its a funny joke, but no matter the iteration, it’s still inaccurate
Any chance you could explain the difference? The closest I’ve come to understanding it is to assume Xue Yang and his methods is actual demonic cultivation
**Before I talk about demonic cultivation, please note that I had
trouble finding sources on it that weren’t from the mdzs wiki (which
calls guidao demonic cultivation at the top of the page)
or from a reddit thread from an mdzs forum. I am very likely missing
important context about modao due to the fact that I have very little
experience with Wuxia that involves it, and so I welcome anyone who
knows more to correct me or add on.
The main difference, is that Wei Wuxian’s guidao, to be used properly, requires empathy for the ghosts (gui) that he utilizes. It is, essentially, Wei Wuxian expanding on his idea from his teens that Lan Qiren punished him for, where he says, “Spiritual qi is energy. Resentment is also energy. Spiritual qi is stored within the dantian and can be used for great feats, so why can’t resentment be used the same way?” (Chapter 4: The Elegant Flirt, 7seas translation) Wei Wuxian is asserting that a fourth way to handle a resentful spirit is to use existing resentful energy, like ghosts with a vendetta against the target, to destroy the target if the first two steps (fulfillment of their last wish, and suppression of the spirit) aren’t possible. But, imperatively, he never suggests creating the resentment- he specifically refers to the victims of the butcher being used against him in this scenario.
We can see him do this immediately after he gets out of the Burial Mounds when he reverses the protection talismans at the Wen camps so that the spirits massacred there by the Wen soldiers will instead be drawn in to take their revenge on the ones who killed them, and when he awakens Wen Ning’s corpse at the labor camps the Wens are imprisoned within using the lingering resentment in Wen Ning. He explicitly states that few others would have been able to come back as fierce as Wen Ning because of the sheer volume of resentment Wen Ning held within his body.
An important thing to note is that resentment here is literally the feeling of resentment. When someone cuts you off in the middle of speaking, or is needlessly rude to you and you get angry with them- that’s the resentment being referred to. In mdzs, resentment is a literal form of energy, because its strong enough to stop spirits from moving on, and the more they felt resentful, the stronger they are in the after-life if it’s keeping them tied to the living world.
Modao, demonic cultivation, is fundamentally different. Generally in Wuxia (fantasy cultivation novels with creatures and magic and whatnot) modao is different in that, typically, the energy is coming from imprisoned souls or sacrifices of human lives/body parts/etc. Its actively harmful to the spirits and people being used to create the resentment, which is what Xue Yang was doing in Yi City (and probably for the Jin as well.)
While Wei Wuxian is controlling sprits at some points using Chenqing, he doesn’t ever create resentment for the express purpose of using it. He’s killed people, tortured them, fought in a war, and used the fallen Wen soldiers to continue to fight against their living brethren, but he never sets out to create more spirits or go further in anyway. Xue Yang, however, intentionally poisons regular people, creates things to control fierce corpses (the spikes in Wen Ning’s and Song Lan’s heads) and just generally doesn’t care about other people in the slightest.
Wei Wuxian is a deeply empathetic person. The book states that one of the abilities that Wei Wuxian is most adept at compared to others is literally called Empathy, and its used twice that I can immediately remember. Once in Yi City with a-Qing’s spirit, and again as a paperman with Nie Mingjue’s dismembered head. It requires Wei Wuxian to form a connection with the dead soul to see their memories, and most won’t do it because of how dangerous it is. This technique isn’t guidao, but it is meant to exemplify the depths with which Wei Wuxian cares about others, including the dead.
Another scene that comes to mind to further support this message, is the flashback where Lan Wangji finds Wei Wuxian in an inn drinking surrounded by female spirits. He’s just chilling with ghosts in broad daylight like they’re all good friends! This scene serves a double purpose, but I’m specifically referring to the fact that he’s shown just hanging out with dead people, something a person who doesn’t have a respect for the dead wouldn’t do.
Unlike Xue Yang who unintentionally created a dead girl that tries to scare off people before they can suffer the same fate she did.
While Xue Yang was working off of Wei Wuxian’s notes, he wasn’t following Wei Wuxian’s core principle, and so he wasn’t following Wei Wuxian’s guidao path, but instead practicing demonic cultivation. So, I guess the biggest difference is the execution (ha) of getting resentment, however I could be missing more as I stated at the beginning of this post.
Tldr; Wei Wuxian wakes up or uses already disturbedspirits, while Xue Yang makes disturbed spirits.
Well put! Please allow me to words about how the relevance of what Wei Wuxian is doing and what sort of effect it has on the world is actually a core metric of the story and why it needs to not be combined or misnamed as modao.
Modao is a well known dark cultivational path in other novels as well. It is perhaps not always strictly evil, but given that it is entirely about using the living to your own ends, it’s certainly rarely heroic and that’s why MXTX uses it as part of the misconceptions around Wei Wuxian from the start. The audience she wrote for is going to know exactly what modao is and immediately clue in that guidao is not that because genre convention is a thing and MXTX knows exactly what she is doing.
Guidao is explicitly working with what already exists in the world and is lingering and stagnating. It is created when people are treated poorly in their lives and poorly in their deaths. A spirit with weight and regrets in their heart cannot move on to a next life and resents the living for still being alive. A body that is unburied and mistreated is a body that remembers the slights against it. Resentful energy is born from that, the mistreatment of those who need the living to help them pass on peacefully to the next cycle of reincarnation. This is why even orthodox cultivation in MDZS prioritizes liberation of the spirit first when it can.
Liberation of the resentment holding someone down, suppressing it if it is too strong to be released immediately, elimination of the being if it is so saturated in resentment that it will not move on any other way. Before Wei Wuxian those were the only ways to remove resentment from the world once it is born. Wei Wuxian instead takes what is there that might have a spirit that would otherwise be suppressed or eliminated and says “what makes you so angry? Why don’t we work together to help you find some peace, even if it means a little justified revenge in the process?” and helps them work through the grudges they held in order to let go of their own accord, within reason, of course. The Intrusion extra is a great example of him determining what the source of resentment is and that it will cause no excessive harm to let this spirit get its revenge. All it wants is to return an item it lost and punch an asshole in the face and it is content. Same with Iron Hook and the spirit there. He died without part of his body and was unable to express the last needs of his spirit in life. Wei Wuxian determines that what he really wants is the missing piece of his body and then to scream for a while until all of the anguish in his heart is out. Guidao is this as much as it is the flute of immortals singing an army of the angry dead to attack the Wen in the middle of the war. It answers the need of the living who uses it and the dead who need it.
Resentment pools and collects in the world and in the hearts of others and makes things worse wherever you find it and this is honestly a brilliant example of MXTX using the literal and the metaphorical at once because resentment is the driving force of all that happens in the flashbacks and present day. I am not joking in the slightest - it is the defining trait to everyone who makes a choice that makes the world worse, and why Wei Wuxian’s refusal to hold onto resentments and bitterness in his heart is a very powerful force in this world.
Whether it be Jiang Cheng’s resentment towards Wei Wuxian for being himself and unintentionally making Jiang Cheng feel bitter about his own self, Jin Guangyao’s resentment towards his heritage and how he never got the respect and prestige he felt he deserved, Xue Yang’s resentment towards one man’s poor treatment of him that went so far as to kill everyone who ever was connected to those who slighted him in any way, resentment is a core theme of those stories. The cultivation world turns on the Wen Remnants out of resentment at what Wen Ruohan did. Madam Yu spends every second of her page time hurting her family out of resentment for not being some nebulous thing she wanted. Resentment controls the world and while it’s most tangible in Wei Wuxian working with the more literal energy of the dead who are still trapped in their own resentment, the fact that his entire cultivational path is centered around redirecting and cleaning up this energy by helping those who he can let go of their resentment and preventing those who he cannot help from continuing to create the cycles of resentment is incredibly, incredibly important. In this world of spiraling resentment and anger, he is reversing and ending the cycles both for others and himself where he can.
This is why it matters so much at the second siege that he and the Wen Remnants choose to save the people who killed them before, even though they could step aside and help no one. They actively choose to end the cycle of resentment and so are freed of the resentment that binds others so they can live a better next life. This is why Wei Wuxian as a character cannot choose revenge upon the whole cultivation world at the beginning. MXTX is telling a story about the corrupting forces of grudges and bitterness and how to change that in the world, even if it is a slow process and may not effect everything you can see, it still has an impact. There are people who are alive because Wei Wuxian did not hold a grudge, there are lost souls who are able to move on and find peace because Wei Wuxian listened where no one else would.
This is why the distinction matters, and while I know it doesn’t help so much with the definition of modao (I have read more xianxia, but have yet to come across a modao user who isn’t just a two page character) hopefully it does convey that guidao is a very different beast and should not be conflated with modao (like the MDZS wiki and 7seas do) because when you conflate and mingle the two, you undermine every theme in MDZS and make understanding the story MXTX wanted to tell a hell of a lot more challenging than it was.
(Also Wei Wuxian also uses empathy briefly in the Guanyin Temple Hostage Party to see the past of one of the ghouls writhing on the floor once the seal is broken and determine that this too is a making of Jin Guangyao’s - how he murdered a bunch of prostitutes, covered them up with a temple and pretended he had never done any of that. It’s a much smaller scene, but it is a third time that he does that)
The new layout it a whole mess. Thankfully Xkit can already help with a bunch of this! I’m sure it’ll give more options soon.
Vanilla Tumblr: (I have marked in red what can be removed. The tabs can be set not to stick, so you will really only see them at the top of your dash. Empty box on the left for hidden notifications and shop sparkle, i just didn’t have any. I’m EU so no Live for me).
using tumblr mobile and seeing people talk about a desktop layout change is like hearing a timer suddenly start ticking down. I am safe for now but I hear the danger
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
every time tumblr rolls out an update i don’t get it for like a week plus or whatever and it’s like when a bomb drops but you don’t hear the sound for a second after. but in reverse, in my case. i’ve heard it drop but it hasn’t yet happened (to me).
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