Glossary / Body and Qi
Body and Qi in Chinese: 83 Terms and Their English Renderings
The anatomy invented for the genre: channels, cores, spirit, and the senses that come with them.
83 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 丹田 | Dantian | The energy centre below the navel. Where qi is stored and where the core forms. |
| 经脉 | Meridians | The channels qi travels through. Blocked channels mean a block in power. |
| 窍穴 | Acupoints | The nodes on the meridians. Opening more of them means faster recovery and stronger techniques. |
| 识海 | Sea of Consciousness | The inner space where the mind lives. Where soul attacks land. |
| 神识 | Divine Sense | The mind's reach: how a cultivator senses what the eyes cannot, and how far. |
| 元神 | Primordial Spirit | The core self, deeper than the body. What survives death if anything does. |
| 神魂 | Soul | The spirit itself. Damaged souls do not heal the way bodies do. |
| 法力 | Dharma Power | The spendable fuel. Every technique costs some; running out mid-fight is fatal. |
| 灵力 | Spiritual Energy | The raw energy in the air and in things. What you gather before you can spend it. |
| 真气 | True Qi | Qi refined inside the body. Denser and more controllable than what is in the air. |
| 精血 | Essence Blood | Blood mixed with life force. Burn it for a burst of power, then pay for it in years. |
| 肉身 | Physical Body | The body as opposed to the soul. Body refiners treat it as the real weapon. |
| 道基 | Dao Foundation | The structural base under everything a cultivator builds. Damage it and nothing else matters. |
| 气血 | Vitality | Physical life force. What body refiners burn as fuel and what old age drains. |
| 内视 | Inner Vision | Looking inside your own body with divine sense. How a cultivator checks for damage or poison. |
| 灵台 | Mind Platform | An older term for the seat of consciousness. 'Clear mind platform' means a calm, unclouded mind. |
| 气海 | Qi Sea | The reservoir of qi below the dantian. Its size decides how long you can keep fighting, not how hard you hit. |
| 灵力枯竭 | Qi Depleted | Emptied out. The most dangerous state a cultivator can be in, because it is the one state where numbers start to matter. |
| 道基受损 | Damaged Dao Foundation | Damage below the realm itself. No pill fixes it, no rival can be blamed for it, and it never quite heals. |
| 经脉寸断 | Meridians Severed | Every channel in the body cut. The clinical way of saying this person will never cultivate again. |
| 废人 | Cripple | Someone whose cultivation has been destroyed. In this genre that is a fate, not a medical condition. |
| 灵觉 | Spirit Sense | The instinct for qi and danger that precedes training. Faster than divine sense, less precise. |
| 先天真气 | Innate True Qi | True qi present at birth. An unfair advantage in the first realm, and a burden later. |
| 通脉 | Open the Meridians | Clearing the channels so qi can move. The first practical step every cultivator takes. |
| 扩脉 | Widen the Meridians | Stretching the channels to carry more. Painful, permanent, and worth it. |
| 炼体九重 | Nine Body Realms | The body refiners' own ladder, running parallel to qi cultivation. Ignored until someone wins with it. |
| 皮膜 | Skin Membrane | The first layer of body refining: skin hard enough to turn a blade. |
| 筋骨 | Sinew and Bone | The second layer: tendons like cable, bones like iron. |
| 脏腑 | Inner Organs | The third layer, and the one that kills people. Refining organs hurts in a way flesh does not. |
| 玉骨 | Jade Bone | Bone refined until it is hard without being brittle. |
| 金身 | Golden Body | The signature achievement of body refining: a frame that will not break. |
| 肉身成圣 | Sainthood of the Flesh | The end of the body path: immortality without a soul to lose. Rarely reached, never forgotten. |
| 气血如龙 | Blood Like a Dragon | Description of a body cultivator's vitality. Audible from across the courtyard. |
| 洗髓伐骨 | Marrow Cleansing | The first true rebuild of the body. Agonising, necessary, and impossible to fake. |
| 脱胎换骨 | Reborn Body | What happens after a major realm: the old body is discarded, not repaired. |
| 神识外放 | Divine Sense Projection | Pushing awareness outward to scout, track or eavesdrop. Constant at high realms. |
| 神识攻击 | Divine Sense Attack | Striking the soul directly. No armour stops it, and few arts teach how to block it. |
| 神魂受损 | Soul Damage | Injury to the soul. Heals ten times slower than flesh, sometimes not at all. |
| 膻中 | Chest Center | The point between the lungs where qi gathers before rising. Blocking it stops the breath. |
| 命门 | Gate of Life | The point on the lower back that anchors vitality. A favorite target in assassination. |
| 百会 | Crown Point | The point at the top of the skull. Where spirit qi enters and where souls leave. |
| 涌泉 | Bubbling Spring | The point on the sole of the foot. Where a body draws strength from the ground. |
| 劳宫 | Palm Center | The point in the middle of the palm. Where a technique is released from. |
| 印堂 | Brow Point | The point between the eyebrows. Turns dark when a person is doomed. |
