Genres
Xianxia
Cultivation fiction whose protagonists pursue immortality and transcendence, with Daoist and Buddhist framing.
Xianxia is the branch of cultivation fiction in which protagonists pursue actual immortality or transcendence through mystical cultivation, framed by Daoist and Buddhist cosmology. Heroes, sects, heavenly tribulations and ascension are its furniture.
The useful contrast is with wuxia: xianxia heroes are climbing toward something beyond the human; wuxia heroes stay mortal, peak-human martial artists whose stories center on moral codes and human relationships.