"Wei Ying, for cultivating an evil path you would eventually have to pay the price."
— Lan Wangji
While Xianxia is essentially a High Fantasy genre, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi still holds some rather dark and disturbing elements, and that even with evil spirits or monsters lurking about, sometimes the Humans Are the Real Monsters.
All spoilers are unmarked.
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Main Story
General
- While Wei Wuxian doesn't go into the details of how he died in the donghua adaptation, the first episode shows a flashback of him struggling to push away dark spirits that have skeletal shapes and are swarming him until he eventually absorbs them.
- The Burial Mounds earned its name for a reason. Once the site of a great battle, the place is now a mass graveyard, with many having died with resentment. The area thus became infected with resentful energy, with countless ghosts haunting the place and killing anyone who dared to trespass their grounds. Wei Wuxian may have closely avoided death when he was thrown there, but he wasn't exactly lucky as he spent months being tortured inside and out, before he finally learned to manipulate the resentful energy in the place.
Pre-Time Skip
Xuanwu Cave
- In the donghua, Wen Zhuliu demonstrates his core-melting abilities on a cultivator who speaks out against Wen Chao, and the process is not pretty. The person starts spasming in pain, clutching his chest, and then the core in his chest dims and shatters. The cultivator then lets out one last scream of pain before collapsing and others checking to confirm that his core is now gone.
The Fall of Lotus Pier
- It's a nightmare for anyone having to watch their home not only be invaded, but also razed to the ground with barely anything left. The worst part is that the Wens gathered all the casualties in one spot, creating an entire mountain of corpses.
The Sunshot Campaign
- The manner in which Wei Wuxian killed the Wens is grotesque, to put lightly. He alters their protection talismans so it would attract resentful energy instead. This, plus a few notes from Chenqing, is all that's needed to cause havoc with his fierce corpses, and any Supervisory Office he targets becomes the site of what's nothing short of a massacre. And each corpse that's found died in a different manner — either from burning, drowning, suicide, or from sheer fright... And then there's the slow and painful torture (including but not limited to autocannibalism) he puts Wen Chao through. Even if the man deserved to die, one wouldn't be blamed for thinking that what happened to him was still more brutal than necessary.
Rescue of the Wen Survivors
- The Wen survivors are rounded up and placed into what is basically a concentration camp, with the Jin Clan dishing out torture to innocent children and the elderly with no remorse. All they see are the evil Wens, and don't care if they're venting their frustrations out on a group of people who don't deserve that hatred. As Wei Wuxian remarks on later, it almost seems like the Wen Clan was never eradicated based on the way the Jin Clan had now taken their spot as the ruler of the cultivation world.
The Ambush at Qiongqi Path
- The Hundred Holes Curse is exactly what it implies — it creates numerous holes in the victim's body (including the inside( and the holes slowly enlarge, giving them not just a horrifying appearance but also lots of pain and damage to the body. The way this curse harms the unlucky victim will definitely make anyone get shivers, whether or not they have trypophobia. Even Wei Wuxian, who's no stranger to inflicting cruel torture, finds the curse's effects to be absolutely disgusting.At first, the victim of the curse would feel nothing. At most, they'd think that their pores had become rougher. However, soon later, the holes would become the size of sesame seeds. The longer it went on, the larger and greater in number the holes would be. It'd proceed until their entire body was covered in holes of all sizes, almost like a grotesque human sieve. On top of that, after the surface of the skin was covered in holes, the curse would begin to extend toward the internal organs. It could either be a ceaseless stomachache, or the rotting of all the organs!
The Nightless Imperial Capital Bloodbath
- Although Wen Qing and Wen Ning go to the Jin Clan peacefully, Wen Qing is given anything but a peaceful death as she's burned alive while her brother is forced to watch.
- What's most likely Wei Wuxian's worst fear of all comes to life — watching his martial sister die in front of his eyes. And it happens in gruesome fashion in the novel, with a sword running through her throat as she pushes her brother figure out of the way. This is enough for an enraged Wei Wuxian to use the Yin Tiger Tally to kill thousands of cultivators present at the Nightless Imperial Capital.
The First Siege
- The fates of the Wen remnants that Wei Wuxian rescued. During the First Siege, they were all slaughtered (save for one), and their corpses were tossed into the blood pool in the Demon-Slaughtering Cave. It isn't as brutal or gory as the other examples, but what makes this horrifying as it showed the cruelty of the other cultivation clans, despite their claims to fight in the name of justice and righteousness.
Post-Time Skip
Yi City
- Xue Yang prefers to slice people's tongue's out of their mouths and poison them with corpse powder. Just hearing the people gurgle in pain but not able to speak anymore makes the act more terrifying especially when Xiao Xingchen's sword couldn't tell the difference between a living person who has corpse poisoning from actual fierce corpses.
- The simple fact that A-Qing watched Xue Yang brutally murder people but couldn't say a word unless she wanted him to find her and kill her as well.
- A-Qing's screams of terror when Xue Yang managed to find her and called her by her name. She began scrambling backwards out of fright and yelled for help that she knew would never come.
Golden Carp Tower
- Nie Mingjue's qi deviation in the Empathy flashback is terrifying to watch unfold, with him almost turning monstrous as he went on a violent rampage while killing several people he mistook for Jin Guangyao before suffering a painful death. Not even his brother was left unscathed.
Return to Lotus Pier
- It's revealed Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang hired prostitutes to gang-rape a sick Jin Guangshan at his death bed before killing off most of the the prostitutes themselves (who were oblivious to what they were being hired to do beforehand) just so they can be silenced. As much of an Asshole Victim as Jin Guangshan is, dying this way is not a pleasant way to go — and there wasn't even any blood or gore involved in his death. The donghua even shows a glimpse of a frail and frightened Jin Guangshan tied to his bed before it happens, and it's unsettling to see.
- When Wen Ning tells Lan Wangji more details about how Wei Wuxian sacrificed his golden core for Jiang Cheng, he reveals that the process isn't painless, and anesthetics were useless. More accurately, they can't be administered, because the donor must be awake and have all senses intact while the golden core is being extracted for the transplant to even at least 50% of success. It's very easy to liken it to a real life organ transplant, but with the added bonus of being awake to see and feel it the entire time.
Guanyin Temple
- Jin Guangyao dies by getting his neck snapped by Nie Mingjue's corpse while he undergoes Sanity Slippage, and the sound of his bones breaking can even be heard. One can't blame the traumatised Jin Ling for covering his eyes and ears when this happens.
Extras
- The "Villainous Friends" extra reveals the kind of horrifying activities Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang did during the Time Skip behind the scenes, such as capturing an entire clan (with plans to kill them, including the children) just because its leader spoke against Jin Guangshan and then leaving the leader to die in a cage of vicious fierce corpses.