| 太阳穴 | Temple | A weak point on the skull. The first thing anyone guards in a real fight. |
| 后颈 | Nape | The back of the neck. One strike here and the body stops answering. |
| 心脉 | Heart Meridian | The channel that carries blood and qi together. Severed, it kills within moments. |
| 奇经八脉 | Eight Extraordinary Meridians | The deeper channel network most people never open. Opening them changes a life. |
| 任脉 | Conception Vessel | The front channel running up the body's midline. Half of the core circuit. |
| 督脉 | Governing Vessel | The back channel running up the spine. The other half of the core circuit. |
| 穴位 | Pressure Point | A specific spot that can be struck to disable. Precision beats force. |
| 解穴 | Release the Point | Undoing a point strike. Needs the same knowledge that applied it. |
| 封穴 | Seal the Points | Blocking the flow at its nodes so the opponent cannot use power. |
| 易筋 | Sinew Change | Replacing the body's connective tissue with something better. Old and feared. |
| 体魄 | Physique | Raw physical constitution. What a body refiner brags about. |
| 真元 | True Essence Reserve | Refined energy, purer than ordinary qi. What high-level techniques run on. |
| 元气 | Primordial Qi | The body's original store of vitality. Damage it and no pill will help. |
| 内息 | Inner Breath | The breath felt inside the body rather than the air outside. What a martial artist listens to. |
| 灵识 | Spiritual Sense | The early, weaker form of spiritual sense. Short range, easy to exhaust. |
| 五感 | Five Senses | Normal sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. What a cultivator improves first. |
| 耳力 | Hearing | Acuity of the ear. A trained one hears a heartbeat through a wall. |
| 目力 | Eyesight | Acuity of the eye. Sees in the dark, sees through disguises, sees what you hide. |
| 鼻息 | Sense of Smell | Tracking by scent. Underrated, and hard to lie to. |
| 丹田破碎 | Shattered Dantian | The injury that ends a cultivation career. Every comeback plot starts with this sentence. |
| 上丹田 | Upper Dantian | The seat in the forehead, tied to spirit and perception. Where divine sense is generated. |
| 中丹田 | Middle Dantian | The chest centre, tied to breath and blood. Rarely mentioned, always damaged. |
| 下丹田 | Lower Dantian | The one people mean when they say dantian without qualification. Core storage. |
| 十二正经 | The Twelve Principal Meridians | The standard channel system, borrowed from acupuncture. Damage to any one of them is named specifically. |
| 经络 | Channels and Collaterals | The whole network, big channels and small branches. Used when a technique damages the body globally. |
| 穴道 | Acupoint | A point on the channel network. Striking one can freeze a limb, which is how non-lethal fights stay interesting. |
| 气门 | Qi Gate | A weak point where energy enters the body. The thing an assassin aims at. |
| 神府 | Spirit Mansion | The upper region of the sea of consciousness. Where the soul sits, if the system has one. |
| 元魂 | Primal Soul | The core of the soul, smaller and more fragile. Destroying it means no reincarnation. |
| 魂魄 | Hun and Po Souls | The two-part soul of the old texts: the heavenly hun, the earthly po. Ghost stories run on the split. |
| 神念 | Spiritual Thought | A single directed probe. Sharper than spiritual sense, and more noticeable. |
| 精神力量 | Mental Power | The raw quantity behind perception and illusion. Exhausting it causes headaches and bad decisions. |
| 血气 | Blood Vigour | The sharper version, closer to aggression. High values are visible as a red aura. |
| 骨髓 | Marrow | Where blood is made, and in this genre the deepest reserve of the body. Refining it is a late-stage upgrade. |
| 气感 | Sense of Qi | The first moment a beginner feels energy. Written as a tingling, and it never gets more interesting than that. |
| 外息 | Outer Breath | Ordinary breathing. In a fight it gets used as the timing cue for everything else. |
| 胎息 | Womb Breathing | Breathing without using the nose or mouth. A sign of advanced attainment, and a party trick in some novels. |
| 龟息 | Tortoise Breathing | Slowed breathing to survive with almost no air. Used for hiding underwater or under rubble. |
| 血窍 | Blood Orifice | A point where blood can be drawn or sealed. Demon path techniques target these. |
Get this vocabulary wrong and every fight scene reads as noise. It is borrowed from acupuncture charts and Daoist internal alchemy, then stretched until it works for wuxia pacing. Terms 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.
My Brother Wants My Dao Companion. Off to Martial Uncle He Goes.A family dispute over a dao companion, settled by the most senior relative available.经脉 Why Is Everyone in My Sect a Spy?!A sect where every senior brother turns out to be somebody else's agent.神识 Apologize to Foundation Establishment at Deity Transformation?A Spirit Severing cultivator comes home to a sect that no longer knows what he is.神魂Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary