Glossary / Artifacts and Magic Tools
Artifacts and Magic Tools in Chinese: 96 Terms and Their English Renderings
Weapons, robes and tools ranked from common to heaven-defying, plus the spirit that sometimes lives inside.
96 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 炼器 | Artifact Refining | Making weapons and tools out of materials that can hold qi. |
| 法器 | Magic Tool | A basic enchanted item: a sword that cuts deeper, a robe that stops a blade. |
| 法宝 | Magic Treasure | A real artifact, bound to one owner and usable at range. What cultivators actually fight with. |
| 灵宝 | Spirit Treasure | Above a magic treasure: it has its own presence and can act without being swung. |
| 仙器 | Immortal Artifact | An artifact from the upper realms. One is enough to make a sect untouchable. |
| 本命法宝 | Life-Bound Treasure | Bound to one person's life. It grows with them and breaks when they do. |
| 飞剑 | Flying Sword | A sword flown and controlled at a distance. The signature weapon of the genre. |
| 器灵 | Item Spirit | A consciousness inside a treasure. Sometimes helpful, always with its own agenda. |
| 禁制 | Restriction | A seal or barrier laid onto an object. Force it and the object may break with it. |
| 铭文 | Inscription | Carved patterns that carry the effect. Damaged inscription, dead artifact. |
| 品阶 | Grade | An item's rank, usually one to nine. Decides who can even use it without being hurt. |
| 天材地宝 | Heavenly Treasure | A natural material rare enough to start a war. Not made, found. |
| 炼器师 | Artifact Refiner | A cultivator who makes artifacts. Rarer than alchemists and harder to replace. |
| 认主 | Bind to a Master | Making a treasure accept one owner. Almost always requires blood. |
| 血炼 | Blood Refining | Binding an artifact with your own blood. Faster, and it hurts twice as much when it breaks. |
| 淬炼 | Temper | Repeatedly heating and striking a material to drive impurities out of it. |
| 储物袋 | Storage Pouch | A bag bigger on the inside. Every cultivator has one; losing it is a crisis. |
| 纳戒 | Spatial Ring | A ring that holds a room's worth of things. Worn, not carried. |
| 玉简 | Jade Slip | A slip of jade holding a recorded message or technique, read with divine sense. |
| 灵舟 | Spirit Boat | A flying boat. Transport for people who cannot fly under their own power yet. |
| 剑阵 | Sword Formation | Several flying swords arranged into a killing pattern. The signature move of anyone who fights with swords and nothing else. |
| 刀气 | Blade Qi | The cutting force thrown past the edge of the blade itself. It reaches further than the arm does. |
| 掌风 | Palm Wind | The pressure wave pushed ahead of a palm strike. It arrives before the hand does. |
| 拳劲 | Fist Force | The penetrating force behind a punch, aimed at what is inside rather than what is visible. |
| 灵材 | Spirit Material | The blanket term for anything refined into an artifact. Markets price it by grade, not by name. |
| 剑气 | Sword Qi | The sharpened force thrown off by a sword. It cuts at a distance, and it shows how deep the sword intent runs. |
| 剑芒 | Sword Radiance | The visible light on the edge of a blade, condensed until it is almost solid. The brighter it is, the denser it is. |
| 刀意 | Blade Intent | The will of the blade made external. Differs from sword intent in temperament, not in principle. |
| 拳意 | Fist Intent | The will behind a punch, projected ahead of contact. A bare-handed cultivator's answer to sword intent. |
| 罡气 | Astral Qi | Hard, outward-blasting defensive qi. Crude next to a qi light barrier, and much harder to break through. |
| 护甲 | Protective Armor | Artifact-grade armour. It takes one hit from someone of your own realm, which is usually the hit that mattered. |
| 内甲 | Inner Armor | Soft armour worn under the robes. Nobody knows about it until the blade fails to go in. |
| 宝塔 | Pagoda Treasure | A tower artifact used to suppress and capture. Once it covers you, the fight is over. |
| 钟 | Bell | A bell artifact. One strike scatters the mind, and the second scatters the formation. |
| 印 | Seal | A seal artifact that drops like a mountain. Slow, obvious, and almost impossible to block. |
| 幡 | Banner | A banner artifact for gathering souls or killing intent. Demon sects carry them in procession. |
| 镜 | Mirror | A mirror artifact that reveals illusions and hidden things. Every elder keeps one. |
| 伞 | Umbrella | An umbrella artifact. Opens and blocks almost anything for as long as the qi holds. |
| 扇 | Fan | A fan artifact for wind and fire. Elegant until it is used. |
| 鞭 | Whip | A whip artifact built to bind rather than cut. Holds a target in place for the killing blow. |
| 弓 | Bow | A bow artifact for killing at range. One arrow, one decision. |
| 箭 | Arrow | The arrow for such a bow. Usually made to break armour and formations, not flesh. |
| 枪 | Spear | A spear artifact, favoured by anyone who wants reach and does not care about elegance. |
| 戟 | Halberd | A halberd artifact. Heavy, awkward, and devastating in the hands of someone strong enough. |
| 锤 | Hammer | A hammer artifact built to break defences. No subtlety, no counters. |
| 爪 | Claw Gauntlet | A claw artifact worn on the hand. Short range, and it never lets go. |
| 盾 | Shield | A shield artifact held separately from the body. The professional choice for surviving a first strike. |
| 飞梭 | Flying Shuttle | A small, fast transport artifact. Faster than a boat, and far less comfortable. |
| 灵船 | Spirit Ship | A full-size vessel for crossing seas and skies. Owning one makes a sect a power. |
| 傀丝 | Puppet Thread | The threads that control a puppet. Cut them and the puppet is furniture. |
| 器胚 | Artifact Blank | An unformed vessel waiting to be worked. The quality of the blank decides the ceiling. |
| 炼器炉 | Forge Furnace | The furnace where artifacts are worked. Built to take heat that would melt a house. |
| 淬火 | Quench | The plunge from white heat into cold. The single step where most artifacts die. |
| 锤打 | Hammering | Beating the blank into shape. Literally a thousand strikes, and everyone can hear you doing it. |
| 血纹 | Blood Pattern | Patterns carved with the maker's own blood. How a treasure learns whose it is. |
| 器劫 | Artifact Tribulation | Lightning sent to test a treasure at the moment of completion. |
| 通灵 | Sentient | The threshold where a treasure starts having opinions. Charming in a sword, fatal in a banner. |
| 噬主 | Devour the Master | A treasure turning on its owner. Always the result of an item spirit raised badly. |
| 认主失败 | Failed Binding | The cost of forcing a bond. Backlash, injury, or a corpse still holding the hilt. |
| 双修法宝 | Dual Treasure | A treasure bound to two people. Powerful together, useless the moment the pair splits. |
| 套装法宝 | Treasure Set | Several pieces designed as one. Complete sets multiply; a broken set is scrap. |
| 破灵梭 | Spirit-Breaking Shuttle | An artifact built to pierce protective qi. One hit, one hole, no argument. |
| 长剑 | Longsword | The default weapon of anyone who has no reason to choose otherwise. |
| 短剑 | Short Sword | Fast, close, and concealable. The choice of assassins and the paranoid. |
| 重剑 | Heavy Sword | A sword built on weight rather than technique. Slow, and it does not need to be fast. |
| 软剑 | Soft Sword | A blade that coils around the waist and makes no sound coming out. |
| 双剑 | Twin Swords | One in each hand. Doubles the attack and halves the defence. |
| 匕首 | Dagger | The weapon that appears when everything else has failed. |
| 毒针 | Poison Needle | A needle with something unpleasant on it. Small enough to be missed in a fight. |
| 机关 | Trap Mechanism | A mechanical trap. Springs, weights and pressure plates, built by people who cannot fight. |
| 袖箭 | Sleeve Arrow | A short bolt fired from the sleeve. Only useful once, which is all it needs. |
| 本命法器 | Natal Artifact | Bound to one person for life. If it breaks, so does part of the owner. |
| 本命飞剑 | Life-Bound Flying Sword | The swordsman's version. Grows with the owner, which is why they refuse to replace it. |
| 法器品阶 | Artifact Grade | Ranked from common to immortal. A grade one artifact is a sharp tool; grade nine is a character. |
| 凡器 | Mortal Weapon | Made by a blacksmith, not a refiner. Breaks against anything with energy in it. |
| 灵器 | Spirit Tool | The first grade that can hold energy. What a mid-tier disciple carries. |
| 宝器 | Treasure Tool | Rare, named, and owned by one person at a time. |
| 器灵沉睡 | Dormant Item Spirit | The spirit is present but inactive. Waking it usually requires something expensive. |
| 解除契约 | Break the Bond | Severing the tie. Painful for both parties, and the artifact often keeps a grudge. |
| 剑匣 | Sword Case | A case holding several swords. Opening it is always dramatic and usually excessive. |
| 护身法宝 | Defensive Treasure | Something that protects passively. Everyone who lives long enough owns at least one. |
| 护心镜 | Heart Guard | A mirror or plate worn on the chest. Blocks the first strike that would have killed. |
| 护体灵衣 | Spirit Robe | Clothing that hardens on impact. Expensive, and ruined without drama. |
| 储物空间 | Storage Space | The interior of a ring or a bag. Living things go in only if nobody is watching. |
| 炼器材料 | Forging Stock | Ore, hide, bone, wood. The supply chain that makes smiths necessary. |
| 开锋 | First Edge | The final grinding that makes a blade usable. Traditionally done by the owner. |
| 器成 | Forging Complete | The moment the item leaves the workshop. Usually accompanied by a sound the neighbours hear. |
| 返虚 | Return to Nothing | A broken artifact losing its power. What happens to everything the protagonist outgrows. |
| 法宝自爆 | Artifact Detonation | Pushing an artifact past its limit deliberately. Big explosion, permanent loss. |
| 储灵 | Store Energy | Pre-charging an artifact for later use. Otherwise a fight begins with an empty weapon. |
| 御器 | Control the Artifact | Directing a weapon or tool by will. The basic skill behind every flying weapon. |
| 破损 | Damaged | Not broken, not working properly. The genre's way of giving a character a bad fight. |
| 修补 | Repair | Fixing an artifact. Requires the original material, which is the actual plot. |
| 重铸 | Reforge | Melting down and starting again. Loses history, keeps material. |
| 法宝压制 | Artifact Suppression | A higher-grade artifact forcing a lower one to stop working. Why picking the right tool matters. |
Rank names repeat across novels, so consistency matters more than elegance. Renderings follow the free cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com.
Where these words turn up
Stories on this site that use them the way the notes describe.
An Eastern Demonic Cultivator Went West for Evil ArtsA demonic cultivator goes abroad to study the local forbidden techniques.法器, 法宝 Killing the Junior Sister of the Immortal SectThe sect’s favourite disciple is the one person a killer was told not to touch.品阶 I Only Swept the Floor, So How Did I Become a Sword Saint?A floor sweeper who turns out to be the only person in the sect who understands a sword.剑气Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary