ability to create an endless number of Heart Devils, an act which normally requires the creator’s death to make even one. The Heart Devils are about as strong as Wong Shou himself and can be created with no cost. Wong Shou is easy enough to deal while he’s in the Spirit Realm but if he reached the Heaven Realm, he’d be an absolute nightmare.
• The Mistress: Lu Mei isn’t thrilled to learn that Liu Jin’s married but doesn’t view it as a reason to stop pursuing him. Since Jin’s wife gave him permission he doesn’t see a reason not to reciprocate.
• The Mole: Elder Hui is spying on the Xiao Sect for the Yun Sect. Elder Hui resented his position of being in charge of the Xiao Sect’s Outer Disciples and was offered a higher position in the Yun Sect if he acted as a saboteur. Ironically, Xiao Zheng was planning to promote Hui before discovering him treachery.
  • When she discovers that the Internal Force is shutting down the bracelets by directly creating blind spots in the barrier, Elder Xue concludes that one of the Elders must be a traitor as only one of them could have access to the barrier’s controls and would only weaken the Sect’s security so badly if they had nefarious intentions.
  • There are a great many moles within Feng Shang’s faction. High ranking core disciples have become disillusioned with his leadership and have betrayed the Eternal Flame Clan in some deal with the Death Fashioning Scripture.
• Mugging the Monster: The Black Bear Bandits attempt to waylay Liu Jin and Xiao Nan on their journey to New Moon Town. The only reason they aren’t all dead before they have time to blink is because Xiao Nan wanted to give Liu Jin the opportunity for a real fight.
• Musical Assassin / Instrument of Murder: Fan Bingbing fights with a guqin that she uses to fire sound blades. An unnamed disciple of the Eternal Flame Clan is apparently “quite lethal with the pipa,” though they’ve only been seen playing it normally.
• Mysterious Mist: The perpetual, heavy mists of the Night Forest cast illusions to confuse those travelling through it. This is caused by the high amount of ambient Yin Qi in the area.
• Necromancer: Members of the Death Fashioning Scripture can raise giant hordes of dead cultivators and spirit beasts to fight for them and can mold the corpses like clay.
• The Needless: The higher a person’s cultivation the longer they can go without eating or sleeping. Xiao Nan states that he could go without food for over a year if he wanted to.
• Neutrality Backlash: The Hu Clan’s fence-sitting during the Lun Clan’s powerplay loses them their good standing with the Xiao Sect and they are forced to give up their access to the Tree of Deceitful Whispers.
• Never Gets Drunk: Liu Jin’s poison purging technique works just as well on alcohol.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes: The Yun Sect tries the same Soul Draining Parasite trick on Xiao Fang that they did on Xiao Zheng. When Liu Jin spots it, Doctor Wu can’t explain why his son missed it as he’d sworn to educate all his disciples on how to detect it after the time with Xiao Zheng. The Yun Sect throws Doctor Wu under the bus.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Liu Jin is particularly intrigued by horrifying things like Xiao Heng’s parasitic twin, Wong Shou’s Heart Devil ability and the Fleshcrafters flesh buds. People tend to get rather disturbed when listening to him talk about them.
• No Man Should Have This Power: Wong Shou’s ability to produce an infinite number of Heart Devils that are as strong as he is, would make him incredibly dangerous if his cultivation reached the Heaven Realm. Feng Zhi refuses to let Wong Shou fall into the wrong hands, even those of Feng Zhi’s own sect, and incinerates him.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Liu Jin is a very small fish by the standards of the Xiao Sect’s main branch but when he goes on a trip to New Moon Town, he’s seen as an incomparable Child Prodigy. The brightest talents in New Moon Town would be considered embarrassments in Eastern Port City’s Sects and the town’s local bandit clan is so weak that a life of crime should be suicide. Xiao Nan specifically took Liu Jin there to give him some perspective of the outside world and help him stop comparing himself to stronger people all the time.
  • Huang Shing feels like one when he enters the Eternal Flame Clan’s Selection Exam. Being in the Ninth Level of the Nascent Realm at 14 is a sign of incredible talent in most places, but the Eternal Flame Clan is one of the four strongest sects in the empire and almost everyone applying is like that. However, it soon becomes clear that Huang Shing is still a clear cut above all but four of the other applicants that year.
  • By the standards of the main branch of the Feng Clan, Feng Zhi isn’t much to write home about, his talent being greatly overshadowed by his cousin and especially by his younger brother. By the standards of almost anywhere else, being in the Earth Realm at 16 is completely unheard of and people look upon Feng Zhi with awe.
• Not the Intended Use: The Bei Clan’s Goldforged Body technique isn’t supposed to be used to improve defence, since gold is a soft, flimsy metal. But Bei Hong wants to use it that way and won’t let something like common sense stop him.
