Glossary / Herbs and Materials
Herbs and Materials in Chinese: 62 Terms and Their English Renderings
The raw inputs: spirit grass, aged roots, monster parts, and how their quality is sold.
62 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 灵草 | Spirit Herb | A plant that holds qi. The base material of almost every pill. |
| 灵药 | Spirit Medicine | A herb or material strong enough to matter. Measured by years of age, not size. |
| 仙草 | Immortal Herb | A herb above mortal grade. Usually guarded by something that eats intruders. |
| 药园 | Herb Garden | Where a sect grows its own materials. Quietly the most valuable land it owns. |
| 朱果 | Vermilion Fruit | A classic breakthrough fruit. Ripens once every few decades, which is why people wait. |
| 千年灵芝 | Thousand-Year Lingzhi | An old, expensive fungus used as a main ingredient. The age is the price. |
| 人参 | Ginseng | Ordinary ginseng, or a spirit version worth more than a house. |
| 妖丹 | Beast Core | The core taken from a demonic beast. Used in pills and artifacts alike. |
| 兽血 | Beast Blood | Used to bind or temper materials. The stronger the beast, the better the result. |
| 灵米 | Spirit Rice | Rice grown on spirit veins. What cultivators eat instead of mortal food. |
| 灵酒 | Spirit Wine | Alcohol brewed with herbs. Drunk for pleasure, traded for favours. |
| 药渣 | Herb Dregs | What is left after refining. Sold cheap to people who cannot afford the real thing. |
| 灵植 | Spirit Plant | A spirit herb grown on purpose instead of found in the wild. Slower, safer, and owned by whoever holds the field. |
| 悟道茶 | Enlightenment Tea | Tea that loosens the mind toward insight. Priced accordingly. |
| 龙涎草 | Dragon Saliva Grass | A herb named for what it grows in. Extremely valuable, extremely unpleasant to harvest. |
| 血灵芝 | Blood Lingzhi | Lingzhi grown on corpses. Restores qi fast, and leaves a taste nobody forgets. |
| 九叶莲 | Nine-Leaf Lotus | Lotus with nine leaves rather than three. Each extra leaf is a realm of difference in price. |
| 紫芝 | Purple Ganoderma | A superior lingzhi. Used in pills that repair what other pills damaged. |
| 寒髓草 | Cold Marrow Grass | Grows in ice. The base for cold-attribute pills and a hundred poisons. |
| 火莲 | Fire Lotus | Lotus that grows in lava. Fire cultivators pay anything. |
| 雷击木 | Lightning-Struck Wood | Wood that survived a strike. The best talisman material there is, and half of it is fake. |
| 灵果 | Spirit Fruit | Fruit grown on a spirit tree. Eaten fresh or used as a pill catalyst. |
| 灵蜜 | Spirit Honey | Produced by spirit bees. Heals and replenishes at the same time, which is why it is rationed. |
| 蜂王浆 | Royal Jelly | The concentrated version. One spoon is worth a month of ordinary cultivation. |
| 灵蚕丝 | Spirit Silk | Thread from a spirit silkworm. Woven into robes that shrug off blades. |
| 铁木 | Ironwood | Wood as hard as iron. The cheap structural material of every formation platform. |
| 寒铁 | Cold Iron | Iron that holds cold. Standard for water-attribute weapons. |
| 玄铁 | Mystic Iron | Deep, heavy, black iron. The default material for serious weapons. |
| 星铁 | Meteoric Iron | Iron from a fallen star. Rare enough that owning a bar is a political statement. |
| 灵银 | Spirit Silver | Silver that conducts qi. Used where control matters more than force. |
| 赤铜 | Red Copper | Warm-conducting copper. Common in fire-attribute artifacts. |
| 雷竹 | Thunder Bamboo | Bamboo that grows where lightning strikes. Arrows, rods, and talisman frames. |
| 魂木 | Soul Wood | Wood that nourishes souls. Ghost cultivators guard these trees personally. |
| 阴木 | Yin Wood | Wood grown in lightless places. Cheap for demonic work, expensive for everyone else. |
| 血参 | Blood Ginseng | Ginseng with red roots. Replenishes blood and qi at once, which is why it is always sold young. |
| 蛇涎果 | Snake-Saliva Fruit | Fruit grown where serpents nest. Poison base, and a fortune if you can pick it. |
| 龙血草 | Dragon Blood Grass | Grass said to grow where dragon blood fell. Strengthens the body beyond its realm. |
| 百年灵草 | Century-Old Herb | The baseline for anything useful. Priced by age, and the age is always the negotiation. |
| 千年灵药 | Thousand-Year Herb | Rare enough that its appearance starts a conflict. Stored in jade, never in cloth. |
| 万年灵药 | Ten-Thousand-Year Herb | Mythic tier. Usually guarded by something that eats challengers. |
| 采摘时机 | Harvest Timing | Some herbs are only useful for a few hours. This is why the scene is always rushed. |
| 保存方法 | Preservation | Jade boxes, spirit liquid, or a living spiritual field. Getting this wrong wastes the arc's loot. |
| 药性相克 | Clashing Nature | Two ingredients that cancel each other out or worse. The reason recipes are secrets. |
| 入药 | Ready for the Furnace | Saying a herb's preparation is finished. Three words that move an alchemy scene along. |
| 生服 | Eat It Raw | Consuming an herb without refining it. Effective, wasteful, and considered vulgar. |
| 药力残留 | Residual Potency | What is left after the main effect is used. Small, and the reason characters are reluctant to share. |
| 黄精 | Polygonatum | A real herb, common in the genre's alchemy as a base. Boring, reliable, always in stock. |
| 何首乌 | Fleeceflower Root | Aged root prized for restoration. Old specimens in fiction are almost always sentient. |
| 灵芝 | Reishi | The most familiar medicinal fungus in Chinese practice. In fiction it appears at the humble end of the scale. |
| 雪莲 | Snow Lotus | Grows on a cliff in the cold. Ice-attribute, and fetching one is a whole scene. |
| 寒玉髓 | Cold Jade Marrow | Not a plant but a mineral fluid. Stores cold energy and is collected with care. |
| 幽冥花 | Underworld Flower | Blooms only in places where things died. Yin-attribute, and it attracts ghosts. |
| 九叶草 | Nine-Leaf Grass | Count the leaves to know the age. Nine is the standard shorthand for 'almost ready'. |
| 藤蔓 | Vine | Often the ingredient that fights back. Harvest scenes are frequently ambushes. |
| 树心 | Heartwood | The core of an old tree, used for talismans and for staves. Removing it kills the tree, which is sometimes the plot. |
| 妖木 | Demon Wood | A tree that cultivates. Stationary, patient, and lethal to anyone who camps in it. |
| 灵植夫 | Spirit Cultivator | A farmer who grows these plants. A profession the genre treats as humble until someone grows something impossible. |
| 催熟 | Force Ripening | Accelerating growth with energy or with time arrays. Fast, and the quality drops. |
| 嫁接 | Grafting | Joining two plants to combine traits. Horticulture, but the results can be alarming. |
| 药田巡守 | Field Patrol | The job of guarding a herb garden. Routine until it is not. |
| 秘银 | Mithril | Light, strong, and conducts energy well. Expensive, so it appears in small quantities. |
| 星辰砂 | Star Sand | Sand that fell from the sky. Keyed to space techniques, and hard to buy legitimately. |
Age is the whole price mechanism here, and getting the number wrong changes the scene. Plant names follow the free cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com.
Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary