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Characters / Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi - Wei Wuxian

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Wei Ying (魏婴) - Wuxian (无羡) - Yiling Patriarch (夷陵老祖)

Voiced by (Mandarin): Zhang Jie note  (animation - adult), Zhao Shuang (animation - child), Lu Zhixing (audio drama - adult, web series, mobile game), Ye Zhiqiu (audio drama - child)
Voiced by (Japanese): Ryōhei Kimura (animation - adult, web series), Misaki Watada (animation - child), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (audio drama)
Voiced by (Korean): Shim Gyu-hyuk (animation)
Played by: Xiao Zhan (web series - adult), Su Yaxin (web series - child)

Height: 186 cm (in original body); 180 cm (in Mo Xuanyu's body)
Weapons: Suibian | 随便 (jian), Chenqing | 陈情 (dizi)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mdzs_wwx_7.png
Click here to see Wei Wuxian in his original body 
Click here to see Wei Wuxian as the Yiling Patriarch 

"Nobody can give me a nice, broad road to walk on. A road where I could protect those I want to protect without having to cultivate the ghostly path."

The son of the servant Wei Changze and the rogue cultivator Cangse-sanren who grew up to become a notorious terror of the cultivation world.

On the list of top five cultivator gentlemen in his generation, he was originally Childhood Friends with the Jiang siblings until tragedy befell their Clan. A series of events led him to be tossed into the Burial Mounds, a mass grave teeming with resentful energy, where he walked out after inventing the ability to control corpses and other arts of the Necromancer, thus founding a dark path to cultivation. He proceeded to distinguish himself in the Sunshot Campaign against the tyranny of the Wen Clan of Qishan, but the post-war political atmosphere did not exactly work in his favor.

Subsequent events led to the plummeting of his reputation, the besieging of his lair, and he died without leaving a trace. 13 years later, the suicidal Mo Xuanyu sacrifices himself in a dark rite to summon Wei Wuxian to take revenge on the Mo family who abused him until he went insane. Stuck in a new mortal body, Wei Wuxian is then dragged into events not of his own choosing, and followed by an acquaintance of his past — Lan Wangji.


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    Tropes #-B 
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the donghua, while Wei Wuxian still played a direct (albeit inadvertent role) in Jin Zixuan's death, there are heavy implications that his loss of control over the corpses in the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath was not a result of only Power Incontinence but also from a few of Jin Guangshan's cronies tampering with or exacerbating the destructive effects of Wei Wuxian's demonic cultivation.
  • Adaptational Badass: Wei Wuxian was already powerful in the novel as either a spiritual or demonic cultivator, but in the donghua he's able to make a hundred more uses of resentful energy and lives up and beyond to his title as the Yiling Patriarch. Besides inflicting Mind Rape and raising the dead, he can also levitate, manipulate the resentful energy like one would tangible energy or matter, and extract golden cores — all of which are just the beginning entries of a long list of all the things he can do. Even being dead for 13 years hasn't made him lose his touch in the slightest. One particular example that shows how he's far more powerful in the donghua is how he uses the Summoning of Painted Eyes. The novel has him paint his own blood on the eyes of a few funerary puppets so as to be able to animate and command them. In the donghua, he only needs a few drops of his blood to create a seal that spreads throughout all of Yi City and control the hundreds of funerary puppets scattered across the area.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: In the donghua, he still disliked Jin Zixuan but was a lot less violent in how he expressed it. When the latter first insulted Jiang Yanli in the Cloud Recesses, Wei Wuxian initially approached him in a casual manner before responding with silence instead of explosive fury when Jin Zixuan continued to talk about both Jiang siblings with a dismissive tone. Then when he humiliated Jiang Yanli in Langya, Wei Wuxian opted only to punch him once rather than beat him senseless like he did in the novel, and merely told him to get out of his sight instead of screaming that he'll kill him one day.
  • Adaptation Personality Change:
    • The donghua has Wei Wuxian possess more maturity in his choice to take up demonic cultivation and the way he reacts to others confronting him about it.
    • The donghua heavily downplays his mischievous side as he gets easily flustered if he's in an embarrassing situation with Lan Wangji or if the other doesn't reciprocate his teasing, unlike his novel counterpart where he is very shameless in his interactions and teases to the point of sexually harassing Lan Wangji.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Jiang Yanli always referred to him as A-Xian, one of the many ways that she showed her love for her younger martial brother.
  • Afraid of Needles: He doesn't despise them overall, but Wen Qing threatening to use her medicinal needles on him if he continued trolling around was more than enough to scare him into obedience.
  • Aggressive Submissive: Wei Wuxian isn't exactly aggressive, but he's definitely more outspoken and candid than Lan Wangji. When it comes to their bedroom activities, however, he's more than happy to let his husband take charge, and even enjoys the idea of being pinned down or tied up and left at his beloved's mercy.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Wei Wuxian prefers to avoid begging... unless a dog is involved. Whenever he's confronted with one, he's not ashamed to scream, cry, call for help, or get clingy with the person nearest to him.
  • Alliterative Name: Wei Wuxian.
  • Aloof Big Brother: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian was a close martial brother to Jiang Cheng, but he became more aloof after he left the Jiang Clan a long time ago and the latter also announced to the entire cultivation world that he was essentially disowned after "turning traitor" to them, and declared Wei Wuxian an "enemy to the cultivation world". After he comes back to the mortal world, any interaction he has with his former martial brother has him speak as little words to him as possible, and his mood around the man is mostly a resigned one. However, he wasn't always impersonal towards Jiang Cheng in the past, just as how the latter wasn't always so hateful towards him back then. While Wei Wuxian holds no ill will towards his old friend, he doesn't make any effort to reach out to him because he knows that he may as well be talking to a giant impenetrable wall, he's aware that both of them had just fallen apart too much, and he feels that the past should stay in the past.
  • Always Someone Better: Wei Wuxian surpasses Jiang Cheng in several — if not, all — fields, and this was what caused tension in their relationship long before their friendship officially ended.
  • Animal Motifs:
    • Crows frequently show up whenever the Yiling Patriarch does his thing. Crows are believed to represent bad luck and are seen as a sign of bad omen, and Wei Wuxian is infamous as the cultivation bogeyman. Crows are associated with death, which alludes to Wei Wuxian's powers of necromancy. They also symbolize change, highlighting the significance in his transformation from a spiritual to a demonic cultivator. Lastly, crows are said to be often misunderstood, much like how Wei Wuxian himself is misunderstood and villainized by almost everyone. In official fanart, he is sometimes portrayed as a fox, likely a play on his mischievous nature.
    • He takes up a pet donkey which he names Little Apple. Donkeys are stubborn, free-spirited, and don't give much thought to what others think about them, much like Wei Wuxian.
    • Played for Laughs in the "Banquet" extra when he implicitly refers to himself as a pig by expressing his intentions to "nibble [his] cabbage". This is a reference to the Chinese saying of "the little white cabbage was dug up by a pig", which describes a parent's distress upon seeing their child marry someone the parent deems to be unworthy — a perfect analogy to what Lan Qiren thinks of his nephew's marriage to Wei Wuxian.
  • Animals Hate Him: He lampshades that he's not just unlucky with dogs, but with almost every other animal as well.
    Wei Wuxian: Those that fly, those that walk, those that swim — every single one of them turns around and flees as soon as it sees me.
  • Anti-Hero: After he became the Yiling Patriarch, Wei Wuxian was more ruthless in nature and even exhibited sadism towards some of his enemies. But he's firmly on the side of good, even stating that he took up demonic cultivation to protect his loved ones and so no one else would have to. He's notably the only character in the story who took morally dubious — but never evil — actions either for good reasons, or because he was repeatedly pushed into a corner and he could find no other way out.
  • The Archmage: As the founder — and therefore the most proficient practitioner — of demonic cultivation, he may as well be one of the most powerful characters in the story among the other cultivators. Case in point, the Jin Clan saw him as an immediate political threat even though he himself wanted nothing to do with politics, and during the attack at the Nightless Immortal Capital, it was only him against an army of more than 3000 cultivators.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: He can get easily distracted, and the donghua shows this best. It's lessened a bit after his resurrection, but there are still times when his attention can quickly shift from one topic to another.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Wei Wuxian can analyze a situation at a glance, coming to quick conclusions by noticing even the smallest of clues. It's a huge part of what made him so successful.
  • Badass Boast: Wei Wuxian makes the occasional epic boast, but he does it less to boost his ego and more to warn his enemies about what he's really capable of doing, either as an intimidation tactic or a mocking remark about how much they're underestimating him.
  • Badass in Distress: While he may be a powerful demonic cultivator, there are times when Wei Wuxian gets put in a position where he needs saving, either due to bad luck or emotional stress.
  • Bad "Bad Acting": He frequently turns to cringeworthy Large Ham antics when he needs to convince people that he isn't actually the Yiling Patriarch nor anyone else suspicious. Fortunately for him, his new body (Mo Xuanyu) being an infamous lunatic allows him to get away with it as most people shrug it off as him just going insane.
  • Bad Powers, Good People: His powers of necromancy made him feared among cultivators, but he's no doubt a hero with noble intentions.
  • Battle Couple: Whether they're solving a mystery or fighting someone, he and love interest Lan Wangji work well together as they're almost completely in sync with how the other thinks and acts. The trope comes into full force in the climactic arc after they confess to each other and have to deal with Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Wei Wuxian's relationship with Lan Wangji in his first life often had romantic tension despite their frequent clashes (not that he was aware of it). Much of the vitriol goes away when he comes back to life and has a more cordial dynamic with Lan Wangji (some teasing aside), but the Unresolved Sexual Tension remains up until the end.
  • Beneath the Mask:
    • While he never once seemed upset or distressed over giving away his golden core nor does he regret it to this day, he's actually more melancholy about it than he lets on and lamented deep down about how he would never be able to properly cultivate or use his sword again. The arrogance that others associated with him as the Yiling Patriarch? Part of it is a front he put up so that no one would be clued in to the fact that he no longer had his core.
    • While Wei Wuxian takes any insult aimed at him in stride, it doesn't mean that he's not hurt by a few of those insults to some degree. In the past it didn't help that he never had any intention to trouble or terrorize anyone, yet everyone continues to spin all sorts of rumors and tales that paint him in the worst light possible, which gives the cultivation clans the "cause" they need to harass and persecute him even though he just wishes to be left alone.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: He's a cheerful guy and loves to tease others, but is nevertheless kind-hearted and ready to lend a hand. And so help him if he actually intends to haunt and kill you...
  • Big Brother Bully: The mild and affectionate version. While he adored Wen Yuan, he loved to tease the child a bit too much. He also seemed to enjoy teasing Jiang Cheng back as teens.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Downplayed with the Jiang children, who were his martial siblings and close enough to see him as family. As the middle child of the trio, he was protective of both of them and did not take it well if one were to harm or talk badly about them. It was Jiang Yanli's death which was the final straw that finally broke Wei Wuxian's sanity.
  • Big Little Brother: By the time he was a teen, he was taller than Jiang Yanli despite being a few years younger than her. While they weren't related nor officially recognized as adoptive siblings, it's obvious that Wei Wuxian thought of Jiang Yanli as a sister, and she made it clear that she viewed him as a second younger brother.
  • Big Sister Worship: He adored Jiang Yanli, always looked up to her and felt that she deserved only the best, which was why he was so adamantly against her engagement with Jin Zixuan, who treated her poorly. When Wei Wuxian was losing his temper at the Phoenix Mountain hunt, Jiang Yanli was the only one who could get him to listen and calm down.
  • Black Sheep: Downplayed. Prior to the Lotus Pier massacre, Wei Wuxian was popular among his fellow Jiang Clan disciples, who admired him and enjoyed playing with him. However, there were hints that he was not as close with the new disciples that joined the clan during the Sunshot Campaign due to his infamous reputation as the Yiling Patriarch. Both the audio drama and the animated chibi mini-series hint that the new disciples actually disliked Wei Wuxian, or at the very least were wary of him. And in the donghua, they were shown to be just as quick to attack him alongside the other cultivators in the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath.
  • Break Them by Talking: As a people person, he knows what makes someone tick and can get someone to lose their composure by pointing out the flaws in their logic and arguments or purposefully angering them. He effectively uses this against the villains a few times.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: Downplayed, as he's less lazy and more unorthodox and would rather play and have fun than do tedious classroom activities. As a teen, Wei Wuxian was the top disciple of the Jiang Clan despite his reputation as a slacker goofball. This is best shown during his stay at Gusu where he spent most of his time sneaking out and drinking but was still able to make cheat sheets for his friends.
  • Broken Ace: Wei Wuxian is all but stated to be the best archer of his generation, and he was known to be skilled with the sword and had already formed a golden core at a young age despite starting his training a few years later than his peers. And this was all evident before he founded demonic cultivation. Despite being one of the most powerful and (in)famous warriors of his generation, however, all the political and personal trouble involved with it drove him to the corner over and over, and while he tried his best to pull through, there was only so much his mind and heart could take. He gets remarkably better after his revival, but the scars of his past will always remain, something he acknowledges.
  • Brought Down to Badass: He gave his golden core to Jiang Cheng, losing all his abilities to cultivate. But then he learned how to raise and control the dead, as demonic cultivation doesn't require a golden core.
  • Brutal Honesty:
    • Nice he may be, Wei Wuxian is earnest and oftentimes doesn't mince his words, especially with the people he doesn't like. A good example is when he bluntly and accurately accused Jin Guangshan of following in Wen Ruohan's footsteps.
    • While it's rare, he can also be sharp-tongued with the people he's close with if provoked enough. For example, he tells Jiang Cheng to his face that he didn't change at all in the years that passed since he died, and his tone makes it obvious that it wasn't meant as a compliment.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He is an intelligent cultivator who created demonic cultivation and invented many things, some that the cultivation world still uses today (such as a compass to detect malevolent energy and a flag to attract spirits as bait). He's also quite the oddball and isn't above 1) burying a toddler into the ground until only his head stuck out while claiming it would help him grow taller, and 2) force-feeding spicy congee to a group of junior disciples to cure their corpse poisoning.

    Tropes C-E 
  • Cain and Abel: He's the Abel to his martial brother Jiang Cheng's Cain. Due to various circumstances, the two fell apart and the Jiang leader eventually led the First Siege with the intent to kill Wei Wuxian, although the latter clarifies that Jiang Cheng was not the reason he died. However, their relationship — while complicated — wasn't always so hostile.
  • Can't Take Criticism: He is implied to be sensitive when people taste his cooking, at least when his (unnecessarily) spicy congee is involved. When Xiao Xingchen (actually Xue Yang) expresses his gratitude after being given the congee, the latter scolds the junior disciples for only complaining after eating their portions. He's then annoyed when Xiao Xingchen still admits that he'd rather die from corpse poisoning than eat the congee, which gets a laugh from the disciples.
  • The Casanova: Subverted. Wei Wuxian had a reputation for wooing beautiful girls, with people even believing he would advantage of virgin women during his days as the Yiling Patriarch. In reality, he never actually courts any women per se, his "flirting" amounts to him acting courteous and slightly playful towards them and giving them compliments or gifts as thanks. His First Love even ended up being a man.
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: He's not above holding mundane conversation during a crisis, especially in the second life where he can often address his enemies in the middle of a fight as if nothing unusual is happening.
  • Casual Kink: When it comes to his "nightly activities" with Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian is more than open to trying new things, from bondage and roleplay to doing it upside down and even doing it in front of illusions of their younger selves who are also getting intimate. However, there's one thing that he doesn't allow, and it's being spanked.
  • Character Development:
    • After seeing the flashbacks of his first life, it becomes clear that Wei Wuxian has become more mature after his First-Episode Resurrection. He learns from his past experiences that while it's okay to be selfless and to help others, he should still ask help from others if he has to and accept the assistance they offer; and that even with all his smarts and skills, it doesn't mean that he's completely in control of the situations he puts himself into and the burdens he takes upon himself.
    • Wei Wuxian's kind and selfless nature is inborn, but his experiences with the Jiang family often caused him to take his selflessness to unhealthy levels because he believed that his life wasn't worth much when compared to the lives of the people he cared for, and thus was rarely honest with others about his innermost thoughts and desires. Combined with society labeling him as nothing more than a servant's son no matter what he did, he had to always be careful about over or under-achieving. After he's resurrected, he slowly starts changing this outlook; while his compassion remains intact, he starts to learn to be more open about what he wants without any hesitance or guilt, and he also learns to make his choices and be completely himself without having to conform to society's expectations or to the obligations anyone would try to place on him.
  • Character Tics: In the donghua and the manhua, he holds his chin whenever he's deep in thought.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: In his past life Wei Wuxian proved to be capable of feats that require near-superhuman strength, such as when he broke the necks of two Wen cultivators in the donghua while trying to rescue Jiang Cheng, forcefully opened the jaws of a kaiju-sized tortoise monster with his bare hands, and when he killed the cultivator who murdered Jiang Yanli by snapping his neck in half. The very latter case is more notable since he no longer had his golden core at the time.
  • Cheerful Child: He was a very cheerful and mischievous teen, as shown in the flashback of his days at the Cloud Recess. Even as a child living on the streets in a donghua flashback, he still found ways to keep himself in a good mood and a put a smile on his face.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: If someone's in danger or in need of more help than him, or if there's a terrible situation in need of fixing, Wei Wuxian will always try to do what he thinks his right and won't care for what anyone else has to say about it. However, he eventually learns that while there's nothing wrong with acting for a good cause, he still has to be careful about when, where, and how to perform his heroics.
  • Class Clown: Downplayed. He wasn't the type to outright misbehave in class, but he liked to provoke Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren with his unorthodox thinking and messing around, and the disruptions that ensued were a good source of comedy for his classmates.
  • Combat Parkour: In the donghua, he is prone to doing flips in battle or when he gets in a persona scuffle with someone. When he's brought back to life, he understandably does this more as Mo Xuanyu's body isn't as strong as his original one, so he prefers outmaneuvering people to straight-up fighting.
  • Combat Pragmatist:
    • He was the first to suggest that resentful energy can be harnessed to aid in cultivation and battle, since in the end resentful energy is, by essence, still energy. He ended up being the first to practice this theory.
    • He's not above the tactic of catching people by surprise or attacking them when they're at their most vulnerable.
  • Cool Teacher: His eccentricities and cooking aside, all the junior disciples highly look up to him and readily listen to any advice he gives them. In the "Iron Hook" extra, the junior trio even make sure to write down his lectures, a testament to how informative Wei Wuxian is as a mentor.
  • Cordon Bleugh Chef: Downplayed. Although there's hints that he otherwise has common sense with cooking, he insists on cooking his food insanely spicy, much to the disgust of others. In the past, the Wen survivors were horrified by his cooking which even made Wen Yuan cry; and the juniors have to use up every inch of their willpower to eat the spicy congee he prepares them — when the aforementioned congee comes up again in a cooking competition held in an audio drama extra, Lan Jingyi is quick to score it one point (which he only changed from zero because the congee once cured him of his corpse poisoning).
  • Cosmic Plaything: Fate wasn't really kind to Wei Wuxian in his first life, from letting his parents die in a nighthunt incident to turning the whole world against him in his final days. Thankfully, it decided to give him a break the second time around.
  • Cuddle Bug: As a teen he enjoyed casually draping his arm over his friend's shoulders, and liked showing or receiving physical affection from the Jiang siblings (such as affectionately nudging Jiang Cheng and getting pampered by Jiang Yanli). In his second life, he slowly becomes touchy towards Lan Wangji as well, especially after the Second Siege. After he marries him, he gets even stickier and loves cuddling with him every chance he gets.
  • Dance Battler: In the donghua he can weave around his opponents almost like he's dancing with incredible ease, mainly to outmaneuver his opponents instead of actually fighting them since Mo Xuanyu's body isn't like his original one. Demonstrated the best when he avoids Jin Ling's strikes and evades a drunk Lan Wangji's movements while they playfully chase one another.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: He wears black and red and is a necromancer. However, mischievous personality aside, he is a kind and caring person.
  • Deadpan Snarker: After he's brought back to life, he's become more prone to dishing out sarcasm especially when he gets annoyed, whereas in the past he would have just sighed or laughed it off.
  • Defector from Decadence: He worked with the Four Great Clans to defeat the Wens during the Sunshot Campaign, but could not tolerate their mistreatment of the innocent surviving members and decided to switch sides to protect them. By doing this, he officially defected from the Jiang Clan, which made him the enemy of the other clans.
  • Defiant to the End: When Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao discussed how they should torture him to death, Wei Wuxian laughed and vowed that whatever they'd do to him, he'd come back as ferocious ghost and haunt and curse the Wen Clan until none of them were left. He kept his word in a way after he came back from the Burial Mounds with the newfound ability to control resentful energy — which he used to give Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao Cruel and Unusual Deaths.
  • Demonization: Due to his infamous reputation as the Yiling Patriarch, many stories have skewed perceptions of him that depict him as a cruel and evil cultivator, and one piece of artwork of him that Wei Wuxian encounters even draws him as a green and ugly monstrous-looking man.
  • Determinator: Wei Wuxian is not the type of person who gives up so easily. It takes a lot of resilience and willpower to survive three months of starvation, solitude, and endless amounts of torture in a place that is the nearest equivalent to the cultivation world's Hell on Earth, and come out with newfound abilities.
  • Discard and Draw: He sacrificed his cultivation powers and discovered demonic cultivation shortly afterwards. In his second life, he uses much less demonic cultivation but compensates with lower-level cultivation and talismans.
  • Does Not Like Spam: His distaste for radishes came up during an argument with Wen Qing over whether to plant them or potatoes in the Burial Mounds.
  • Don't Call Me "Sir": He gets uncomfortable whenever Wen Ning refers to him as "master" and has to constantly remind him to not call him that.
  • Do Not Go Gentle: His actions during the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath strongly imply that he had no intention of holding back despite his impending death. He knew that after Jin Zixuan's death, it was only a matter of time until the cultivation clans conspired to kill him, even after both Wen Qing and Wen Ning sacrificed themselves in the (false) hope that the Jin Clan would be appeased. As such, he headed to the Nightless Immortal Capital to confront the other clans himself before they get the chance to ambush him, as he won't go down without a fight and he will always live by his principles to the bitter end.
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!: It's not really sympathy or pity he hates, but he despises receiving any sentiment that hides the underlying worry that he won't be able to handle something on his own or that he may be tinkering with something that can make him appear evil. He becomes more accepting of others' help after his resurrection, and even tells Lan Wangji that he trusts him to watch his back.
  • Drama Queen: Gender-inverted and Played for Laughs. When Wei Wuxian intends to ham it up, he doesn't hold anything back.
  • The Dreaded: When he was the Yiling Patriarch, a lot of people were afraid of him, and even after his death he was described as an immoral and reprehensible monster to scare others. After his resurrection, Wei Wuxian's name alone still strikes fear into the hearts of cultivators, but his name gets cleared a bit by the end of the story. The epilogue also hints that he now uses his reputation to his advantage instead of it being used against him.
  • Dreadful Musician: Wei Wuxian is known to be skilled with the dizi which is explained with the fact that as a master of the Six Arts, he would naturally be proficient in music. But after he's brought back to life, he initially has trouble playing the instrument since he had been dead for 13 years and hastily carved his new flute in the middle of battle. Afterward, he deliberately invokes this trope whenever his help is needed and he doesn't want blow his cover by showing how good he is. He only stops it when Lan Wangji tells him he knows who he really is.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: In his past life, almost all the cultivators conveniently forgot that Wei Wuxian was one of the few good reasons the Four Great Clans even had a chance to take on the Wen Clan once and for all. Instead, they preferred to focus on how he's the founder of The Dark Arts, that he's not obsequious to their whims, and that as a "son of a servant" he doesn't deserve to possess so much power and skill.
  • Easily Forgiven: Jiang Yanli rushing out to see him with nothing but love and concern for him implied she held little if any resentment for him causing Jin Zixuan's death, and even took a blow meant for him.
  • Eating the Eye Candy:
    • Played for Laughs when he and Lan Wangji find the dismembered torso. Wei Wuxian is amazed at how it's in excellent physical shape that he starts to literally tap the abdomen while marveling at the hardness of the muscles.
    • There are moments when he finds himself dazed by Lan Wangji's beauty, and the donghua even has him praise the latter's figure.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: His skin becomes a shade lighter which, combined with his loose dark hair and clothes, evokes a corpse-like appearance after becoming the dreaded Yiling Patriarch. The donghua even shows his skin bleaching white while he's being tortured by the resentful energy in the burial mounds.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • As a teenager, despite his prankster personality, he never intended to have his antics get others in serious trouble and felt bad whenever it happened.
    • Wei Wuxian hated the Wen Clan for everything they did to his family, but he remembered to distinguish the innocent from the guilty and took the elderly and the children under his wing some time after the Sunshot Campaign was over when he learned that they were kept prisoner by the Jin Clan.
    • While Wei Wuxian had done some questionable things as the Yiling Patriarch, even he's disgusted by fellow demonic cultivator Xue Yang's actions and outright states that he needs to die.
    • A lighthearted example: while he doesn't mind being reborn in the body of someone who's infamous as both a maniac and a homosexual, he's shocked when he learns that Mo Xuanyu got kicked out of the Jin Clan because he made passes at Jin Guangyao, his half-brother.
    • Played for Laughs regarding his sex life. As kinky as he and Lan Wangji are and as much they're willing to try a lot of things, there are a few things that they are definitely not up for, such as making out in front of a child. And while they're initially curious about the idea of upside-down sex, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu revealed that after one try, they agreed to not do it again.
  • Experienced Protagonist: Right at the beginning of the story, he's introduced as the founder of The Dark Arts and is said to be a skilled cultivator in his youth. He also lived through both a massacre and a war, and then went through some other horrifying ordeals. All of this makes him a stranger to almost nothing at alll.
  • Expository Hair Style Change: In the donghua and manhua, as a carefree teenager, he wore his hair tied up in a high ponytail. After his time at the Burial Mounds, as the Yiling Patriach, Wei Wuxian wore most of his hair down and tied his red ribbon loosely into the rest of his hair which indicated a slight twisted change in personality. After he's resurrected in the body of Mo Xuanyu, he puts his hair back up into a ponytail and has regained much of his original upbeat demeanour.
  • Extreme Mêlée Revenge: He can be overly brutal in beating someone up if he feels that they deserve it. There's how he dealt with the Wen Clan in the past, and when he hears about Xue Yang's crimes he thinks to himself that if he were Chang Ping he'd go into a cycle of cutting Xue Yang up and summoning his spirit so that the man would regret being born.

    Tropes F-H 
  • Fatal Flaw: While Wei Wuxian's selflessness is a noble trait, he is often shown to be willing to bring extreme harm to himself if it meant being given even the smallest opportunity to protect the innocents or the people he cherishes, and his experiences with the Jiang family essentially resulted in him taking his altruistic and magnanimous nature to outright unhealthy levels. It doesn't help that he almost never confides in anyone about his problems nor does he ask for their help even once, which causes both sides plenty of stress, grief, and misunderstandings.
  • Faux Yay: Initially, at least. He has no qualms about flirting with Lan Wangji during his ruse as Mo Xuanyu, in hopes that other people wouldn't suspect his true identity and that doing so would disgust the latter enough that he'd eventually send him on his way. This naturally doesn't work on Lan Wangji since he actually has feelings for him — even despite thinking Wei Wuxian rejected him all those years ago and is simply making fun of his feelings, he's willing to keep up with it because he's that selfless and in love. The trope wears off when Wei Wuxian finds himself slowly falling for Lan Wangji for real.
  • Fight Magnet: Defied. In the past, several cultivators wanted to prove their skills and fight Wei Wuxian after he started practicing demonic cultivation. Knowing they'd be like this, he never brought his sword with him despite it being standard courtesy, frustrating other cultivators and inviting accusations of being mannerless.
  • First Love: Lan Wangji showed no interest in romance until Wei Wuxian came into his life, and the latter has stolen his heart ever since.
  • Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Although he was only their martial sibling, Wei Wuxian shared close sibling-like bonds with both Jiang children during his first life and was either the more rational or naiive brother depending on the sibling.
    • Between him and Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian was primarily the sillier one whereas Jiang Cheng was more level-headed. In times of duress, both assumed the latter role even with their different approaches due to contrasting temperaments. But in situations where morality is involved, Wei Wuxian was more level-headed than the usually rash Jiang Cheng, despite other cultivators thinking otherwise.
    • Jiang Yanli was the sensible older sister to Wei Wuxian's foolish little brother, although this was only during lighthearted moments where they were being playful and affectionate with each other.
  • Forgetful Jones: Downplayed. A few characters In-Universe have commented on Wei Wuxian's terrible memory, and he even admits to his tendency to forget things. This is justified given the emotional trauma he endured in the past, which likely caused him to subconsciously repress a few of his less pleasant memories. Wei Wuxian says that another reason for his forgetfulness is his mother's saying to remember only the kindness others show him and not the other way around.
  • Former Teen Rebel: Downplayed. While good-natured and well-behaved at home, he played a lot of pranks elsewhere and was prone to breaking numerous rules in the Cloud Recesses as a teenager. As an adult, he still has a mischievous streak but is less of a headache to deal with.
  • Fragile Speedster: While he was a Lightning Bruiser in the past, he's much fragile in his second life since Mo Xuanyu has a weaker physical build and lower cultivation power. As such, he mostly dodges when confronted in physical combat and relies mostly on talismans or demonic cultivation.
  • Friend to All Children: He can't seem to help himself from mentoring the younger generation or bailing them out of trouble. In turn, all the junior cultivators respect Wei Wuxian and look up to him, even defending him from their parents during the Second Siege. He also had a bond with the toddler Wen Yuan in his first life, even often taking care of the latter and becoming a familial figure to him.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: He was a Street Urchin and the son of a man widely derided as a mere servant, and he eventually became the Yiling Patriarch. Downplayed in that his mother was a famous cultivator but with the way inheritance works in ancient China, no one remembers that.
  • The Gadfly: Wei Wuxian takes amusement in riling up other people and playing pranks on them, with Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng getting the short ends of the stick during their younger days. He's never mean-spirited about his teasing, however.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Wei Wuxian came up with many cultivation inventions (such as the spirit attraction flag and the compass of ill winds) that others admit are highly useful, even if said inventions were created by someone who they had deemed to be dangerous and evil.
  • Gallows Humor: Wei Wuxian tends to make an offhand joke about his death once in a while, and in the past he would make a few morbid jokes about his wounds. Naturally, no one's laughing at them.
  • Generation Xerox:
    • Wei Wuxian mirrors his father in terms of their respective relationships with a leader of the Jiang Clan. Close as brothers since childhood? Check. Made an oath to (or actually did) serve the other? Check. Eventually left their friend's side due to marrying someone else? Check, although in Wei Wuxian's case the circumstances were a lot more complicated. A notable difference is that while Jiang Fengmian and Wei Changze remained on amicable terms, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng fell out and became enemies for a long time.
    • Wei Wuxian and his mother share a lot of similar traits, from being The Gadfly to even having similar tastes in the men they ended up marrying.
  • Genki Boy: He has an energetic and sunny disposition, and is noted by Jiang Fengmian to be a boy who always smiles. This side of him becomes a lot more subdued after the Sunshot Campaign began, but some hints of his jovial personality remain. It gets better after he came back to life, but it's also tempered by him being Older and Wiser.
  • Genius Bruiser: Both his battle skills and his intelligence make him one dangerous cultivator, especially in his first life where he's a Charles Atlas Superpower without the help of a golden core. Not so much in his second life as Mo Xuanyu's body isn't as durable as his first.
  • The Gift: He's a once-in-a-generation talent who is equal with the likes of Lan Wangji, has innate talent when it comes to cultivation even when not born in a noble clan, and his strategic mind allows him to think outside the box that puts him a step above his peers. Even losing his golden core and compensating with demonic cultivation didn't slow him down, as he's still able to overcome his peers and seniors. To top it off, his sword sealing itself is a rarely heard-off event that only happens to very exceptional cultivators, and even he is surprised by this as he hadn't used Suibian for many years.
  • Good Feels Good: In the audio drama's take on the "Intrusion" extra, Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that he's beginning to truly understand the importance of the latter appearing "wherever the chaos is", as per his reputation, and it feels nice to accompany him in helping the common folk since that's its own reward.
  • Good Is Not Soft: He's one of the most empathetic and compassionate characters in the story. That being said, however, he always cuts to the chase with his enemies and makes it clear a few times that he's more than capable of dealing with them both swiftly and painfully.
  • Grew a Spine: Wei Wuxian is not a coward or a doormat. However, in his first life, due to both hiis selfless nature and the negative influence left on him by his martial family, he would put his needs and wants last in almost every situation. He comes back Older and Wiser after his resurrection, and after looking back on everything that happened to him, he decides to start living for himself for once, not for others.
  • Guile Hero: He's noted to be very clever and silver-tongued, and there have been a few scenes in the novel where he wins with words alone. Mo Xiang Tong Xiu even described him to be "unparalleled in bullshitting".
  • Guilt Complex: Downplayed. Thanks to the influence he grew up with, he's often made to feel responsible for many people's hurt and losses. He was present or involved in a lot of tragedies, such as the loss of his biological family, his martial family, and then his surrogate family. Given the reasons or circumstances that influenced those events, it's no surprise that Wei Wuxian's spirit is crippled with guilt and shame. It doesn't help that a lot of the people around him tend to blame him whenever something bad happens, even when it has nothing to do with him. However, he makes it clear to everyone confronting him in the Second Siege arc that he will not take responsibility for the things he didn't do.
  • Happily Adopted: Downplayed. While he wasn't officially adopted and is simply the head disciple of the Jiang Clan, he was well-beloved and got along with everyone in the main family... except for Yu Ziyuan, who resented him because her husband treated him more warmly than he did his own son, who Wei Wuxian just so happened to surpass in every way.
  • Happily Married: He and Lan Wangji elope shortly after the final arc and they are more than happy in their life as a married couple, now that they've resolved all their misunderstandings and are making up for lost time.
  • Hated by All: He's vilified at the start of the story thanks to practicing Demonic Cultivation and for the events of Quigiong path and Nightless City, that nearly everyone blamed him for bad things that happened after his death or not even related to him at all. Jin Guangyao later takes his place after all of his crimes come to light and Wei Wuxian is absolved of some of his sins, though he still remains The Dreaded due to his past actions.
  • Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Whenever Wei Wuxian shows signs of being attracted to Lan Wangji, he plays it off with the justification that no one of any gender or rank would be able to resist the latter's charm and that even heterosexual men wouldn't mind being chummy with him. Unlike most examples, Wei Wuxian doesn't fear being Mistaken for Gay or anything of the sort — he's just that oblivious to his own feelings.
  • Hearing Voices: Due to his abilities of necromancy, Wei Wuxian has a stronger connection with the dead than most other cultivators. When he and Lan Wangji enter the Nie family's ancestral hall, which is rife with buried corpses and lingering spirits, he's the only one who thinks that the place is insanely noisy.
  • Heavy Sleeper: While Wei Wuxian sleeps for a normal amount of time, he has a later sleeping schedule than most, and is almost impossible to wake up. Lan Wangji even tries to adjust his body clock, to no avail.
  • Heroic BSoD: He underwent a dramatic breakdown after the events of the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath, to the point where Lan Wangji's confessions and pleas all went unheard as Wei Wuxian kept on repeating, "Get lost!"
  • Heroic Neutral: At present. He still won't hesitate to do the right thing when he has to. However, he no longer wishes for the adventurous and dangerous life he once had and prefers to live in peace without ever being bothered by anyone's troubles.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian gave his golden core (which is essentially a cultivator's life as it's their power source) to Jiang Cheng so that the latter could still have a career as a cultivator.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: He doesn't spend his entire time beating himself up over every little thing or having a low opinion of himself. However, he's so selfless to the point that it doesn't register to him that other people might be concerned about him and want to help him like he helped them, to the point that he even questions why his own well-being is the concern of others. This also plays a part in why he's completely unaware of Lan Wangji's feelings for him.
  • High-School Sweethearts: Inverted. He and Lan Wangji first met back when they were around teens; while it's implied they subconsciously became attracted to one another around then, they were not on good terms and everyone assumed they hated each other. It's only after many years and several misunderstandings that they realize their mutual feelings and reach their "sweetheart" phase.
  • His Story Repeats Itself: In both his first and second lives, the cultivators attempted to lead a siege against him in the Burial Mounds. Whereas the First Siege ended with Wei Wuxian dead and the surviving Wens slaughtered, the Second Siege has Wei Wuxian survive and save the cultivators that wanted him dead.
  • Honor Before Reason: He insists on doing the right thing regardless of the consequences, like helping Mianmian (and Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan) against Wen Chao or helping Wen Ning and his family post-Sunshot Campaign when the Wens became pariahs, going as far as attempting to bring his friend Back from the Dead. However, it doesn't always work out for the better, since the cultivation clans don't truly care much about justice and have also taken the habit of making him The Scapegoat.
  • Humble Goal: He subconsciously thinks of what he and Lan Wangji will do after retiring in the future even before their Relationship Upgrade, and his thoughts mainly consist of them building a home in the countryside and possibly even adopting a child. The "Incense Burner" extra expands on this, showing that he dreams of him and Lan Wangji living a peaceful life together in their own country house while they grow crops and make clothes.
  • Hyper-Awareness: Almost no detail goes past him, and he almost immediately comes to the correct conclusion after making a few observations.
  • Hypocrite: The instances where he encourages Lan Wangji to be more honest about whether he's in pain or needs help contrasts with how he himself never does the same thing no matter what crisis he's in. This gets reconstructed — his self-contradiction about helping and being helped is connected to his selfless nature which often goes to the extent of him to neglect his own needs, and growing out of this is part of his Character Development.

    Tropes I-P 
  • I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: Wei Wuxian is not a romantically insecure guy, but given his history with Lan Wangji and the kind of person he thinks the latter is, it's naturally never occurred to him that the man may have fallen for him.
  • Iconic Outfit: He does wear a variety of clothes in the novel, but his black and red hanfu clothing from his Yiling Patriarch years and his current attire in the donghua are his most recognizable outfits in all adaptations. These clothes also makes him standout from the rest of the cast as he is the only one who wear black and red.
  • Idiot Hair: He has a hair antenna both in his past and present lives. While he's not an idiot, he can be emotionally dense, albeit not without reason.
  • If It's You, It's Okay: Despite assuming himself to be straight, over the course of the story Wei Wuxian finds out that he doesn't mind being more intimate with Lan Wangji and actually enjoys the idea of the other pampering him. One instance is when he falls asleep on the other after the second siege at the Burial Mounds and thinks about how nice it would be for Lan Wangji to carry him. The latter ends up being the Closet Key for Wei Wuxian and is also the only person he's ever fallen for.
  • Ignored Expert: During the Second Siege, when everyone is cornered by the fierce corpses in the Burial Mounds, many are reluctant to listen to Wei Wuxian's advice, despite him being the most knowledgeable on the location and topic and being their best chance at escaping the place alive. They grudingly agree they have no choice but to follow his lead, but are hesitant to hear him out until it becomes clear who the real culprit is.
  • I Hate Past Me: When he sees himself as a teen or young adult when doing Empathy on Nie Mingjue's head, his immediate reaction is getting the urge to beat up his younger self for his follies.
  • I Just Want to Be Loved: While Wei Wuxian is selfless and has known the love of other people, deep down, he also yearns for someone who would accept him for what he is, who he would love and would love him unconditionally and be there for him no matter what. He finds that someone in Lan Wangji.
  • Image Song:
    • The opening song of the donghua, "Drunken Dreams of the Past", is sung from Wei Wuxian's point of view as the song narrates how he views his life and how he never goes against his beliefs in spite of all the trials and tribulations he goes through.
      Overlooking both good and evil, I witness the chaos of life
      Side by side, we fight against the world
      Not once did I betray my principles
      Leading a carefree life, I have transcended virtues and vices
      Yet I cannot erase the scars from within my heart
      In this life, we shall not be caught in strife
    • An official character song was released after the donghua's conclusion, titled "Destiny" and sung by Liu Yuning. The lyrics speak of his life with Lan Wangji and how not even fate could separate them forever.
  • The Immodest Orgasm: Wei Wuxian is not exactly quiet in bed. An extra even has him (unsuccessfully) attempt to goad Lan Wangji into using the Silencing Spell on him so that no one could hear them having sex.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Wei Wuxian can shoot a target while blindfolded. He's even capable of throwing an arrow with his own hands from a great distance and still meet his target dead-on.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: He suffers through abuse, trauma, and several losses, but they all fail to rob him of his heroic and selfless heart. At worst, all it does is teach him that while there's nothing wrong with caring for others without seeking reward, it shouldn't come at the cost of neglecting his own well-being.
  • Innocently Insensitive: He's free-spirited nature makes him so earnest that there are times when he can hurt other people without intending to.
    • Wei Wuxian always flirts with Lan Wangji either to disgust him away or to tease him, but then it turns out that the latter confessed his feelings to the former in his first life and assumed he still remembers, which makes it seem like Wei Wuxian has been leading him on this whole time.
    • Wei Wuxian deeply cares for Jiang Cheng, and is aware that his actions in the aftermath of the Sunshot Campaign deeply affected his relationship with his former martial brother. However, he took enough precautions to ensure that Jiang Cheng wouldn't suffer the consequences of his actions, and he always wished for friend's safety and trusted that the latter would fare well even when he's not around. Regardless, he only realizes too late the full extent of how hurt Jiang Cheng is by being left alone, even if his reasons for leaving the Jiang Clan were gravely understandable and Jiang Cheng wasn't helping the situation either. In the end, both of them are only able to apologize for what happened.
  • Insecure Protagonist, Arrogant Antagonist: Zigzagged. Protagonist Wei Wuxian is actually confident in his abilities, but his selflessness goes to Ineffectual Loner levels and he often suffers from a notable lack of self-regard. On the other hand, Arch-Enemy Jiang Cheng may suffer from an Inferiority Superiority Complex, but he is haughty, competitive, and quick to show his disdain towards anything or anyone he doesn't like.
  • Instant Expert: Wei Wuxian is considered a genius as he's quick to apply what he's learned with little trouble. This even occurred when he created demonic cultivation and became skillful with resentful energy in a short amount of time, although it's downplayed as it took three months for him to emerge from the Burial Mounds with these skills.
  • Insufferable Genius: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian admits that in the past he was quite arrogant and thought he was a one-of-a-kind talent, which is more or less true as no one could deny his skills in cultivation. However, he never rubbed his successes in anyone's faces, and it wasn't his intelligence but his untamed and selfless nature that caused others to find him insufferable.
  • In Touch with His Feminine Side: Downplayed. He doesn't have any problems with putting on makeup, and he loves being pampered like a princess. Just ask Lan Wangji.
  • I Regret Nothing: He never says it out loud, but his behavior after his resurrection shows that in spite of everything he went through, not once does he regret suffering from trying to do the right thing and follow his heart and morals.
  • Jerkass to One: If there's one person the otherwise amicable Wei Wuxian personally and openly despised, it was Jin Zixuan.
  • Karmic Jackpot: Wei Wuxian chose to do the morally right thing over following society and ends up dying for it. However, the events that followed his death soon guaranteed him a second chance at life both literally and figuratively. Once the old scores with the Big Bad are settled, Wei Wuxian learns that his efforts to do good were not completely in vain, he enters into a loving relationship with someone who understands him and appreciates him for who he is, and he's freed of the burdens and debts of his old life.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Downplayed. His personality after his resurrection shows that, while he remains heroic at heart, he's no longer as idealistic as he used to be. This is due to seeing the cultivation world at its worst firsthand and suffering, even dying, because of it.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: After everything that happened in his first life, Wei Wuxian learns much faster on when someone he's trying to talk to can't be reasoned with directly. However, he still finds other creative ways to get others to listen to him or at least get off his case.
  • Kung-Fu Wizard: Technically all cultivation emphasizes on physical — as well as mental and spiritual — training, but Wei Wuxian is a rather egregious example in being a competent swordsman, and then switching to using talismans and demonic cultivation after he gave up his golden core for Jiang Cheng as he could no longer wield spiritual energy.
  • Large Ham: Whenever he pretends to be Mo Xuanyu either to not give himself away to old acquaintances or to get Lan Wangji off his back, he tends to act as dramatic as possible. Of course, he's doing it on purpose and the audience can easily tell that he's having a ball with acting as unrestrained as he can.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Due to his lackluster memory and his falling mental state at the end of his first life, Wei Wuxian has a habit of forgetting specific details. One such example the aftermath of the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath which included Lan Wangji's implied love confession to him, something that caused a major misunderstanding until the climax of the story.
  • Leitmotif: In the donghua, whenever he starts to use his powers in a fight, it's usually followed by the sound of a flute.
  • Like Brother and Sister:
    • Wei Wuxian admired his martial sister Jiang Yanli and is hostile to any guy who shows the slightest amount of disrespect to her, and she dotes on him and enjoys cooking for him. It's easy to think that they were a lovey-dovey pair from those facts alone, but they saw each other purely as siblings.
    • After he started living with the Wen survivors, Wei Wuxian developed a squabbling but caring and sibling-like relationship with Wen Qing, whom he otherwise never showed romantic interest in.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Reconstructed. After living a lonely and strict upbringing that was tainted by tragedy such as his parents' deaths, Lan Wangji began to see Wei Wuxian as a source of strange comfort life to the point of becoming anguished when the latter took up demonic cultivation and defected from the cultivation world. He was despaired when Wei Wuxian died, but after a few grief-stricken incidents he became able to move on with his life and bring good to others while honouring his companion's memory. After finding out Wei Wuxian has resurrected, Lan Wangji once again becomes attached to him and gets agitated whenever his life is endangered (which Jin Guangyao takes advantage of in the climactic arc), but he's otherwise fine with being by himself and trusts Wei Wuxian to go off on his own to investigate things.
  • The Lost Lenore: Downplayed. His death didn't send Lan Wangji into a depression, although the latter mourned his death for some time. After recovering from both his wounds (which he received from defending Wei Wuxian) and his grief, he continued living the best he can, all the while honoring Wei Wuxian's memory.
  • Love Epiphany: Over the course of the story, Wei Wuxian gradually becomes more and more aware that his feelings for Lan Wangji are going beyond platonic. But it takes Lan Xichen telling him about what Lan Wangji did for him during the aftermath of the Nightless Immortal Capital attack to give him the final push to confess his feelings.
  • Loving Bully: To be frank, Wei Wuxian was only teasing Lan Wangji... and he tricked Lan Wangji into opening a disguised porn book, made jokes about stealing his clothes, stole his forehead ribbon... Now they're cultivation partners.
  • Master of the Mixed Message: While it becomes clear throughout the story that both protagonists have fallen for each other (and as early as when they were teens), Wei Wuxian's jokester and flirtatious personality does nothing to help Lan Wangji confirm if his crush is mutual or not. Wei Wuxian believing himself to be straight while growing up and his reluctance to acknowledge his growing feelings for his companion (out of fear of rejection) adds on to this problem. Then he finds out he was confessed to by Lan Wangji in his first life but was too traumatised to remember it, meaning his flirty antics mislead the latter into thinking his feelings were being toyed with the entire time. A horrified Wei Wuxian is quick to make his feelings to Lan Wangji loud and clear afterward.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • His birth name means "infant", which in Chinese folklore is associated with the yin principle. This includes thing such as dark, cold, and death, which is appropriate for the founder of demonic cultivation.
    • His surname Wei (魏) contains the ghost radical (鬼), furthering his association with ghosts.
    • His courtesy name Wuxian (无羡) is pronounced the same as the word for "fall" (诬陷), fitting considering how he's seen In-Universe as a Fallen Hero.
    • Wuxian also has the meaning "without envy", coming from the last line of a poem by Ming Dynasty literati Xu Ben. “即无羡鱼志,外物非所迁” (jí wú xiàn yú zhì, wài wù fēi suǒ qiān) translates as “to be free of envy and aspire to greater heights; not be misguided by honorary reputation and personal gain”. This is likely indicative of Wei Wuxian's carefree attitude towards life. He comes from a lowly background as the son of a servant, but lived his life without ever envying others.
  • Misery Builds Character: Reconstructed. A good portion of Wei Wuxian's life is linked to the losses he suffered, whether it involves either his family, his friends, or his powers. A consequence was that all the bad things happening to him caused a decline in mental health. However, his character is defined by how he, in spite of all the pain and loss he had underwent, always remains true to his heart. As such, he is able to overcome his struggles. He can never forget his losses, but his inner strength allows him to accept, learn, improve, press on, and move forward in a healthy manner.
  • Mister Seahorse: No, Wei Wuxian can't get pregnant, but he makes a few jokes alluding to this trope.
    • When Lan Wangji first met Wen Yuan, Wei Wuxian replied that the kid is his — but the way he words it implied that he gave birth to him himself. Lan Wangji actually bought the joke for a second.
    • In the "Incense Burner" extra, Wei Wuxian joked that if it was possible for men to get pregnant, he would have given birth to a lot of children by now due to his sex life with Lan Wangji.
  • Moment of Weakness: While experiencing an emotional breakdown after Wen Ning accidentally kiils Jin Zixuan, he ends up thinking to himself why'd he's been helping out the Wen Remnants and letting himself suffer when he could have had an easier life in the Jiang Clan with his family.
  • My Greatest Failure: In the present, he regrets ever having created the Yin Tiger Tally, given all the tragedies that took place because the Jin Clan coveted it. This motivates him to not only be smarter with his demonic cultivation but also confront anyone else who abuses the power or the Yin Tiger Tally itself.
  • My Greatest Second Chance: While he never expected it to happen, he views his revival as a good opportunity to redeem himself even if he doesn't say it out loud. He ensures that he doesn't repeat the mistakes he previously committed, improves in how he deals with others who have disagreements with him or he used to misunderstand, and he never stays stuck in the past.
  • My Sister Is Off-Limits: Wei Wuxian highly respected his martial sister Jiang Yanli and believed that someone like her deserved only the best man — and he didn't see Jin Zixuan as that man. However, he saw that they grew to genuinely love each other, so he tried to make peace with it as long as Jiang Yanli was happy.
  • Necromancer: As a practitioner (and founder) of demonic cultivation, Wei Wuxian's specialty is controlling corpses.
  • The Need for Mead: His default way of investigating supernatural cases is to hit up the local taverns, buy a drink, and then ask the waiters about rumors.
  • Never-Forgotten Skill: Mo Xiang Tong Xiu confirmed that his state after his death was far from peaceful or liberating, but neither that nor 13 years of being separated from the mortal world crippled his ability to use demonic cultivation. The donghua takes this further — not even a week has passed since he came back, yet slaying a dangerous mutated beast and breaking an ancient powerful seal (that was said to be nearly impossible to break by just anybody) are still a cakewalk for him.
  • Never Gets Drunk: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian drinks so well that he's able to down at least half a dozen jars in one sitting and still remain sober. The only liquor that's able to get him drunk is the fruit wine brewed by Uncle Four. Mo Xiang Tong Xiu states he does get drunk but hardly acts any different — not that his usual self isn't already bizarre to begin with.
  • Noble Male, Roguish Male: Wei Wuxian is the free-spirited and commoner-born Roguish Male, and Lan Wangji is the elegant and dignified Noble Male.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He had completely horrible luck when it came to helping others in the past, since for various reasons his actions always backfired on him. This included speaking out against Wen Chao, saving the survivors of the Wen Clan, and rescuing Su She from the Waterborne Abyss.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: He has no problems invading other people's personal space in his first life, especially with Lan Wangji even if the latter gets uncomfortable and tries to rebuff him many times. He tries to weaponize this against Lan Wangji in his second life to try to disgust him into leaving him alone but soon discovers that the latter is more tolerant of his antics and wouldn't let him go no matter what he does. This changes once they get together as they spend the entire climax arc and post-epilogue nearly glued to each other.
  • Not a Morning Person: Wei Wuxian's sleeping schedule involves waking up late in the morning and going to bed after midnight, which is part of why he got in trouble when he was studying at the Cloud Recesses (which runs on a strict curfew). Even after his resurrection, his sleeping habits remain unchanged in spite of Lan Wangji's efforts.
  • Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Majority of the narrative is how everyone sees Wei Wuxian as a Fallen Hero and an embodiment of pure evil and destruction. But the novel would eventually reveal that this is not the case, and nothing about the legend of the Yiling Patriarch was as simple and black and white as everyone believed it to be.
  • Obfuscating Insanity: After he's summoned into Mo Xuanyu's body, Wei Wuxian maintains the facade of being crazy (like Mo Xuanyu was) to keep others from suspecting his true identity. The narration in the novel also notes that since he's in the body of a lunatic, he's taking advantage of the opportunity to act all-out. He eventually drops the act when Lan Wangji reveals that he knows who he really is, but Wei Wuxian still pretends to be Mo Xuanyu around everyone else.
  • Oblivious to Love: Downplayed. There are many hints from Lan Wangji, especially in the present timeline, that he is in love with Wei Wuxian. Due to his stoic and cool nature, however, his feelings are not very apparent; in fact, people had the opposite impressions and thought he loathed the Wei Wuxian. It's only those are around Lan Wangji that know him well enough — the juniors, Lan Xichen, and later Wen Ning — that are quick to catch on to his feelings. Despite all the time they spend together in his second life and the romantic tension that ensues, Wei Wuxian either doesn't pick up on Lan Wangji's feelings or is in denial, and he's shocked by the revelation when Lan Xichen explains what happened to them after the Nightless Immortal Capital incident.
  • Obnoxious In-Laws: Though he's a more harmless example than most.
    • Implied after Jin Zixuan married Jiang Yanli. On his way to Jin Ling's one-month celebration, he teasingly promised Wen Ning he wouldn't badmouth the father for a year to show his gratitude for the invitation, hinting that he still thought ill of him despite otherwise being happy for his former martial sister's happiness.
    • While he makes an effort to act more polite and considerate towards Lan Qiren, Wei Wuxian still seems to enjoy messing with the old man. It's just done in newer ways that now involve the man's beloved nephew after marrying him, like going through a couple of rounds of arguably rather loud sex with Lan Wangji, fully aware that Lan Qiren sleeps near their house.
  • Occult Detective: His main role in the present time's storyline alongside Lan Wangji is to find all the missing limbs, figure out who the dismembered person is, and investigate why they died.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • Despite his confident and outlandish personality, he was a close classmate to the skittish and quiet Nie Huaisang when studying at the Cloud Recesses. Their friendship was based on their unconventional way of thinking and their similar interests in goofing off at the Cloud Recesses.
    • Although short-lived until his resurrection, the mischievous Wei Wuxian befriended the timid Wen Ning at the archery competition when watching him practise and giving him encouragement. Even after the Wen Clan attacked Lotus Pier, he still had a soft spot for him since the latter treated him a lot nicer than the other members of the Wen Clan ever did. After resurrecting Wen Ning into a fierce corpse, the two became closer, and in the present Wei Wuxian tries to have the other treat him as a friend and not a master. While he regrets getting Wen Ning involved in his current affairs, Wei Wuxian clearly cares for him and hopes to give him a happier ending.
  • Offended by an Inferior's Success: A major reason the rest of the Cultivation clans have it out for him is because they take it as a personal offense that someone who is the son of a mere servant and a rogue like him has the talent, potential and achievements that could match, if not outright surpass that of the scions of the major clans.
  • Older and Wiser: In his second life, Wei Wuxian is calmer and more careful with his actions and words, and uses his experience to mentor the new generation of cultivators.
  • One-Man Army: During the Sunshot Campaign, he was rumored to have taken on 5,000 Wen soldiers by himself and massacred them with barely any survivors. Then during the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath, he's held accountable for the deaths of at least 3,000 cultivators. While he was powerful enough to take on many men thanks to his demonic cultivation, he clarifies in the present that the rumours are exaggerated.
  • Opposites Attract: The outgoing and exuberant Wei Wuxian falls in love with the quiet and reserved Lan Wangji.
  • Papa Wolf: From the moment he realizes that Jin Ling is Jiang Yanli's son, Wei Wuxian becomes a protective and caring uncle figure towards him. He doesn't hesitate to call out the youth on the poorer aspects of his personality, but he also shows worry about Jin Ling's Friendless Background and dreads the thought of any harm happening to him. Despite teasing him often, he treats Jin Ling with patience, understanding, and affection. While Jin Ling would never admit it, he comes to accept and appreciate Wei Wuxian as his martial uncle and even lets him call him A-Ling without any complaints.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: His mindset during the Sunshot Campaign. The Wen Clan brought chaos and pain, especially Wen Chao and Wen Ruohan, therefore they should suffer for the crimes they committed. While his methods were initially celebrated, they later came to be questioned and even feared.
  • Penny Among Diamonds: Wei Wuxian was a street urchin until he was taken into the prestigious Jiang Clan. Despite becoming the head disciple, his poor background and less prestigious parentage was constantly gossiped about.
  • Perpetual Smiler: Jiang Fengmian saw that when he first took Wei Wuxian, the child would always put on a smile no matter what went his way. This part of him slowly shed in his first life as he grew older and experienced more and more hardships.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Normally, Wei Wuxian is charismatic and very good with words, unless any serious matter which is centered around him are involved, in which he immediately puts up his guard and never speaks clearly about his situation since he doesn't want to say anything that would get anyone else involved. In Wei Wuxian's case, it literally cost him his life.
  • Power Floats: In the donghua, Wei Wuxian can use demonic cultivation in lieu of a sword to levitate, control his descent, and outright propel himself at any direction he wishes.
  • Power Incontinence: His degree of control over his powers partially depends on his mental and emotional state.
  • The Power of Hate: Demonic cultivation is already powerful even with the most basic spells, but what allowed Wei Wuxian to manipulate resentful energy to an extremely destructive scale during the Sunshot Campaign and the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath was his hatred and anger towards anyone who wronged him and those he held dear.
  • Precision F-Strike: Wei Wuxian doesn't curse that much, unless he's really pissed or frustrated. Such is the case in the audio drama where he uttered "妈的", which commonly translates to "Fuck!", in Jin Zixuan's face.
  • Protagonist Journey to Villain: The flashback segments of the story shows how and why Wei Wuxian came to be known in history as a beloved cultivator turned heretical villain (at least for Grey-and-Gray Morality standards).
  • Proud Beauty: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian is not so narcissistic that he brags about his beauty often or even occasionally, but he still knows that he has good looks. So when he sees in the present that charlatans would depict him as an ugly man, he is extremely offended.

    Tropes R-Z 
  • Rags to Riches: He has a humble background that included living on the streets for a couple of years after his parents' deaths. His marriage to Lan Wangji from the noble Lan Clan greatly improves his financial situation by the end of the novel.
  • Rebellious Spirit: Wei Wuxian is not the type of person who easily conforms to absolute authority and rigidity, and freely chooses his own path with little to no regard to what others might say about it. After the Time Skip, he's no longer burdened by a sense of either debt or guilt.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Subverted. His signature colors are black and red, which seems befitting of his villainous reputation at the beginning of the story. While demonic cultivation is indeed risky and looked down upon, after his introduction it's revealed he's actually a Hero with Bad Publicity.
  • Red Baron: Wei Wuxian is known by society as the feared and reviled Yiling Patriarch. The mention of his title alone gives shivers down almost everyone's spines. Wei Wuxian himself does not consider his title a badge of honor at all, however.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the donghua, his eyes glow red whenever he uses demonic cultivation.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni:
    • Wei Wuxian is the wild and boisterous Red Oni while Lan Wangji is The Stoic and elegant Blue Oni.
    • In the more casual moments as teens, he acted as the energetic and wild Red Oni to Jiang Cheng's dutiful and no-nonsense Blue Oni. However, when a situation becomes dire, he becomes the more rational Blue Oni to Jiang Cheng's fiery Red Oni. While they complemented each other fairly well in his first life, the clash in personalities soon contributed to their friendship falling apart.
  • Riches to Rags: Being one of the top disciples of the Jiang Clan and one of the best cultivators of his generation meant he had a lot of good things going for him, and Wei Wuxian himself lampshaded how he never had to worry about buying anything. After he sacrificed his golden core and thus had to take up demonic cultivation to compensate, his life ever so slowly went downhill, even when it came to finances; in the past and present, he and a few other characters remark on how broke he is.
  • Sad Clown: He hides a lot of trauma and pain under a cheerful, goofy demeanor. It's present from the beginning when he's glossing over his own death or when he casually talks about the abuse that was heaped on him by Yu Ziyuan.
  • Sadist: He showed his bloodthirsty side when he was dealing with the Wen Clan, and he held absolutely nothing back with his brutality at that time. However, this was the only instance where he ever showed delight in inflicting pain and suffering on someone else, and considering what the Wen Clan had done then, it's not hard to see why.
  • Sanity Slippage: Whether it was really due to practicing demonic cultivation or simply because the emotional trauma of the tragedies started to take its toll on him, Wei Wuxian became more temperamental and stubborn after becoming the Yiling Patriarch and was partly hostile to almost everyone. He finally lost it after Jiang Yanli's death and unleashed hell during the Nightless Immortal Capital siege.
  • The Scapegoat: Ever since his first life, whenever something terrible happens — even if Wei Wuxian isn't at fault — the people who are involved or affected always lash out at him because 1) they have a hard time accepting responsibility for their actions, 2) can't admit that no one was truly at fault for what happened, or 3) need someone to let out their resentment on.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: This is one of the core aspects of Wei Wuxian's character, such as when saving the Wen remnants after the Sunshot Campaign. If there's trouble afoot, he's the last person who you would expect to sit on his laurels and wait things out. And if the law is holding him back, he won't think twice about breaking said law and will risk landing in hot water with those who disapprove of his actions as long as he's able to help those who are suffering from the injustice of others.
    Jiang Cheng: We aren't even able to care for ourselves; how do we have the time to care about the trivialities of others?
    Wei Wuxian: First, this isn't a triviality. Second, things like this, somebody will have to care about them, sooner or later.
  • Seen It All: After his reincarnation, he is hardly fazed by any of the horror he witnesses. It's justified, given the many horrible experiences he had in his first life.
  • Self-Made Man: Downplayed in his first life. He became a street urchin after becoming orphaned and began learning cultivation later than others after being taken into the Jiang Clan. While Wei Wuxian had the support of Jiang Fengmian and the clan's resources, he wasn't officially a member of the Jiang family and often had his reputation of being a son of a servant used against him. As such, any renown, infamy, or skill he acquired was more notable because he earned them solely through a combination of both innate talent, keen judgment, and hard work, without once currying favor from those in power.
  • Sexy Shirt Switch: The "Intrusion" extra shows that Wei Wuxian has gained a habit of accidentally wearing Lan Wangji's inner robes whenever he wakes up. Given their respective sleeping schedules, this is likely done on purpose by Lan Wangji.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Part of the narrative is showing the difference between Wei Wuxian as the person he really is and the legend everyone sees him as.
  • Sickeningly Sweethearts: After their Unresolved Sexual Tension finally gets resolved, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have no shame in showering each with affection and being love-dovey. Case in point, at Guanyin Yemple, they're either physically glued together or not-so-subtly flirting with each other while they're confronting the Big Bad.
  • Signature Hair Decs: He uses a red ribbon to tie up his hair both in his first and second lives. While it's subtle, this makes him stand out from the other male cultivators, who wear special crown-like hairpieces — something which Wei Wuxian never has.
  • Significant Wardrobe Shift: In the donghua and manhua he discarded his Jiang Clan disciple attire with a set of black robes after his Cold-Blooded Torture in the Burial Mounds, marking the start to his Yiling Patriarch era. After coming Back from the Dead, he wears a different set of robes, which is a combination of the clothes he wore when he was still a member of the Jiang Clan and when he became the Yiling Patriarch. This symbolizes that while he embraces his past as a part of him, he's also moved on from it and now simply sees himself as Wei Wuxian of neither the Jiang Clan nor the Burial Mounds.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian is at least hinted to be bisexual, as he's shown to be attracted to women and isn't immune to admiring the physique of other men; however, Lan Wangji is the only person he has ever fallen for.
  • The Smart Guy: Wei Wuxian's greatest strength lies in his strategic abilities, quick thinking and observation skills, as well as his vast knowledge of cultivation. While his new body after his resurrection is physically lacking compared to his fellow cultivators, he more than makes up for it with his wits. He's also the one who figured out that the Jin Clan helped influence the events that would eventually lead to the First Siege, and theorizes that Nie Huaisang orchestrated the events surrounding his revival and Nie Mingjue's dismembered corpse — a theory that others do not find implausible.
  • The Social Expert: Wei Wuxian is better at interacting with people than most other cultivators of his generation, especially since he approaches them without any regard for their reputation, gender, or status.
  • Squishy Wizard: In Wei Wuxian's second life, Mo Xuanyu's body isn't as well-built as his original one and so leaves him more vulnerable. However, Wei Wuxian retains his demonic cultivation skills and combat senses, and is still able to react quickly when he's in danger. The audio drama confirms that he eventually gets to form a golden core in his new body, but he now has the additional perk of being The Archmage due to his demonic cultivation, returning him to his Lightning Bruiser roots.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: Wei Wuxian gets uncomfortable whenever Wen Ning treats him as if he's his master and prefers that they interact on equal footing. He even encourages Wen Ning to think for himself and carve his own path, and is happy for Wen Ning when the latter decides to follow his own path in the finale.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: During his first lesson with Lan Qiren, after suggesting the use of demonic cultivation instead of wasting the resentful energy that could be used to their advantage instead, the timid and cowardly Nie Huaisang later spoke to him about his theories and quickly agreed at how useful such a skill would be for the cultivation world. They also both are on the same wavelength when wanting to goof off or play around, such as when Nie Huaisang actually helped Wei Wuxian in pranking Lan Wangji with porn just so he could later report how the latter reacted.
  • Street Smart: He's far from Book Dumb, being quick-witted and educated. But compared to the other cultivators of his generation, he's the most well-equipped in casual conversations with the common folk and understanding how the people think and act, especially since he has had the most exposure to a world that lacked the privilege and fortune that the cultivation clans have.
  • Street Urchin: He lived on the streets after his parents' deaths, up until he was found and taken in by Jiang Fengmian.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: While many remark on how he takes a lot after his mother, a flashback of his family in the donghua finale reveals that he is nearly a spitting image of his father.
  • Survivor Guilt: Downplayed. While he acts like the past is no longer his concern, some moments show that he still often thinks about deaths of his loved ones. He feels guilt and remorse for everything that happened, but acknowledges the past can't be changed and so doesn't intend to spend the rest of his life holding onto grudges and regrets.
    Wei Wuxian: No matter how much regret I feel, my mistakes will never vanish. The deceased cannot return to life. My death brought an end to the old scores of my previous life. Now that I have come back, I should only look to the future.
  • Sweet Tooth: It's not as pronounced as his love for spicy foods, but Wei Wuxian is also fond of eating desserts. A chapter has him eating candied haws, and the donghua features him eating ice cream as a result of Product Placement.
  • Sword and Sorcerer: While both are proficient in both combat and cultivation, Wei Wuxian serves mainly as the Sorceror post-resurrection due to his use of demonic cultivation while Lan Wangji acts as the Sword and primarily fights as a swordsman if not as a guqin player.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Downplayed. While Wei Wuxian understands Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao's motives and why they became the people they are now, he doesn't condone their actions in any way.
  • Tall Poppy Syndrome: It's heavily implied that several cultivators had it out for Wei Wuxian in the past not just because he was a Defector from Decadence, but also because they resented his prowess and envied how he managed to create and advance an entirely new path of cultivation at such a young age. Normally, the clans wouldn't find this to be that big an issue... except that they don't like being surpassed by someone they essentially see to be of commoner blood. As such, this fueled their desire to take him down so they could brag about taking down a supposed Evil Genius.
  • Teacher's Unfavorite Student: Lan Qiren specifically singled him out for being Cangse Sanren's son, who he had a petty grudge with, even assigning his favorite nephew Lan Wangji (which was noted to be unusual as he was way ahead cultivation studies compared to his peers) to peg him down a notch. His troublemaking tendencies grinds Lan Qiren's gears so much he becomes the first student he gave up on his otherwise peerless record. This didn't change after his resurrection and his name cleared of his sins as Lan Qiren doesn't even hide his disdain even after he marries his favorite nephew and becomes part of the Lan Clan.
  • Team Mom: While he likes to cause mischief and is a bit of a prankster, he also has a caring and protective side that shows whenever he's with the junior cultivators. During his several encounters with the junior disciples he protects them, guides them and gives them reassurance whenever there is danger.
  • The Tease: His naturally outgoing personality also translates into being a bit of a flirt, especially towards Lan Wangji.
  • Teen Genius: Wei Wuxian was the head disciple of the Jiang Clan as a young teen and was already considered a prodigy. To say that discovering and rapidly developing demonic cultivation at 18 years old minimum is no small feat would be a major understatement. It says something that despite the many bad things others say about Wei Wuxian, no one ever calls him unintelligent.
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: As a result of the events at Qiongqi Path, Wei Wuxian started rapidly losing his grip on his sanity. When he arrived at the Nightless Immortal Capital and is confronted with the injustice, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the other clans — which was worsened by the thought that there's no one left who cares for him and that his own family and friends now see him as a monster — he snapped and decided to become what they had always feared him to be.
    He felt that everyone loathed him and he loathed everyone as well. He wouldn't be scared no matter who came at him. It wouldn't matter no matter who came at him. It was all the same anyway.
  • Thrill Seeker: According to the "Intrusion" extra, Wei Wuxian prefers to go on the more dangerous night-hunts as he's only after the risk and not the reward.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • His second life is this in a nutshell. Because he chose to follow his morals, Wei Wuxian lost almost everything, including his own life, as a result of both the injustice of others and circumstances he was unable to control in spite of his best efforts. After his reincarnation, he doesn't go through the same sufferings once again and after the finale, he now gets to live a pleasant and fulfilled life free of the troubles of the cultivation world's politics and the toxicity of his past.
    • When it comes to his cultivation, Wei Wuxian turned to using resentful energy in the past because it gave him — and the other clans — an edge against the Wen Clan. But one other main reason was that he could no longer cultivate normally, since he had his golden core transplanted into Jiang Cheng's body after the latter's golden core was melted off by Wen Zhuliu — although he told no one about this. This is also the reason why he never brought his sword with him again, no matter how much criticism he would get from others. However, when Wei Wuxian's resurrected in Mo Xuanyu's body, he's given the chance to cultivate normally again while still being able to use demonic cultivation when necessary, and the audio drama's final episode strongly hints that he's cultivated a golden core that's powerful enough to let him use Suibian once more.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: His signature favourite cuisines are wine, Jiang Yanli's cooking, and all things spicy. His love for spicy food and alcohol leads to many comedic moments in the story, and his martial sister's food was one of the many things he loved about her.
  • Tragic Hero: All Wei Wuxian wanted to do was save and protect the people around him. It always backfired on him and eventually led to his death, although he gets a second chance after he's brought back to the mortal world.
  • Tranquil Fury: He can display his anger in a frighteningly calm manner, depending on the guilty party and the reason for his anger.
  • Trauma Conga Line: His parents died when he was still young, leaving him to spend some of his childhood years living in the streets before being found by Jiang Fengmian. He was taken into the Jiang Clan and found happiness and family, despite Yu Ziyuan's hostility towards him. However, it was during his teenage years that his suffering began: because of a series of events prompted by the greed and ambition of the Wen Clan, he lost his martial family, his home, his friends, almost everything, and in his desperation to avenge those he lost and protect those that remained he went against everything he was taught, becoming a feared and hated figure.
  • Uke: Or shou in Chinese terminology. He takes the more submissive role in his intimate life with Lan Wangji, and he is the shorter and more upbeat of the two.
  • Unaffected by Spice: He loves food so spicy that he forgets that his spice preferences are way too extreme for anyone else who eats it, especially Lan Wangji.
  • Uncanny Valley Makeup: He wakes up wearing hanged ghost (or diao si gui) makeup when he comes back in Mo Xuanyu's body, although he rolls along with it as part of his disguise. He washes it off while making his way around Mount Dafan, but at one point he puts it on again when he tries to disgust Lan Wangji into ditching him (to no avail).
  • Unexpected Virgin: Wei Wuxian was heavily rumoured to be a casanova. However, the flirtatious and infamous villain of the cultivation world has never actually had any intimate nor romantic experiences with women, and he has no idea about anal sex until his first time with Lan Wangji. The only kiss he had before his Plot-Triggering Death was with Lan Wangji, at Phoenix Mountain, and he thought it was a courageous yet shy woman for a really long time.
  • Unique Protagonist Asset: He is the only one who can use "Ghost path"note  cultivation that allows him to manipulate resentful energy and can easily control hundreds of corpses to his will, while actual demonic cultivators like Xue Yang could barely copy his abilities due to not knowing how he learned his cultivation skills. Due to this, he's a One-Man Army that turned the tide during the Sunshot Campaign that his powers are both feared and coveted by nearly everyone.
  • Unknowingly in Love: Downplayed. Wei Wuxian doesn't appear to be aware of his feelings for Lan Wangji for most of the story and doesn't realize the implications of picking out houses and planning a family with him, amongst other things. However, it's hinted multiple times in the novel that deep down he's actually subconsciously aware of his feelings, and what's holding him back from confessing is his fear of destroying their relationship as well as the assumption forced upon him that Lan Wangji hated him when they were younger. He finally confirms his feelings after Lan Xichen tells what happened between him and Lan Wangji after the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath, and as soon as Lan Wangji arrives he loudly confesses his feelings to him right then and there.
  • Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Downplayed. Throughout the entire story, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji remained at least subconsciously in love with each other. However, during the former's first life, they both attempted to approach the other with friendly intentions, only to be rejected or ignored before their positions were later reversed.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Even when their feelings become painfully clear, various misunderstandings and circumstances prevent Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji from realizing their mutual love and getting together until the end.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Even if some things were inevitable, it's easy to wonder how much would have changed had Wei Wuxian never told Jiang Cheng that they would become the Twin Prides of Yunmeng in an attempt to snap the latter out of his funk. While it did lift up the latter's spirits at the time, it also aggravated both his pride and his abandonment issues in the long run, which — alongside several outside circumstances, part of which are caused by Jiang Cheng's aforementioned issues — ended up straining their relationship past the breaking point.
  • Urban Legend Love Life: It's rumored that he's bedded a lot of women in his past life due to his flirtatious personality, which spiraled into outrageous gossip like kidnapping virgins to the burial mounds after his defection. In actuality, he is a romantic at heart who never even had a relationship with any girl and only kissed once in his life. It doesn't help that he told Lan Wanji that he's very experienced when it comes to women and is later shown hanging out with a lot of ghost women, much to the other's frustration.
  • Weak, but Skilled: At present, Wei Wuxian lacks the power he once had and thus easily gets tired and rarely directly fights anything. He contributes either in a support role (intelligence gathering, protecting the juniors) or through fierce corpses (which doesn't require cultivational power). This makes sense, given that Mo Xuanyu wasn't particularly powerful when Wei Wuxian took over his body. This also serves as a foreshadowing: Wei Wuxian is used to fighting without cultivation because he spent years without a golden core.
  • We Used to Be Friends: He and Jiang Cheng were once close as martial brothers, but various events, decisions, and circumstances worsened their relationship to the point that the latter now hates him. While he is shown to feel sorrow about what happened between them, Wei Wuxian understands why their friendship deteriorated and is resigned to the fact that it can't be repaired. He even tells Jiang Cheng that too much had already happened between them and that it's better if they move on.
  • What You Are in the Dark: Even though it would be extremely disadvantageous for him, Wei Wuxian always chooses to help others. The most shining example is when he sacrificed his own golden core with the help of the Wen siblings so that Jiang Cheng could cultivate again after the latter's core was destroyed — and he resolved to never let anyone, especially Jiang Cheng, find out the truth.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: The flute became Wei Wuxian's weapon of choice after becoming the Yiling Patriarch. While he normally uses it to control corpses, he also uses it as a weapon to knock enemies off or block melee attacks in the donghua and the live-action drama.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Wei Wuxian turns out to have a pretty severe case of cynophobia. He developed this fear because he often had to fight dogs over scraps of food during his time as a Street Urchin. Consequently, he's also averse to being bitten (unless sex is involved) since it reminds him of dogs.
  • Willfully Weak: Wei Wuxian spends much of the plot hiding his demonic cultivation to protect his identity and doesn't display the massive power he used in his first life. Even after he's discovered, Wei Wuxian still doesn't use demonic cultivation at its full power, as he has no more need to use it the same way he used to in the past due to the lack of wars and killing intent.
  • Willing Channeler: A good portion of the plot is uncovered through Wei Wuxian channeling the memories of ghosts and one severed head.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: While his generation as a whole was forced to grow up much sooner than expected because of the discord and wars that they were forced to deal with from a young age, Wei Wuxian still outshines his peers and even his elders with his ability to healthily deal with the adversities that come his way, his profound understanding of human behavior, and his wide knowledge of the world around him.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Lan Wangji feared that demonic cultivation would eventually have adverse effects on Wei Wuxian in his first life. While it did mentally wear him out to an extent, it was not the cause of his Sanity Slippage.
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious:
    • Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji call each other by their birth names by default. The one time Lan Wangji called him by his courtesy name was a sign that he was seriously angry at him.
    • When Lan Wangji discovers that Wei Wuxian is alive again, albeit in another person's body, he never calls him by name and plays along with the other's act of playing dumb... up until the moment when he finds that Wei Wuxian is afflicted with both a Curse Mark and whip marks from Zidian. This prompts him to call the other by his name and let him know that the cat is out of the bag.
  • You Remind Me of X: Lan Sizhui tells Wei Wuxian at one point that he's a lot like Lan Wangji, as he can feel safe when either men is around. This emphasises that both men are nurturing mentors despite their different personalities and foreshadows that Lan Sizhui subsconsciously remembers being taken care of by Wei Wuxian.
  • Zombie Advocate: Even before he founded The Dark Arts, Wei Wuxian had already expressed interest in the potential benefits that resentful energy could provide when it comes to hunting or analyzing corpses and spirits.

    Tropes that apply to him in The Untamed only 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cql_wwx.png
Click here to see Wei Wuxian as a child 

  • Acting Unnatural: Played for Laughs. There are moments when Wei Wuxian has a hard time playing things off smoothly when he's caught red-handed.
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Untamed gives Wei Wuxian more baggage by upping the severity of his Sanity Slippage prior to the events of Qiongqi Path and making him completely unaccountable for the bloodshed that occurs after the events of the Sunshot Campaign, intensifying his status as The Scapegoat.
  • Adaptational Badass: While his abilities actually get a downgrade, he never lost control like he did in the novel and the events that made it look otherwise (i.e. Wen Ning going berserk and killing Jin Zixuan, and the corpses no longer heeding Wei Wuxian's commands in the Nightless Immortal Capital bloodbath) were instead due to Jin Guangyao and Su She's machinations.
  • Adaptational Nice Guy: After he came back to life in the novel, he acts a lot more distant towards Jiang Cheng whenever they meet, given their entire history and his knowledge of how much Jiang Cheng hates his guts now. The live-action drama softens this aspect of his personality to an extent — in the finale, he's a bit more emotional in his final confrontation with Jiang Cheng and reaches out to the latter while consoling him. This differs from how he acted in the source material, where he keeps his distance throughout and responds to Jiang Cheng in a more neutral and melancholy tone.
  • Adaptation Personality Change:
    • While some of his pranks in the novel are committed purely for fun, his other pranks are calculated and have a hidden motive behind them. In the series, however, almost all his pranks are done solely for the heck of it.
    • After he became the Yiling Patriarch, his fuse was much shorter and his mental state was a lot more volatile compared to his novel counterpart, and he even came close to experiencing a total emotional hijack a few times.
  • Adaptational Wimp: He remains a powerful cultivator in his own right and still became infamous as the Yiling Patriarch, but he's no longer the founder of demonic cultivation. He's also a lot more physically frail after he began practicing The Dark Arts, whether he's in his original body or Mo Xuanyu's body, and he either comes close to fainting or actually does pass out in both past and present.
  • Character Tics: He brushes the tip of his nose whenever he's deep in thought.
  • Cool Mask: He wears a masquerade mask to prevent others from finding out that he's Wei Wuxian, since his appearance is assimilated into Mo Xuanyu's body after the summoning ritual. It adds to the cool factor when he has his badass moments while under disguise.
  • Determinator: Wei Wuxian was hellbent on growing lotus flowers in the Burial Mounds despite Wen Qing arguing that he'd be wasting his time because the soil wasn't right for the plants. He ends up growing a small patch of lotus pods and flowers, although the seeds were inedible.
  • Forgot About His Powers: Wei Wuxian exhibits the ability to stop time or other people's perception of time. However, he only uses this ability in one other instance while in Yi City and never again for the rest of the series.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Although he and Lan Wangji are no longer love interests in The Untamed due to Chinese censorship, much of their original dynamic remains intact and they are so close to one another that they consider each other soulmates. note 
  • Humble Goal: As a teen, Wei Wuxian wishes on his lantern to be able to always fight for justice and to protect the innocent. This made Lan Wangji realize that while he was a troublemaker, deep down he had a noble heart, and started having second thoughts about his first impression of the man.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: During the Phoenix Mountain hunt, he was blindfolded and yet managed to shoot five arrows at once, which hit all of their targets.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: Lu Zhixing increases the pitch of his screams in the scenes where Wei Wuxian gets scared by a dog, to the point of not sounding much different from a shrieking girl.
  • Secret-Keeper: Wei Wuxian figures out that Nie Huaisang was behind everything that lead up to Jin Guangyao's downfall and lets him off with a warning. The Nie Clan leader takes the veiled threat with a small nod, and the two part ways for good.
  • Tell Me About My Father: In the first few episodes of the flashback arc, any mention of his mother immediately had him ask the person who mentioned her to tell him anything else they knew about Cangse-sanren.
  • We Used to Be Friends: He and Nie Huaisang were close during their teenage years at the Cloud Recesses, but after Wei Wuxian is resurrected and he figures out the latter was the reason he's alive again, as well as the one behind Jin Guangyao's demise, he expresses his gratitutde but also implicitly warns him to not act out of line by reminding him of the one of the Lan Clan's rules of how "one mustn't associate with evil". Nie Huaisang understands that they've both changed too much to ever return to their friendship during their youthful years, but they do part on more respectable terms.

Alternative Title(s): Mo Dao Zu Shi Main Characters Wei Wuxian

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