• Not Worth Killing: Feng Zhi didn’t feel the need to take Huang Shing even slightly seriously, when Shing tried to prevent Zhi from taking Yi Jiao. Feng Zhi is rather annoyed when he learned that Huang Shing didn’t take the hint and is still trying to get Yi Jiao back.
• Offhand Backhand: A pair of disciples try and interfere in Liu Jin’s fight with Bu Jing. Jin punches them across the room in a thousandth of a second. Another pair of disciples then try and help Liu Jin and don’t fare any better.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The first time we see of Huang Shing in the Dead Plains, he has just killed a dragon, more than a Realm stronger than him, in a fight that lasted several days. The second time we see him, he’s grown an entire Realm in power in a couple of weeks.
• Old Master: Old Jiang is an extremely old, above Emperor level cultivator, the greatest doctor in the world and the teacher of most of the runners up.
• One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: The elixir that Liu Jin helped Luo develop, nullifies the curse of the Earth Realm and allows Guo Xuesheng to effortlessly out speed and curbstomp Xi Mou, despite their equal levels of advancement.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Divine inheritances can only be used by those the god or the inheritance itself deems worthy, like Liu Jin passing the Nine-Headed Snake God’s trial. The Eternal Flame is unique in that it has been split in half; with the Eternal Flame Clan holding one half and the Crimson Cloud imperial family holding the other. Anyone can use it and it can be passed down through bloodlines. The biggest division in the Eternal Flame Clan is whether or not to fix the Eternal Flame for the chance of access to far greater power, running the risk that the Eternal Flame might judge everyone unworthy, and the Clan would lose access to it entirely.
• Order vs. Chaos: The basis of the conflict between Feng Shang and Feng Gui. Shang is cautious and favours stability and steady growth, while Gui is reckless and wants to take risks like fixing the Eternal Flame for the chance of greater power.
  Gui: Destruction is necessary for progress. We do away with the obsolete and replace it with something better.
  Shang: Who decides what is obsolete? You? Progress is a system, brother. A set of behaviors with tried and proven results throughout the ages! Stability, not reckless destruction is necessary!
  Gui: Stability! You call what you do stability? Your ways have led to nothing but stagnation! How long has it been since we last truly expanded our borders? The Dead Plains taunt us, brother!

Feng Shang’s ability to actually keep things stable is questionable, given his actions in the conflict. The recreation of the Internal Force and especially the release of Xun Huwen have caused far more chaos than anything Feng Gui has done, and made those like Elder Chang rethink their loyalties. Shang’s side is also revealed to be infested with traitors to the Eternal Flame Clan.

• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lei Kong is so disturbed by Liu Jin’s fascination with Wong Shou’s Heart Devil abilities that he drops his usual sycophancy and begs Liu Jin to speak no more about the subject. Liu Jin, wanting to encourage that sort of behaviour from him, agrees.
• Our Demons Are Different: A demon is created if a non-human organism lives for a century, which gives it a one-in-a-trillion chance to cultivate, gain sentience and attain a human form. Old Jiang estimates that, at most, a dozen demons have been born on the Vermillion continent in thousands of years. However, if a demon manages to breed, their offspring will become demons far more easily and as demons are born in the Earth Realm, they pose an immense danger to human societies if they ever get a foothold.
  • There is also the case of Heart Devils, they are a condition in which ones emotions seemingly come to life to kill the one that birthed them. Only if the Heart Devils kill their originator will they be able to become a corporeal entity.
• Outrun the Fireball: Liu Jin and the other disciples desperately run deeper into the temple to try and escape the explosive arrow Qu Rou fired at them. Three of them don’t make it.
• Parental Neglect: If Feng Gui’s children aren’t powerful enough to be useful to him, he doesn’t give a damn about them. Feng Hao is his favourite child and Feng Gui still never spends time with him.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The extremely Qi-rich environment of the Dead Plains, combined with the constant danger from spirit beasts and more Core Disciples makes it an excellent place for cultivation. The disciples make months of progress in a few weeks. Liu Jin unlocking their meridians helped even further.
• Perception Filter: Mastery of the seventh step of the Art of the Roaming Thief lets the user disguise themselves as a completely ordinary person, who is unconnected to the user and should be left alone, even if the techniques activated mid-conversation.
• Perpetual Storm: The Grand Storm is a massive thunderstorm surrounds the Palace of the Storm Dragon. It is a manifestation of the power of the Divine Storm Dragon and acts as an impenetrable defense for the Emperor.
• Phlebotinum Pills: There are a variety of magical medicines (from potions and elixirs to actual pills) that help improve cultivation.
• Playing with Fire: Another one of the great sects of the Crimson Cloud Empire mainly uses fire, and the main family has a technique named the Eternal Flame. This sect is called the Eternal Flame Clan.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Lei Kong’s life is Liu Jin’s to do with as he wishes. When Jin tests this by making to slash his throat Lei Kong doesn’t even flinch.
• Pocket Dimension: There is one in the centre of Poison Fang Canyon, containing the Nine-Headed Snake God. The dimension is far bigger than the entire canyon.
  • The Yun Sect’s Nine-Fold Severed World technique cuts an area off from the rest of the world. It’s useful for limiting collateral damage from high-level fights.
• Poison Is Corrosive: The poison of Liu Jin’s White Venom Fist is strong enough to melt through armour and the person wearing it.
• Poisonous Person: After passing the Nine-Headed Snake God’s test, Liu Jin is able to make his Qi poison aligned and infect others just by touching them.
• Polyamory: Polygyny is common among powerful cultivators such as with Xiao Zheng and Feng Gui having multiple wives and Xiao Nan aiming for a minimum of two. Xiao Shuang tells Liu Jin she has no problem with the two of them having this arrangement, given that it would be years before the two could see each other again and demanding that he be faithful seemed unfair considering how short a time they’d been married.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Su Daji has the prince of the Storm Dragon Empire wrapped around her finger but refuses to actually try and become princess because the vestiges of Su An keep comparing the prince to his cousin Liu Jin and find the prince lacking in every aspect.
• Power Levels: The surest way to measure someone's power is to feel their Qi and go from there. Most of the time the one with the higher realm will win a fight.
• The Power of the Void: The Xiao Sect’s signature moves all involve either erasing things from existence or warping space. The Void Fist is a punch that causes a destructive spatial distortion to instantly appear at a chosen point, the Void Step allows instant movement by removing the space between two points, the Engulfing Void negates an enemy’s attack by erasing it from existence and the All-Consuming Heavenly Void does the same thing to everything in a one-mile radius.
• Power-Up Food: The Tree of Deceitful Whispers produces two kinds of fruits. One kind is poisonous but the other provides a large power boost. (Well, large by New Moon Town standards.)
  • Eating the flesh of powerful spirit beasts is highly beneficial for cultivation. Dragon meat is the best kind but also the most dangerous. Dragon body parts don’t like being turned into things that aren’t dragons and violently resist being digested.
• Princeling Rivalry: The Eternal Flame Clan is locked in a power struggle between the two sons of its current patriarch over which will be the Sect’s next leader. If they’re ever in the same room the brothers constantly snipe at one another.
• Prolonged Prologue: The prologue contains everything that happens before Eastern Port City is destroyed. It covers around five years of time and is over 200,000 words long.
• Proud Beauty: Lu Mei knows how attractive she is and takes full advantage of it. When Liu Jin comments that he’s never met a woman who will directly call herself stunning, Mei states that pretending to be Obliviously Beautiful, will only be able to seduce idiots.
• Puppet King: The current Storm Dragon Emperor is a good man but lacks the power to enforce his will in any way. The empire is still in total chaos, fifteen years after he took the throne, and most sects and clans don’t even pretend to be loyal to him instead of one of the Three Heavenly Generals. The only reason he’s still on the throne is because the Divine Storm Dragon protects his palace, which is as far as the Emperor’s power extends.
• Purple Is Powerful: Purple lightning is the most powerful form of lightning Qi and is only available to the bloodline of the Storm Dragon Emperors.
• Rage Quit: Meng Yue pulls the classic “throw the board out the window” move, when Bai Lianshi effortlessly wins their game of Go.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: The basis of Huang Shing’s Nine Dragon Slaying Palms along with the Megaton Punch. Huang Shing hits an opponent 437 times before the impact of the first blow has time to launch it backwards.
• Really Gets Around: Feng Gui makes a point of having as many children as he can. He does this to spread the Feng bloodline as wide as he can to stop it dying out and to increase the odds of him having a child talented enough to be useful to his ambitions.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Liu Jianguo reveals to Liu Jin that he was in fact the previous emperor of the Storm Dragon Empire. Jianguo abdicated after his Heel Realization.
• Real Name as an Alias: Lie Jin doesn’t think of it as his real name, but he goes by Qing Jin in the Eternal Flame Clan, which was his father’s original name.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Liu Jin and his friends are assigned to accompany Feng Zhi on a diplomatic mission to Night Phantasm City, as their punishment for their fight with Bei Duyi and the others. It’s far more an Antarctica for Feng Zhi than it is for them, as the whole mission is just a way for Feng Zhi to save face and have an explanation for why he wasn’t invited to the Crimson Cloud Tournament.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Averted by Liu Jin and Jianguo who are two of the kindest and most moral characters in the story. Jianguo used to play it very straight though.
• Red Shirt: Inner Disciples have no business going to the Dead Plains. Liu Jin starts off with a group of 70 and by the time they get to the temple, due to a combination of betrayal, spirit beasts and Core Disciples lying in ambush, 90% are dead. The survivors are the only ones whose names Jin ever learns.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: Huang Shing refuses to go back and help Feng Zhi against Xi Mou because he doesn’t like Feng Zhi or care if he gets hurt. Huang Shing also tells Feng Hao that if he did go back and try and help then he and Feng Zhi would immediately attack each other, so he’d just make the situation worse. Huang Shing admits he’s being petty but says, given how petty the leaders of the Eternal Flame Clan have shown themselves to be, he doesn’t see why he should be the bigger man.
• Revenge Before Reason: Qu Rou is determined to kill as many disciples of Feng Gui’s faction as he can, to take revenge for his brother, who died during the Crimson Cloud Tournament. Feng Gui’s faction took over the Medical Pavilion during the tournament and withheld medical supplies to sabotage the competitors, resulting in Qu Rou’s brother dying from his injuries. Qu Rou is told that the Inner Disciples he’s killing were powerless to affect any of this and most aren’t even members of the Medical Pavilion, but Qu Rou doesn’t care. When he learns that one of the disciples he’s after is Liu Jin, who was instrumental in all this happening, he goes completely berserk.
• Russian Roulette: New Moon Town’s Tree of Deceitful Whispers gives fruit of two different colours, one of which increases the eater’s power and the other is deadly poisonous. The only way to tell which is which, is to force someone to eat a fruit and see if they die. Unfortunately for Lun Shu, he chose Liu Jin to perform the taste test.
• Sand Worm: All-Devouring Worms reside in the Dead Plains. They are hundreds of feet long and spend most of their time eating minerals. If one attacks you the safest thing to do is to let it eat you and fight your way out from inside.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Xun Huwen is the grandson and only living relative of Elder Xun and were he related to anyone else Xun Huwen would have been killed out of hand for the danger he represented. Of course, Elder Xun may not be willing to let his grandson be killed but he won’t let him do as he likes either.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the internal unrest in the Eternal Flame Clan starts really heating up many disciples buy themselves years of time in isolation chambers or volunteer for very long-term missions.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Xun Huwen was an incredibly talented cultivator with a Dao of motiveless destruction. At the first opportunity the Eternal Flame Clan locked him in the lowest levels of the Punishment House, never to be released. 300 years later Feng Shang ordered Xun Huwen set free, to try and tilt the balance of the civil war back in his favour.
• Secretly Dying: Ruan Goutin was ambushed at the last Eternal Raging Valley summit and sustained an injury that steadily destroyed his cultivation. To prevent the many people who wanted to take advantage of his weakness from getting ideas, Ruan Goutin increased his normal brutality to even higher levels while desperately searching for a doctor to heal him, before his condition could no longer be hidden.
• Secret Room: The temple in the Dead Plains has a section of wall that slides back when a certain tile on the floor is pressed. The room contains the temples defense mechanism, and the room can only be found by a wielder of the Eternal Flame, sensing the weapon inside.
• Semantic Superpower: Sufficiently powerful cultivators can learn and develop a Dao, the core expression of who they are as a human being, which allows them to perform actions related to a certain concept. For example, Feng Gui’s Dao of Destruction lets him do things like destroy the time it takes for his attacks to connect with his target and have great control over fire, since fire burns things and thus destroys. Daos are capable of being extremely nuanced, the Eternal Flame Clan 47 recorded types of Destruction Dao and 119 more theoretical ones.
• Sensor Character: Khong Hu is skilled at aura reading which allows him to sense the actions and emotions of other cultivators, hours after the events happened.
  • Everyone connected to the Eternal Flame can sense its presence in other people. Since there are only three people in the Dead Plains with the ability to use it, this allows Lu Mei to track down Feng Hao and Feng Zhi from hundreds of miles away.
• Shaping Your Attacks: When he reaches mid Spirit Realm, Liu Jin can turn his Qi into animated snakes. It’s much easier to make the snakes out of poison Qi but Jin can make the non-elemental with effort.
• Shed the Family Name: When Yun Han abandons the Yun Sect to join Murong Bang, he decides to only go by Han from then on.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Xiao Shuang had to spend her entire life hidden inside her bedroom to keep her safe. She’s ecstatic at just being able to walk through the city.
• Shock and Awe: Liu Jin learns to use lightning attuned Qi from Lei Kong, so he has an alternative to his poison Qi, during his time in the Eternal Flame Clan.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Old Jiang. The first practical lesson he gives Liu Jin is feeding him a poisonous fruit and telling him to figure out how to purge the poison from his body. He continues feeding him progressively more deadly poisons for an entire year to prepare him for journeying into the center of Poison Fang Canyon. Once there, he has the Nine-Headed Snake God mark Liu Jin with a brand which continuously pumps a poison into his body which causes agonizing pain and will kill him instantly if he ever stops purging it. Jin had to stay in that state for three years.
  • Meng Yue’s favourite method of training Xiao Shuang is to kidnap her in the middle of the night and abandon her in monster-infested wilderness with no supplies, or something equally life-threatening. The other elders always yell at Meng Yue for this, but that does nothing to stop her.
  • Elder Xue is one to Liu Jin as well.
    Xue: You are valuable and important enough for me to bring you here. That should dissuade most assassination attempts against you.
    Jin: And the rest?
    Xue: I expect you to deal with those yourself.
• Sketchy Successor: The only person who wanted Wong Shou to lead the Bright Phantasm Sect was his father. Almost everyone else, including Wong Shou, thought that his indecisive and cowardly nature would cause him to crack under the pressures of leadership instantly and tried to get Wong Rou to choose someone else. To everyone’s surprise, Wong Shou managed to completely change and began acting like an ideal heir, without a hint of his former cowardice. It turned out that all his character flaws went elsewhere.
• Smoking Gun: Elder Xue had ironclad proof of Elder Cheung’s guilt, but she opened her prosecution with weaker evidence so Elder Dang would more confidently defend Cheung and discredit himself when Xue revealed her proof. As Elder Dang oversees Internal Disputes this prevents anyone from stopping Elder Xue from permanently taking over the Medical Pavilion.
• Social Climber: Liu Jin begins attracting them after he marries Xiao Shuang. Su An’s the only one who has any real luck, since she promised Jin she’d force the others to stop bothering him.
• So Proud of You: Old Jiang’s final words to Liu Jin are to tell him that he is proud of him and that it was a privilege to have taught him.
• Start My Own: Having been shown just how expendable the Eternal Flame Clan thinks they are, some disciples aren’t keen on returning after the mission to the Dead Plains. Ten Zichun is of the firm opinion that they should form their own sect, with Liu Jin as its leader. Jin tries to keep Ten close at hand, so he won’t be able talk anyone else into it. Unfortunately, this lets Ten see more of Jin doing incredible things, making him all the more convinced that this is a good idea.
• State Sec: The Internal Force was a disbanded subdivision of the Eternal Flame Clan’s Division of Internal Disputes that Patriarch Feng Zhang allowed Elder Dang to recreate on the pretense of trying to decrease the number of disciples who break the Clan’s rules of engagement. The Internal Force’s methods of punishment are extreme violence and the only people they punish are supporters of Feng Gui. Even many of Feng Shang’s supporters don’t like the internal force and were against them being reinstated.
• Stern Old Judge: The very old and very neutral Elder Xun presides over Elder Cheung’s trial and he has no patience for any Unconventional Courtroom Tactics tried by either side.
• Stinky Flower: Odious Crown Imperials smell appalling, cause sores if they touch your skin and, if they’re old enough, whisper death threats at you. Liu Jin is forced to tend them by Elder Xue for talking to Elder Xun without her permission. Luckily, Jin can turn off his sense of smell at will.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Huang Shing and Bei Hong both have shades of this. Shing is a Hot-Blooded Idiot Hero with an extremely powerful fighting style, that lets his cultivation advance incredibly quickly. He even has a Privileged Rival in Feng Zhi, though unusually the cause for their antagonism, and Shing’s driving motivation, is a girl. Bei Hong is a Boisterous Bruiser Blood Knight with little interest in anything that isn’t fighting and getting stronger. Bei Hong has complete disregard for social etiquette and only shows respect to those who’ve proven their strength to him, and he has a far-reaching reputation as the Bei clan’s ‘problem child’.
• The Stoic: Liu Jin is not given to strong emotions and even when he does feel them, rarely shows them outwardly.
• Suicide Attack: Liu Jianguo challenges a group of soldiers so his neighbours can get to safety. When one impales him with a spear Jianguo activates the poison pill he was carrying, killing the soldiers in seconds.
• Super-Empowering: Old Jiang has enough knowledge of the body to directly interact with someone’s meridians and let them cultivate far faster. He could have increased Liu Jin’s growth tenfold rather than just by 30%, but that would’ve drawn far too much attention.
  • Liu Jin learns how to do this himself, though is also careful not to let other people learn of it. He discreetly uses it on the other disciples in the Dead Plains, when they need to grow in strength as quickly as possible, but only Fan Bingbing is skilled enough to realise. The others attribute it to the environment of the Dead Plains.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Universal. everyone who is a cultivator will have some form of supernatural martial art (the void-wielding Xiao, the fire wielding Feng family and so many more).
• Superpowerful Genetics: There are many abilities that are only possessed by members of a certain bloodline like the Feng Clan’s Eternal Flame or the Qing Clan’s Purple Lightning. All clans and sects practice eugenics to add useful abilities to their ranks or improve ones they have.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Lei Kong was once the greatest prodigy the Lei Clan had seen in generations and the one who would restore the clan to its former glory after the damage they had suffered at the hands of Qing Jianguo and the empire’s subsequent civil wars. However, Lei Kong’s success would mean certain factions within the clan would lose what little power they still had, so they chose to cripple him in a “training accident”, rather than give it up for the greater good of the clan.
  • Bei Hong and Bei Duyi are branch members of the Bei Clan and were born in possession of far more talent than the main branch. They were taught from a young age that it was unwise for them to outshine members of the main family and they should keep their heads down and be respectful. Bei Duyi listened, Bei Hong did not. Fearing for his cousin’s safety, Bei Duyi took it upon himself to keep Bei Hong down, to prevent someone with more power and less mercy deciding to do it. Bei Duyi was not strong enough to succeed.
• Tap on the Head: Lei Kong strikes Liu Jin on the back of the neck to end his suicidal assault on Murong Bang’s army and get him out of Eastern Port City. Liu Jin is unconscious for four days.
• Team Switzerland: Elder Xun is the oldest and strongest Elder in the Eternal Flame Clan and has zero interest in Feng Shang and Feng Gui’s power struggle. Xun makes a point of openly burning any gift either side gives him, and many disciples try and work in the Technique Hall Xun oversees so they can sit out the conflict.
  • The Medical Pavilion is supposed to be this, which is why Lu Mei joined it early on, as the Pavilion is supposed to heal anyone who needs it, and Elder Cheung is one of the weakest Elders and no one would bother getting his support. However, Liu Jin’s discovery of Elder Cheung’s crimes and Elder Xue’s subsequent takeover, puts the Pavilion firmly in Feng Gui’s camp. Though Jin makes sure that the Medical Pavilion still fulfils its purpose and heals everyone who’s injured, regardless of their affiliation.
• The Tease: Lu Mei, especially towards Liu Jin, though he has a better track record of flustering her than the inverse.
  • Elder Xue is one towards Elder Chang. He is not good at ignoring it.
• Telepathy: Cultivators can project their thoughts into other people’s heads. Liu Jin likens it to using Qi to project your voice without actually speaking. It’s a useful skill for holding conversations you don’t want overheard or when you’re travelling faster than sound, and no one could hear you speak.
• Temple of Doom: The temple in the Eye of the Dead Plains has been picked clean of treasure for centuries and all that remains in it now are monsters and Booby Traps. It still manages to be the safest place in the Dead Plains.
• Tempting Fate: Huang Shing does this repeatedly when he comments that the Eternal Flame Clan’s Selection Exam easier than he expected. He decides to stop when he and Liu Jin are attacked by two dozen Yellow-Crowned Lizards after they easily kill the first one.
  • Just before they arrive in Night Phantasm City, Feng Zhi tells Liu Jin and his friends, “With any luck, we have two boring weeks ahead of us. I look forward to them ending, so that I may no longer deal with any of you.” Obviously, neither of those things happened.
• That Came Out Wrong: Liu Jin comments that it would be wrong to call him and Lu Mei friends, after she kisses him in front of a crowd of people she’d charmed and he had to fight one of her admirers. Lu Mei has to explain to him that everyone took that to mean they were actually more than friends and even people like Feng Zhi think they’re in a relationship.
• These Hands Have Killed: Liu Jin was forced to remove his pendant and release his poison to kill the Black Bear Bandits. When he gets home to his father he finally breaks down and cries.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: And knew you would play that tape first, and how long it would be before you played it. Old Jiang’s first words when Liu Jin uses the first memory jade is telling Jin how predictable he is, preemptively state that Jiang obviously can’t hear him, explain that Jin is so methodical that Jiang knew he’d play the jade at the far right of the box first and correctly estimate that he’s been dead for at least a year before Jin used the jade.
• Theory of Narrative Causality: Xun Huwen believes in a version of this. In his view there are a finite number of opportunities (i.e. Inciting Incidents) in the world and they will inevitably happen to a select few individuals with "weight". This happens through no action or effort on the weighted individual’s part, they are just always in position to take advantage of the opportunities and gain power, wealth, or connections. The universe will also not allow weighty people to die against unimportant people and they will either triumph against all odds or events will conspire to save them. To prove his point, Xun Huwen tries to murder Liu Jin, who he has concluded is also a person with weight. Jin’s life is saved three times, the last of which is the culmination of a series of extremely unlikely coincidences and circumstances completely unique to Jin.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Or at least low-level cultivators weren’t meant to know yet. When the Feng brothers properly clash, their techniques are so powerful that reality starts breaking down. Liu Jin’s mind starts disintegrating from witnessing it at long distance, but he can’t make himself to look away until Mud forcibly turns his head. Many other disciples weren’t as lucky and it’s not clear what happened to them.
• They Would Cut You Up: Wong Shou’s ability is seemingly unique and, potentially, incredibly powerful. If any sect learned about him, they’d vivisect his soul as well as his body, to see how he worked. Wong Shou is spared this fate by Feng Zhi deciding that he’s too dangerous to be brought to the Eternal Flame Clan, given the sect’s internal unrest, and incinerates him.
• Thinking Up Portals: Patriarch Feng transports the 198 disciples to the Dead Plains by waving his hand and creating a massive transfer circle to teleport them. The circle separates the disciples into groups and Liu Jin’s finds themselves about a mile up in the sky.
• Think Nothing of It: When Liu Jin thanks Mud for saving him and Feng Hao from Xun Huwen, Mud tells him that thanks are unnecessary, as he was just following Elder Xun’s orders. Though Mud admits that he wasn’t explicitly told to stand guard over Liu Jin while he healed from his injuries.
• Threatening Mediator: While watching a dispute between the Lun and Hu Clans, Xiao Nan reveals a fraction of his power and politely tells them to stop interrupting his meal and leave peacefully. The clan members agree instantly.
• Throwing the Fight: Liu Jin does this twice in the Eastern Port City Tournament. The first time against Cui Tian in the group stage so Jin can avoid fighting Yun Han too early and the second time against Yun Han later on. Liu Jin had no chance of winning a fight with Yun Han so surrendered on his own terms after Yun Han realised Jin was poisoning him.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Summoned shades are destroying the Bright Phantasm Sect’s resources and given their ability to bypass the defenses must be being created by a traitor within the sect itself. A trap reveals that the shades are actually Heart Devils being unknowingly created by Wong Shou as manifestations of his indecisiveness. Wong Shou himself is actually a nascent Heart Devil representing Wong Shou’s ideal self, possessing the original’s body, which the Heart Devil had no idea about.
• Tongue-Tied: In order to prevent Liu Jin leaking the details of his condition to anyone, Ruan Goutin uses a technique on him that renders Liu Jin unable to speak a word to anyone.
• Too Important to Walk: Shen Mi, the disciple of the Divine Frozen Palace sent to assist Xiao Fang is carried everywhere in a palanquin. She claims she needs to stay in there to look after the injured Elder Gang.
• Tournament Arc: The Eastern Port City Tournament is held every two years with disciples from all the city’s sect and schools. The Xiao Sect uses the tournament Liu Jin participates in, as part of a scheme to catch the Yun Sect spy in their midst. There is also the far more important Crimson Cloud Tournament, but Liu Jin has only had the opportunity to hear of those second-hand. Tournaments are restricted to disciples under a certain age as having the sects’ strongest people participate would have far too much collateral damage.
• Training from Hell: The training that Jin underwent after becoming Old Jiang's apprentice, was to be poisoned every hour of the day until he could purge any and all toxins from his body as an afterthought.
• The Unfavorite: Xiao Heng is this to Xiao Ding, due to his disability. Xiao Ding does the best he can to hide him, out of shame.
• Unknown Rival: Huang Shing assumes that he posed so little threat to Feng Zhi, that Feng Zhi wouldn’t even remember his attempt to stop Yi Jiao’s abduction and Feng Zhi gives Huang Shing no indication that he does. However, Feng Zhi later reveals to Liu Jin that he knows exactly who Huang Shing is and why he’s come to the Eternal Flame Clan. Feng Zhi doesn’t remotely view Huang Shing as a threat, but he does remember him.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Feng Hao is at an astonishingly high level of cultivation for his age but since he’s only eight he hasn’t had time to develop his technical fighting skills to the same degree and usually tries to overwhelm his opponents with pure power.
• Unwitting Pawn: Disciple On to Elder Hui. Hui wanted to see how easy it would be to have Liu Jin assassinated so manipulated On into attempting it. When one of On’s would-be conspirators talked, Hui captured and killed On to divert suspicion away from himself.
  • Elder Dang was given a tool that let him create blind spots in the barrier protecting and surveilling the Eternal Flame Clan to let the Internal Force break the clan’s rules. Talismans and barriers are not Elder Dang’s forte, so he didn’t realise the immense danger to the Eternal Flame Clan’s security this tool represented.
• The Usurper: After Xiao Zheng is killed and the main branch of the Xiao Sect is destroyed, Xiao Fang must deal with multiple ambitious Branch Master’s wanting to take over while he’s still young and weak. Xiao Yifan nearly succeeds in luring Xiao Fang and his group into a trap, with a fake offer of support, but Big Nose Li’s brother warns them in time, and they escape into the Great Red Plains.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: After Qing Jianguo murdered even the most tenuously connected people to the conspiracy that murdered his parents, he realised he felt no better and now had nothing to distract him from the atrocities he’d committed.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: When the Fleshcrafter’s army is wiped out and the Duke arrives to protect Liu Jin, Xun Huwen declares that he no longer has any reason to stay and will leave for the other side of the Dead Plains. The Duke considers this to be practically suicide and lets him go, since killing him might result in Xun Huwen killing everyone else there in his final moments.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Fleshcrafter doesn’t take Liu Jin stealing control of his monsters and being far better at creating undead than him, despite Jin being much weaker and having no prior knowledge of the techniques that took the Fleshcrafter years to master, with much grace. Xun Huwen is very amused.
