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Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)

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Skelm said:
Related to this, I've been toying with the idea of a system where the focus is actually on immortality and not gaining ever more power by having these trade off against each other.

What I came up with is: you have a pool of Qi that increases linearly over time. In it's raw state, the only thing you can really do with it is undirected energy blasts, but over time it's possible to construct channels and internal structures that allow your Qi to do more complicated and nuanced techniques. The crucial part is these structures are themselves made up of Qi and so count against the size of your Qi pool and reduce the amount of Qi you have available to actually power your techniques. A complicated technique is never directly more powerful then an energy blast, just more efficient at it's intended purpose.

Most of the variance in cultivation paths is in what techniques you build into yourself, with every sect having their own developments. Usually the most complicated (and therefore expensive) technique learned is life extension, which takes up ever more Qi capacity as you extend your lifespan further, and one crucial decision to make is how much to devote to immortality vs techniques that grant power.

In this model, an ancient master might only have a small amount of Qi left over to actually power their techniques, while younger cultivators can throw around much more power as long as they're willing to accept the shorter lifespan that results. Optionally, it could be possible to burn down part of your cultivation base to recover the Qi committed to it, giving the ancient master great power that they dare not use because it would mean giving up their greatly extended lifespan.

Probably actual immortality is something of a pipe dream in this world, and the best life extension techniques are not well known due to the difficulty in testing them.
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Honestly, this sounds like a fun system and one I'd actually want to see used in a story at some point.
 
Skelm said:
Related to this, I've been toying with the idea of a system where the focus is actually on immortality and not gaining ever more power by having these trade off against each other.

What I came up with is: you have a pool of Qi that increases linearly over time. In it's raw state, the only thing you can really do with it is undirected energy blasts, but over time it's possible to construct channels and internal structures that allow your Qi to do more complicated and nuanced techniques. The crucial part is these structures are themselves made up of Qi and so count against the size of your Qi pool and reduce the amount of Qi you have available to actually power your techniques. A complicated technique is never directly more powerful then an energy blast, just more efficient at it's intended purpose.

Most of the variance in cultivation paths is in what techniques you build into yourself, with every sect having their own developments. Usually the most complicated (and therefore expensive) technique learned is life extension, which takes up ever more Qi capacity as you extend your lifespan further, and one crucial decision to make is how much to devote to immortality vs techniques that grant power.

In this model, an ancient master might only have a small amount of Qi left over to actually power their techniques, while younger cultivators can throw around much more power as long as they're willing to accept the shorter lifespan that results. Optionally, it could be possible to burn down part of your cultivation base to recover the Qi committed to it, giving the ancient master great power that they dare not use because it would mean giving up their greatly extended lifespan.

Probably actual immortality is something of a pipe dream in this world, and the best life extension techniques are not well known due to the difficulty in testing them.
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So we get a couple of questions out of this.
- First, they gain qi linearly over time, but they spend lifespan linearly over time as well. By extension, unless the two are *perfectly* balanced, either it should be possible to spend less than you gain (and thus grow your available non-lifespan qi over time... however glacially slowly) or it should not (which means that even the most successful old masters are just staving off the end, while they're stock of uninvested qi slowly dwindles
- Second, what is the purpose of this system? It may be an interesting world to write in, but it's fundamentally not a xianxia world. the kind of society that shows up from "everyone gets energy blasts of more or less the same level of power, unless they invest effort to convert it into more subtle stuff" may well be interesting, but it's going to be radically different, as raw power is no longer any kind of gatekeeper, and there's a pretty hard upper limit.
 
It might be fun, but it reminds me too much of all the 'move up two stages, drop down three, move up three and a half' shenanigans that made me stop being invested in the mechanics side of Even Further Beyond.
 
A simpler way of doing it might be that you accumulate energy through cultivation. You can, of course, use that energy to accomplish tasks directly, use it to cultivate techniques, or to rejuvenate your body and soul.

The first choice is fairly straightforward, easy and the results are powerful - but it's generally considered wasteful. After all, that's your technique xp and/or your potential lifespan or healing you're sacrificing.

