Have you ever wondered about real life bloodlines, or a little magic of xianxia that can be brought here to the real world? For most of my east asian friends, this will be significantly easier because oftentimes, our parents keep these documents in forgotten cupboards. For other races, it might be a little harder. Now, to start: Many of the names of bloodlines in xianxia (or at least the more historically accurate ones) oftentimes originate or at least somewhat derive from from real-life clans that exist in the real world. Typically, this is only Chinese. However, in other ethnicities bloodlines, other clans may pop up as well. If you have evidence or knowledge of your bloodline, (or seriously, just make up your own if you want), its a seriously cool feeling to inject yourself into a xianxia story as a fellow cultivator/bystander, rather than just a reader. Asian clans+descendants are typically patriarchal, so if you need help in that respect in tracing, there you go. My own dad just suddenly popped a story about how my clan was aristocratic and his own grandfather was the richest landowner in korea. Didn't go well with the communists. You don't even necessarily have to be east asian. I'm sure a lot of our indian readers can trace their bloodlines, and I'm sure a lot of xianxia readers have seen things like the "Dragon-Elephant Fist", in which case, the elephant part comes from beings such as Ganesha. Europeans can put their own spin on it. A clan's symbol and/or main building and/or main myth and/or beast can be considered the foundation of whatever cheat you're inserting into yourself. I found that my clan's symbol was our Three Piety Gate, as well as a relation to a distant, forefather figure, so I built my ability off of that. I'm sure others can find much cooler or dream up much cooler things. This seems like a great way to deepen immersion into xianxia reading and world building. It would be really cool to get a community or novel made to get newcomers excited about xianxia, using this kind of imaginative stuff. As an additional tip, take a look at some japanese kamon or korean clan emblems if you want to get your imaginations fired up! Important buildings, mythos (i've learned of some pretty cool myths that directly connect to much larger ones) just through wikipedia. It's your choice to go back as far as you want.
Oh crap, I didn't mean to post in Novel General. It's up in General Chat. My bad. Please go there. Or, actually, things get drowned out too fast in general chat. This is fine too if this works.
It's called inbreeding. It's mostly done to keep the wealth within the family. If your clan was aristocratic, there was probably a lot of marriages between cousins back in the day.
Bloodlines aren't really a thing where I live, not outside the aristocracy, but tracing ancestry is relatively simple due to the church records. Ofc it isn't exactly perfect, but it goes back a pretty long time. I think the first entry on the family tree on my parents wall is a guy named Edmund. It's unknown when he lived exactly (at least it's not recorded on the family tree) but his son has 'year 800' written in his entry. Legend goes that Harald Bluetooth was the first guy to get written into the church records and he entered some of his ancestors, of which 'Edmund' was the oldest entry. Ofc that's not the same as bloodline. We're not their direct descendants. But tracing a bloodline up the paternal or maternal lines is relatively simple, assuming one accepts that not all records will be completely accurate for various reasons. Anyone looking to find their anestry tree can check out Ancestry.com. They do DNA tests, I think? Or that might've been another site.
I can only trace back to my mom's parents lol. Even then I am not sure about their background, just that my grandmother was a daughter of a salt merchant that decided to reside here in our Country. I'm completely blanked out with my grandfather as well as my grandparents on my father's side.
Wherever there's lightning power it's probably my bloodline... Though I wouldn't disregard the others, it's just hard keeping tabs how far it's gone by now. Lightning ones are easy to verify.