  Fleshcrafter: I will kill him! I will kill him! I will kill him!
• Villain Team-Up: When he sees how much trouble Liu Jin is giving the Fleshcrafter, Xun Huwen decides it would be more interesting to join forces with him. This is very bad news as the only one capable of fighting either of them is Mud, and the Fleshcrafter occupies him so Xun Huwen can attack the temple unopposed.
• Villain with Good Publicity: General He Bin presents himself as the Token Good Teammate of the Three Heavenly Generals, who is truly loyal to the Qing dynasty and the Storm Dragon Empire and is seen as a hero by the imperial court. Su Daji saw through him instantly and tries hard to not be alone with him.
• Walking Wasteland: If Liu Jin removes the pendant that absorbs the venom he expels from his body, then every living thing around him instantly rots and dies and the ground is rendered barren.
• The Wall Around the World: To prevent the Vermillion continent from being destroyed in the war with the Amaranth and Carmine continents, the 108 strongest cultivators sacrificed themselves to seal the continent away from the rest of the world.
• Wax On, Wax Off: In classic Old Master fashion, the first thing Old Jiang does when he takes Liu Jin as his apprentice is give him inane busywork like transcribing poetry. If they had any practical purpose, Liu Jin hasn’t discovered them.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Due to the massively increased gravity they have to deal with, Earth Realm cultivators have a very limited jumping ability. So, if you have some method of flight, you’re safe from them, assuming you have a safe place to land. Liu Jin used Lu Mei’s Flying Carpet to rescue Feng Hao and Huang Shing from a pair of Earth Realm Core Disciples.
• What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: Liu Jin feels very angry and guilty about all the lives he takes in the Dead Plains. They were all members of the same sect and shouldn’t have had any reason to fight each other but were forced to because of the petty squabbling of the Feng brothers. Jin feels even more guilty that he values his personal goals enough that he’s willing to keep killing people and potentially spend the lives of disciples who’ve placed their trust in him.
• What Do They See in Her: Liu Jin is baffled as to why so many people in New Moon Town are in love with Hu Meili, when he doesn’t consider her attractive enough to warrant a second glance. Xiao Nan explains to Liu Jin that the only real measure of a person’s beauty isn’t their physical features, it’s the fact that people want them.
  • When Xiao Fang meets her, several years later (and after Hu Meili has taken a beautification potion), he doesn’t think much of Xiao Heng’s taste either.
• When Trees Attack: Reverse Trees grow upside down, burrowing into the earth until they find an underground cavern, and need total darkness to grow instead of light. If anyone gets close to it, the tree grabs and drains the life out of them.
• Willfully Weak: Elder Chang is at the ninth level of the Heaven Realm and is strong enough that reaching the Emperor Realm is a certainty. However, that would require him to enter the Renegade Realm and isolate himself from the world for several years, which he refuses to do while the Eternal Flame Clan is in turmoil.
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Su An's possession by Daji transformed her original fairly attractive appearance into a serious contender for the title of World's Most Beautiful Woman. Generally, the higher a person's cultivation, the more attractive they become. It's outright impossible for a powerful cultivator to be ugly.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Entering the Renegade Realm invariably turns a cultivator cruel, reckless and violent. Many cultivators aren’t willing to move past the Heaven Realm out of fear of getting stuck as a Renegade.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: The women of the Divine Frozen Palace have a reputation for being this. The Five Fairies stand out even amongst them.
• Would Hurt a Child: Upon being released from prison the first thing Xun Huwen does is try to murder the eight-year-old Feng Hao. Just for the chaos Feng Hao’s death would cause.
• Wrecked Weapon: Liu Jin’s fight with Huang Shing leaves Jin’s spear on the verge of shattering. Guo XueSheng deems the spear not worth repairing and offers to make Jin a new one, more suited to his level of strength.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Old Jiang was fatally poisoned by one of his enemies and there’s nothing even he can do about it.
• Zerg Rush: Wong Shou’s Heart Devils have nothing in the way of tactics or coordination, they just attack in a hundreds-strong tide and can endlessly replenish their numbers. Liu Jin and his friends, might have eventually been worn down and killed, if Feng Zhi hadn’t killed Wong Shou.
  • The Fleshcrafter’s undead horde surrounds the temple on all sides and continuously advance on the defenders. Liu Jin and the others are so badly outnumbered that their efforts barely even buy time.

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