You build techniques by taking that energy you've gathered and made yours and internalizing it further. It become embedded in your body/soul/heart/what-have-you and by circulating your energy through it, you can accomplish a specific task at far greater effectively. In addition, once your cultivation of that technique has gone far enough, you can pull in external energy to do the same thing. This, of course, is far more efficient - but it does rely upon having an available source of energy. Many places would have a varying level of environmental energy to use, but others might be more difficult to work in.

Naturally, there'd be ways of restricting or cutting off such flows of energy. You can always fall back on whatever accumulated internal energy you have, however, and there'd be tricks to avoid being 'blocked' as well. So direct conflict at times has an aspect of controlling the surroundings, dueling techniques, understanding how the opponents' techniques work and other strategic aspects.

And finally, that energy can keep your body and soul in good shape - healing wounds (physical and non) and reversing the effects of aging. There'd be some tradeoffs in the amount of energy needed to maintain the body at different levels of health (ie, remaining ever-young would be more difficult than remaining ever-old), variations in methods, shortcuts (real or imagined) and so on. The costs of self-maintenance might mount ever-higher over time - requiring either some form of effective hibernation or constant improvement in cultivation realm (and thus energy conversion capability) to keep up.

And naturally there's ways of sacrificing health/lifespan and even 'burning' techniques in an emergency - but that's a desperation move for sure.

So the more energy you're able to internalize, the more you have to keep yourself healthy and to advance your capabilities... but you have to decide how to spend what you get, and conflict is risky - you might find yourself needing to sacrifice years, decades or even centuries of progress.
 
Sirrocco said:
Eh? I'd not heard of this one, and I'm interested to hear more.
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Completed xianxia quest on SV. Fantastic prose, dialogue and worldbuilding.

As for what Yeangst is referring to, in Even Further Beyond the MC has access to three different magic systems as a cheat skill. One of those magic systems lets the MC sacrifice his Cultivation stages to create powerful artifacts. Over the course of the story, the MC's power would fluctuate as he cultivated, forged some artifacts and then used the powers of those artifacts to cultivate faster.

It's pretty short by webnovel standards (only 130k words) and some examples of the zigzagging powerlevel can be found in the first few proper updates. I'd strongly recommend it, if only for the way its mechanics treat xianxia powerlevels.
 
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Sirrocco said:
- First, they gain qi linearly over time, but they spend lifespan linearly over time as well. By extension, unless the two are *perfectly* balanced, either it should be possible to spend less than you gain (and thus grow your available non-lifespan qi over time... however glacially slowly) or it should not (which means that even the most successful old masters are just staving off the end, while they're stock of uninvested qi slowly dwindles
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The cost of lifespan doesn't have to be linear, but yes, this is intrinsic to having such a trade-off exist at all. Either a perfectly optimal actor could escape the main constraint and this is not really different from any other xianxia, or there is some lifespan cap that even a perfect actor can't escape, or the two are mysteriously well balanced. This is why I thought that actual immortality should be a mere legend. Alternatively, it could require permanently capping the power you can safely expend in some other way.
Sirrocco said:
- Second, what is the purpose of this system? It may be an interesting world to write in, but it's fundamentally not a xianxia world. the kind of society that shows up from "everyone gets energy blasts of more or less the same level of power, unless they invest effort to convert it into more subtle stuff" may well be interesting, but it's going to be radically different, as raw power is no longer any kind of gatekeeper, and there's a pretty hard upper limit.
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Xianxia means "immortal hero", and yet such stories rarely seem to give more than a passing note to the immortality. I think this is pretty intrinsic to having the path to immortality come with ever flashier super powers, especially early on. I thought it would be interesting to consider the other direction.
 
Skelm said:
Xianxia means "immortal hero", and yet such stories rarely seem to give more than a passing note to the immortality. I think this is pretty intrinsic to having the path to immortality come with ever flashier super powers, especially early on. I thought it would be interesting to consider the other direction.
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Personally, I think it's because immortality itself is generally less interesting than the stuff you do to become immortal.
 
I like the transhumanist take on xianxia. You get immortality because you can do maintenance on yourself. It has more to do with philosophy than purely abstracted power converted from qi.

The first barrier is physical degradation which you solve with body exercises and using qi to strengthen. Or use mental exercises to keep mental health up. Or soul exercises to keep the soul clean and let go of unwanted 'inner demons'.

At a high level practising the body allows you to affect mental and spiritual strength and the same for other paths.

Then there is the external environment. If all the spirit beasts around are attacking and can only be defended against by physical might, sects proliferate and spread around body cultivating technology to get political power.

Alchemy is basically how you test your improvements that you want to do to become better. With the pill as the model for the body.

So a protagonist travesl around and learn about other cultures way of 'improving'. Each is not wholely better and the ancient way of cultivating depends on the ancient environment.
 
I recommend Fields of Gold

Not your tipical cultivator story. Set in a cultivator setting, but more from the perspective of a common family.

Warning: Do not read on a empty stomach. I guarantee you will get hungry.

I also have a request if anyone knows of a story where the Cultivator actually main way of powering up is he does farm and cultivates the land? Growing tones of spiritual crops for eating and pills.
 
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Vlad said:
I recommend Fields of Gold

Not your tipical cultivator story. Set in a cultivator setting, but more from the perspective of a common family.

Warning: Do not read on a empty stomach. I guarantee you will get hungry.

I also have a request if anyone knows of a story where the Cultivator actually main way of powering up is he does farm and cultivates the land? Growing tones of spiritual crops for eating and pills.
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Lessee... I recall one that started with the protagonist tending to spiritual crops as part of a sect.

Then there's one where the protagonist is just living on his own and tending to his crops ("Carefree life of dreams", or some title like that?) - again, it seemed to be just for the first part (although I dropped it a bit after he left, so maybe he went back).

There's "Elixir Supplier", that's set in modern-day China, where the protagonist is cultivating and becoming a doctor. I recall it as being... rather preachy? But a focus was on growing crops to make medicine.

Growing medicines and cultivation candy is often something that comes up in stories where the protagonist has a pocket dimension. One I read some of years back, "Ancient Strengthening Technique" (I think that was what it was called) did that, as did "Lord of All Realms" (the latter is a better read than the former, I think).

The thing is, is that almost always the xianxia protagonist has to travel - once they 'conquer' an area, they have to be moved to a new "higher level" one. So a farm or garden is going to be left behind (unless they can take it with them).

I suppose another way to do it is that the protagonist, by tending to the soil with the appropriate techniques, establishes a connection or resonance with the earth, which in turns empowers them. The more land they cultivate in this way, and the more intensely they do so, the stronger the connection.

The rich crops are sold on, with the proceeds going to buying things that can improve the "farm", or purchasing nearby land to increase its size (or the physics of the world are such that the farm can grow on its own). Perhaps techniques are discovered to make it easier to tend to large areas (puppets, tamed beasts, clones, domains, etc). New crops to plant, of course. Dealing with the inevitable greed and politics to protect the territory.

There's probably a decent story in that approach... but it's probably not going to be found in the standard xianxia fare.
 
CircleTheSkies said:
There's probably a decent story in that approach... but it's probably not going to be found in the standard xianxia fare.
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Farming for Gold is largely that - though from a VR/GameLit standpoint rather than a xianxia standpoint. MC also moves around from time to time - mostly driven by the fact that a lot of the story is in how he cultivates and develops his land and what he grows there and whatnot, and so changing up the environment, soil composition and so forth is used to keep things fresh(er). Basically, in order to have plot development, you need to have change, and reaction to that change. Farming simulator doesn't lend itself well to the "just add more biggatons" strategy of some xianxia, which means that it becomes difficult to both keep things interesting and have the farming itself be the focus without occasional reset-and-change-baseline effects.
 
Sirrocco said:
Farming for Gold is largely that - though from a VR/GameLit standpoint rather than a xianxia standpoint. MC also moves around from time to time - mostly driven by the fact that a lot of the story is in how he cultivates and develops his land and what he grows there and whatnot, and so changing up the environment, soil composition and so forth is used to keep things fresh(er). Basically, in order to have plot development, you need to have change, and reaction to that change. Farming simulator doesn't lend itself well to the "just add more biggatons" strategy of some xianxia, which means that it becomes difficult to both keep things interesting and have the farming itself be the focus without occasional reset-and-change-baseline effects.
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Havent read fields of gold yet but i've Started farming for gold and I'm enjoying it.

I would imagine that since stats are based off Real Life and gaming acts as An exersise tool means that if he ever rebuilds his character, he would be a lot better off at level one
 
So I thought for a while about the whole farming-cultivation idea, and sketched something out.

The protagonist is a farmer, following in his ancestors' footsteps. He (and those before him) have farmed this valley in light wilderness, growing food and sundries for their own use and some form of regional cash crop (something like peppercorns?) that he sells to local traders along with other families like his own.

Low-level cultivation is extremely common - more or less every child is taught by their parents, although most civilians will never really get beyond the first level or two of the first realm. The protagonist was, as a child, particularly capable; enough that his parents discussed whether he'd have a better life serving the local lord or sect. But as he was an only child, and he didn't have much interest in the prospect, he continued working at the farm.

Eventually, he inherited the valley from his parents, who passed away, and continues his simple life. He gets married, grows older, has children, became a widower, and simply kept working. His children have all left - perhap one got married in town, another left to join the lord's armed forces, that kind of thing.

All the while his cultivation has continued to climb. At some point, you have the "fortunate encounter" - which allows him to establish a connection with the earth he's been tending to for decades. Perhaps this is simply the effect of his family's long tending of the land, or some quirk of the family's cultivation method that never exhibited due to nobody ever advancing far enough. Or it was literally an encounter with something or some being.

Regardless, he starts to become effectively a conduit for the cycle of energy that allows life to flourish. Energy from deep in the earth wells to the surface, drawn by plant life, where it attracts energy from the heavens. This energy mixes together to become the energy of life, which then fuels the biosphere before eventually (through death and decay) returning back to the earth. As the energy from beyond the heavens comes in to the cycle, the net result is an increase in the deep earth energy.

Now, this energy exhibits in other ways, which might allow it to exit the cycle, so there's a rough balance going on. The protagonist spends his energies upon the health of the land, resulting in the plant life growing more vigorously - and thus drawing more deep earth energy to the surface, where it attracts more heavenly energy. The protagonist is able to replenish his energies from the deep earth energies that are drawn to the surface - and then uses that energy to improve the soil, and the spiral continues.

He eats the food he grows, uses the wood he grows, and so on - and thus his cultivation continues to improve through farming. The connection with the deep earth energies, moreover, sustains him, replenishing his lifespan - and since he lives a timeless and (since his children have moved out) solitary life. The richness of his valley isn't noticed by outsiders, and as he only sells the cash crop (why would food sell as well as spices?), the supernatural vitality of his food supply goes unremarked.

The effect starts to spread as his cultivation improves - soon it's the neighbors' farms that see a gradual improvement in the quality of their yield, then the neighbors' neighbors. It happens over the course of decades, so it's hard to pinpoint a cause. The region just slowly flourishes - and as all these farms are in rocky, remote areas relatively far from town, there are rarely visitors that might be able to sense the change in the quality of the land. Eventually even the town areas become 'his' and continue to improve - but it's only until his expanding territory reaches the warded (and possibly owned) lands of the local sects that it stops (and flows around them).

That's the "uninterrupted" plot, of course. There's all kinds of interruptions that could show up as the author desires at various points. However, if you want the protagonist to be able to stay on 'his' land, then there's going to have to be different resolutions than you often see in xianxia - you simply can't have escalation in the same rapid pattern, as he's tied to a place and can neither escape pursuit nor move on to a broader world.

Moreover, if combat and such becomes increasingly important, than you risk losing that core of "farming to cultivate". So I don't know how well a story could flow from this, actually. Still, I think it's doable.


