Discussion What started the "cultivation" trend ?

Unless you tell me it's because of the history of china.

What was the first popular CN that created the boom of cultivation + different realms? If possible a modern one.


It's interesting how it differed then the JP WN trend of mana magic + adventurers.

 

I wanna say Chinese myths and legends to $400 Alex...

 

Old man Laozi

 

Drugs, lots and lots of drugs.

 

cultivators themselves

 

Probably Wuxias and JP Novels. Then again before the xuanhuan novel trend started, there were a lot of similar games dealing with martial arts fantasy, that could had influence some imagination. Maybe even Dragon Ball Z had a influence. There’s so many things in that story that’s given a lot of good ideas..

 

Cultivator that don't have jobs decided to become writer and writes about wish fulfillment that they always dreams on.

 

Demn monks and their fantasy (just a joke okay!?!)

 

Religion and legends.

 

There are a lot of answers to this question.

I heard DeathBlade say it was some novel named Water Mage or something. Most think it to be The Romance of the Condor Heroes, Sun Wukong, The Monkey King. For me personally it would be Dragon Ball Z.

 

boredom?

 

The first book on cultivation was a autobiography by a foundational stage cultivator. Seeing it's success all other authors added their own imagination to write better novels using that book as a foundation.

 

Jin Yong?

 

Superstitions

 

Basically, if you want your citizens to become arrogant and frog in the well just divert people's attention from the reality that's what Chinese novels are
It's just Avery countries has a topic for them
Usa, alien
India, love story
Uk, magician
China, disrespecting others
Japan, beta male
Etc

 

wuxiaworld actually had a article on that. there was a death of an old chinese fiction writer who wrote books similiar to the condor heroes or heroes shed no tears. basically old wuxia novels.

apparantly, the author mentioned wrote a book in which the charactor cultivated to a level where he broke the void before the story ended. it was one of the firsts and lead the path way for future CN xianxia, xuanhuan and othe high fantasy novels.

chinese mythology and philosophy has involved thoughts of higher planes and gods and demons living along side humans. there are early works like the journey to the west as examples. they also have the beliefe in internal energy and harnessing it. this combined with old wuxia cultivation novels lead to some pretty sweet high fantasy CN novels that we have today.

 

probably myths and legends, but they expand on it, you start off as a weak little human and then next thing you know you have qi or whatever and any enemy you see in these are defeated, a xuan level cultivator from some light novel or whatever it was called, could fly but from where it started you were only at qi refinement, where it works on building your base for the body. and then as soon as you reach it bing badaboom everything below that just feels weak? then you see people who could create worlds, morph reality, break mountains with but a punch. gods just don't feel as powerful expecially when you can eventually kill them.

 

People were hungry, they had to eat and hunting was too tiring, so they imitated birds and start burying seeds into soil.

 

myth and legends created genre.
if you want to know what popularized genre look for oldest novels that kids read in schools (in china ofc)

 

Growing up watching dragon ball z, "cultivator" was never part of my vocabulary. Im pretty sure the kids watching 'Super' now dont associate the show with it either.