Also... came across "The Second Coming of Gluttony". And... so far not too bad. It not an unfamiliar start - Korean guy gets shot into a game-interfaced-alien-world, with a side of foresight - but the character (at least so far) is a bit more interesting. He's a gambling addict, and gets a fairly well-done realization that he's slipping into bad habits and tries to fix his weak will and gambling addiction. I haven't gotten to him even leaving the "Neutral Zone" yet, but so far it's been a decent read.

I'll see where it goes though.
 
So... things you could do for plotbits...
- The richer energies start to attract spirits of various sorts, and he has to figure out ways to either integrate them into the system, destroy them, or reshape them so that they can fit into the system in a healthy, thriving way.
- Various plants start sprouting in different, more spiritually empowered forms, and he has to figure out how to ensure that they thrive. It woudlnt' do to have his land not thrive.
- Various interactions with his neighbors, who have the occasional problem of their own, where you get to have fun with the bit where the plants that he's using to pull together solutions (and maybe he learns some alchemy/spirit cooking from his new spirit friends or experimentation or something) are absurdly more valuable and therefore far more potent than anyone realizes. Like, he's concerned about a kid who gets ill one winter, so he makes hte kid a nourishing soup... which heals the illness, significantly improves his general health, and nourishes his spiritual roots. A hundred chapters (and many shared meals) later, the kid heads off to the local town to seek his fortune, and a few chapters after that we get back word that he was kind of surprised at how weak everyone was.
- Various powerful individuals happen to wander by the farm, actually realize how potent the stuff is, and try to come up with ways to convince him to provide it to them (preferably in an ongoing supply) without letting on how valuable it all is (or letting anyone else know what they've found). Of course, they also have the whole Dao soul-obligation thing going on, so they also have to figure out how to somehow repay him as well. Eventually enough of them accumulate that they have to start dodging each other. Cue bedroom comedy
- Eventually, the folks in the local town do figure out what's going on and come looking, but by then he's progressed far enough that it would be... unwise to arouse the ire of the master in his Domain. Unfortunately for them, he hasn't left his Domain in decades, if not longer... and it turns out that it basically covers the town now, too - or at least it will if the wards are ever dropped. "So, our new Dao-Lord started out as a mountain peasant? And we didn't find out about that until now?" "That's about it, sir." "Oh, dear. Do you have any idea as to what his plans are?" "I believe he intends to grow melons, sir."

Basically, it's a relatively slow slice-of-life/comedy, with a nice little xianxia progression grind to make the "xianxia progression grind" bits happy.
 
How about instead of a no name cultivator, it is an imperial branch from the previous dynasty? Where you send all the second sons to after the coronation. It is also the part of the imperial cult that is supposed to create artifacts for the emperor's use. So it also has old masters of the art.
Then also include all the professionals like Tailors or Butchers.

Or having the boundary conform to what have been eneffofed to the previous family? Then to increase cultivation resources, the cultivator will be forced to create 'dungeons' where you have to get more energy cycles per square meter by using the space underground.
 
Lokri said:
How about instead of a no name cultivator, it is an imperial branch from the previous dynasty? Where you send all the second sons to after the coronation. It is also the part of the imperial cult that is supposed to create artifacts for the emperor's use. So it also has old masters of the art.
Then also include all the professionals like Tailors or Butchers.

Or having the boundary conform to what have been eneffofed to the previous family? Then to increase cultivation resources, the cultivator will be forced to create 'dungeons' where you have to get more energy cycles per square meter by using the space underground.
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Err? That sounds like a very different story. It's not an uninteresting story, but it's not the "farmer who just sort of wanders into being a badass cultivator" story. Perhaps you could expand on it a bit?
 
Ok let me expand my idea in another direction.

The Kong Tong sealed valley.
A group of cultivators in the back mountains of Kong Tong. Access is forbidden by Imperial decree and guarded by the White Tiger Army.

It is said that the valley is home to the oldest family that can trace their lineage all the way to Emperor Yu the Great where the sealed valley and accompanying MuRong Forest is enfeoffed to the MuRong Clan.

The Murong clan is a secretive artisan family that is the creator of famous swords and incense. However, their martial might is not to be underestimated as well. Many 'free thinkers' have crusaded into the woods to liberate masterwork swords and all have failed to return.

With their power, it is hard to imagine why few of the Murong clan have been seen in the Imperial City. However legends tell of a curse by the same Emperor Yu the Great who raised the clan, cursed so that no male MuRong descendent is permitted to leave the valley under the penalty of six by six white lightning bolts.

Now, only the swordsmen who seek the best swords dare venture close.

This story begins on the day when the MuRong estates burn. Only a wretched small boy is all that remains from the devastation. With a fire scarred face, this boy have been taken in by a loyalist village and hidden by an elderly couple of farmers.

What was the reason for the enmity to muster the killing of such a huge clan? Who can appease the ghosts of MuRong wailing in regret and defiance? Is the MuRong's cursed fate to remain in the valley able to contain the rampaging fires of Hatred?

Cause and effect. When you seek vengeance, dig two graves.
 
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Lokri said:
Ok let me expand my idea in another direction.

The Kong Tong sealed valley.
A group of cultivators in the back mountains of Kong Tong. Access is forbidden by Imperial decree and guarded by the White Tiger Army.

It is said that the valley is home to the oldest family that can trace their lineage all the way to Emperor Yu the Great where the sealed valley and accompanying MuRong Forest is enfeoffed to the MuRong Clan.

The Murong clan is a secretive artisan family that is the creator of famous swords and incense. However, their martial might is not to be underestimated as well. Many 'free thinkers' have crusaded into the woods to liberate masterwork swords and all have failed to return.

With their power, it is hard to imagine why few of the Murong clan have been seen in the Imperial City. However legends tell of a curse by the same Emperor Yu the Great who raised the clan, cursed so that no male MuRong descendent is permitted to leave the valley under the penalty of six by six white lightning bolts.

Now, only the swordsmen who seek the best swords dare venture close.

This story begins on the day when the MuRong estates burn. Only a wretched small boy is all that remains from the devastation. With a fire scarred face, this boy have been taken in by a loyalist village and hidden by an elderly couple of farmers.

What was the reason for the enmity to muster the killing of such a huge clan? Who can appease the ghosts of MuRong wailing in regret and defiance? Is the MuRong's cursed fate to remain in the valley able to contain the rampaging fires of Hatred?

Cause and effect. When you seek vengeance, dig two graves.
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Okay. Sounds like a pretty solid (if somewhat generic) start to a xianxia story. Where do you go from there? Is it the standard "practice warrior arts, cultivate aggressively, fortunate encounters, discover more about the world, seek revenge" plot implied by the opener, or are you thinking of throwing some twists in there?
 
Sirrocco said:
Okay. Sounds like a pretty solid (if somewhat generic) start to a xianxia story. Where do you go from there? Is it the standard "practice warrior arts, cultivate aggressively, fortunate encounters, discover more about the world, seek revenge" plot implied by the opener, or are you thinking of throwing some twists in there?
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The point is that the main character is trapped inside an area, so he needs to farm to get other people to do stuff for him.

I want to split cultivation into 5 elements -> dual polarities yinyang -> mono wuji phases. This corresponds to what plants and animals he can cultivate.

To cultivate he burrows energy from what he 'cultivates' for each elemental aspect. Then he comes up with ecosystems for the spirit plants that boosts that further.

Then because the valley is only so limited in area, he starts to dig underground and into the mountains to get more and more cycles of energy going. Until he gets strong enough to resist the lightning bolts.

Because nobody is left to teach warrior arts, he fights using super modified farming spells that are more AOE. Like Gold Blade used for insect removal or Calling Wind and Rain to water crops or earth golem puppets for a harvesting array.

He has friends that he inspires to become stronger like Tailors or Butchers like in KungFu Hustle.

Maybe by the time he gets strong enough, he gets some character development and doesn't go out to rampage to kill another noble family.

And friends that stop him from going completely revenge idiot. Friends that drag him into brothels, monasteries or new cities with unique plants. A crazy stalker swordswoman covinced that the main character is a girl pretending to be a man because of the Murong curse and bugging him to make a sword for her. Serving as a exposition to communicate what other people not from the valley thinks about the family
 
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Lokri said:
The point is that the main character is trapped inside an area, so he needs to farm to get other people to do stuff for him.

I want to split cultivation into 5 elements -> dual polarities yinyang -> mono wuji phases. This corresponds to what plants and animals he can cultivate.

To cultivate he burrows energy from what he 'cultivates' for each elemental aspect. Then he comes up with ecosystems for the spirit plants that boosts that further.

Then because the valley is only so limited in area, he starts to dig underground and into the mountains to get more and more cycles of energy going. Until he gets strong enough to resist the lightning bolts.

Because nobody is left to teach warrior arts, he fights using super modified farming spells that are more AOE. Like Gold Blade used for insect removal or Calling Wind and Rain to water crops or earth golem puppets for a harvesting array.

He has friends that he inspires to become stronger like Tailors or Butchers like in KungFu Hustle.

Maybe by the time he gets strong enough, he gets some character development and doesn't go out to rampage to kill another noble family.
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Ahhhh. I see now. It's not just that he's limited to an area - it's that initially the area is small enough and has little enough in the way of cultivation resources and combat arts that he can't normally cultivate up far enough to break the seal and thus must actively work to increase the level of cultivation the area can support and leverage what arts he can get. Okay. Cool.

So... if he's locked down to this little area, with relatively few allies, what's to stop the folks who killed his family from coming back to finish the job?

Alternately, to remove that aspect, and remove much of the initial revenge schtick, you could have the catastrophe be the result of his family messing around with Powers They Ought Not Have Touched. If it blasted the core of his ancestral lands and made them dangerous to enter, it even gives another way in which he can be powering up - as he gains ability, he can push further into the blasted zone, possibly recover arts/resources/etc, and eventually cleanse bits of the land enough that he can expand his fields.

As another interesting subplot... perhaps there are other noble families who desire the lands for themselves (largely so that they can loot whatever's left of his birthright in the blasted parts), and are in legal proceedings to acquire them. After all, his family was totally wiped out, right? He can't personally make it to the courthouse to protest his existence, so he has to keep finding ways to work through intermediaries to buy time, while not letting them know that he's there. (It would be so very convenient for them if he died.) Eventually they get enough legal support to start coming into the valley, and he has to rush around and quickly loot all of the bits that he's able to get to that he hadn't looted yet (while trying to not let his crops go bad) and then split attention between convincing them that he's just a local farmer who they don't need to kill and leveraging the toxicity of the core of the valley to stymie their attempts to penetrate it for themselves... with great little scenes like the one where there's a vicious murderous spirit that he'd been carefully trying to starve so that he himself could enter the area, but he can't afford to let the soldiers of the enemy family get any further, so he goes to the spirit and makes a formal offering of herbs and incense and qi-rich foods, and the spirit buffs up from "withered thing that no one's really worried about" to "tiny god of death" and basically just eats something like a squad of mid-range soldiers... and now he has to figure out a way to work with the spirit that *Isn't* just "starve it and hope it goes away".
 
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Sirrocco said:
Ahhhh. I see now. It's not just that he's limited to an area - it's that initially the area is small enough and has little enough in the way of cultivation resources and combat arts that he can't normally cultivate up far enough to break the seal and thus must actively work to increase the level of cultivation the area can support and leverage what arts he can get. Okay. Cool.

So... if he's locked down to this little area, with relatively few allies, what's to stop the folks who killed his family from coming back to finish the job?

Alternately, to remove that aspect, and remove much of the initial revenge schtick, you could have the catastrophe be the result of his family messing around with Powers They Ought Not Have Touched. If it blasted the core of his ancestral lands and made them dangerous to enter, it even gives another way in which he can be powering up - as he gains ability, he can push further into the blasted zone, possibly recover arts/resources/etc, and eventually cleanse bits of the land enough that he can expand his fields.

As another interesting subplot... perhaps there are other noble families who desire the lands for themselves (largely so that they can loot whatever's left of his birthright in the blasted parts), and are in legal proceedings to acquire them. After all, his family was totally wiped out, right? He can't personally make it to the courthouse to protest his existence, so he has to keep finding ways to work through intermediaries to buy time, while not letting them know that he's there (it would be so very convenient for them if he died. Eventually they get enough legal support to start coming into the valley, and he has to rush around and quickly loot all of the bits that he's able to get to that he hadn't looted yet (while trying to not let his crops go bad) and then split attention between convincing them that he's just a local farmer who they don't need to kill and leveraging the toxicity of the core of the valley to stymie their attempts to penetrate it for themselves... with great little scenes like the one where there's a vicious murderous spirit that he'd been carefully trying to starve so that he himself could enter the area, but he can't afford to let the soldiers of the enemy family get any further, so he goes to the spirit and makes a formal offering of herbs and incense and qi-rich foods, and the spirit buffs up from "withered thing that no one's really worried about" to "tiny god of death" and basically just eats something like a squad of mid-range soldiers... and now he has to figure out a way to work with the spirit that *Isn't* just "starve it and hope it goes away".
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What stops other nobles is that for generations Murong Clan have been trapping the forest and mountains constantly such that a guide only knows 'a safe path for 2 at a certain time' and not where a dangerous path is. Also the curse only prevents male descendents from leaving, female descendents have been married to other noble families. Those Murong Remnants are very upset about losing their hometown and backing and formed an alliance to stop the land grabs.

The traps are so common and dangerous for armies that only a super powerful (famous) cultivator or internal sabotage can be the cause. So only a smash and grab sneak attack rather than occupying is feasible.

Also as an Artisan caste nobility, they are supposed to give tribute to the emperor. This could be famous swords for the emperor to bribe sword masters with.

The army outside isn't so much protecting the clan as ensuring that tribute flows in return for trade into the valley with a convenient excuse. So it is kind of an Imperial embaresment that they couldn't 'protect' the clan.

I want to play with the 4 caste system, merchant, farmer, artisan, scholar. With the protagonist as a farmer, there are certain legal rights that prevents land grabs if you tribute well.

For the Murong clan, I was thinking that all the treasures and arts are locked behind arrays that test for the Murong curse. The invaders only smashed and grabbed the valuable swords and fled after setting everything on fire and killing everyone.

There is a contribution points system with a redeemable senior disciple, clan elder position. So fhe MC needs to do a privilege escalation to unlock more of the clan arts. Does this by pouring farmed spirit herbs into the treasury.

He picks the herb gathering quest then submits the herbs, gets the alchemy receptionist quest to put it into alchemy warehouse. Then cries as all of them rots because only senior disciples can take the alchemy prep tasks.Then after getting senior disciple position, he cries as only elders can give pills as rewards.

For the spirit idea, maybe he could buddy up with the local earth god with spirit alcohol. Who can reccomend spirit animals into the ecosystems he creates. To protect against the nobles as well.
 
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Has anyone read "mini-world of endless fun", and gotten deep into it, like around 500+ chapters?

It's one of those modern chinese nationalist potagonists with a system, when the modern world begins to regain qi.

What intrigued me was the gimick of the system for the protagonist. By playing games through a developer only the protagonist is subscribed to, the protagonist affects the real world and obtains benefits to his cultivation path.

That and the character developments are sorta impressive. I've never seen a possible harem where the potential harem has one male and multiple females competing over the same dude before.

My point is that I really do like the way the games and reality overlaped, up until the games overlaped more directly onto the protagonist instead of indirectly.

I think it might be possible to do something like that idea as a quest, but I'm not sure how to go about that. Even though I call them games, they really aren't games that can ever exist in reality, as a key point to the success of the protagonist is his limited ability to break the fourth wall. An FPS game with a linear story wouldn't allow it's players to write their own script for interactions with npcs for example.
 
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