Glossary / Primordial Myth
Primordial Myth in Chinese: 114 Terms and Their English Renderings
The deep past the genre keeps referring to: creation, the first divisions of the world, the oldest powers.
114 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 盘古 | Pangu | The giant who split heaven from earth and then died doing it. His body became the landscape, which is why mountains and rivers in this tradition are never just scenery. |
| 混沌 | Primordial Chaos | The undivided state before anything had a shape. Modern novels use it as the ultimate power source; anything called chaos-attribute is automatically the strongest thing in the room. |
| 道祖 | Ancestor of the Dao | The title given to Hongjun in the creation epics, and the highest rank anyone can hold. In game adaptations he is usually the final NPC who gives out endings. |
| 鸿钧 | Hongjun | The teacher of the three pure ones, and by extension the teacher of everyone. He almost never fights; he explains the rules and then watches them get broken. |
| 三清 | The Three Pure Ones | The three highest deities of the Daoist pantheon, treated in fiction as three brothers who disagree. Their disagreements usually become the plot of an entire arc. |
| 太上老君 | Tai Shang Lao Jun | The deified Laozi, keeper of the alchemy furnace in the heavenly palace. Every adaptation puts a pill in that furnace that somebody steals. |
| 元始天尊 | Yuanshi Tianzun | One of the three pure ones, associated with the beginning and with authority. In sect fiction he is claimed as founder by sects that want to sound older than they are. |
| 通天教主 | Tongtian Jiaozhu | The third of the three pure ones, patron of the heterodox. Novels use him whenever a character needs a respectable ancestor for an unrespectable method. |
| 女娲 | Nuwa | The goddess who patched the sky and made people out of clay. Cultivation fiction keeps her as a background figure whose leftover stones become treasures. |
| 伏羲 | Fuxi | The first of the three sovereigns, credited with the trigrams. Any divination system in a novel traces back to him, often through a diagram nobody can read. |
| 神农 | Shennong | The divine farmer who tasted hundreds of herbs to find out which ones kill you. Alchemy chapters cite him the way a paper cites a founding study. |
| 轩辕 | Xuanyuan | The Yellow Emperor, ancestor of the human line and namesake of countless swords. A sword called Xuanyuan in a novel always means the owner has a claim on legitimacy. |
| 蚩尤 | Chiyou | The rebel chieftain defeated by the Yellow Emperor, later remembered as a war god. Novels that want a sympathetic villain reach for him first. |
| 刑天 | Xingtian | The headless warrior who keeps fighting with his face on his torso. He shows up whenever a scene needs to prove that losing your head is not the end of a fight. |
| 夸父 | Kuafu | The giant who chased the sun and died of thirst. In fiction he is the standard reference for ambition that is larger than the body carrying it. |
| 后羿 | Houyi | The archer who shot down nine suns and kept one. Bow artifacts in novels are almost always his, or claim to be. |
| 嫦娥 | Chang'e | The woman who drank the elixir and floated to the moon. Moon palace scenes in cultivation novels are her house, whether or not she appears in them. |
| 东皇太一 | Donghuang Taiyi | The supreme god of the ancient Chu hymns, later folded into the primordial hierarchy as its first emperor. Novels that need a power above the three pure ones use him. |
| 帝俊 | Dijun | An early sky sovereign, largely forgotten outside myth. His ten sun sons are the reason the sun-shooting story exists. |
| 羲和 | Xihe | Mother of the suns, and the charioteer who drives them across the sky. Sun-related techniques often borrow her name for their highest tier. |
| 共工 | Gonggong | The water god who rammed the pillar of heaven and tilted the sky. Every map in this tradition has a southeast that is slightly lower because of him. |
| 祝融 | Zhurong | The fire god, and Gonggong's usual opponent. Fire techniques in novels cite him the way sword users cite the Yellow Emperor. |
| 烛龙 | Zhulong | The torch dragon whose open eyes are day and closed eyes are night. Games love him because his design writes itself. |
| 鲲鹏 | Kunpeng | The fish that becomes a bird, from a line in Zhuangzi. Movement techniques and sect names borrow it constantly because it implies a transformation nobody can follow. |
| 饕餮 | Taotie | The glutton of the four fiends, a mouth with no body that eats everything. Treasure-devouring artifacts get named after it, always with a warning attached. |
| 穷奇 | Qiongqi | A winged tiger that eats the honest and rewards the vicious. Antagonist beasts in the genre are usually this one wearing a different coat. |
| 梼杌 | Taowu | The stubborn one of the four fiends, a boar-tiger that refuses to be reasoned with. Used for enemies who cannot be talked down. |
| 混沌兽 | Hundun Beast | The fourth fiend, a faceless blob of disorder. Chaos-attribute monsters in novels are drawn from it. |
| 九尾狐 | Nine-Tailed Fox | The fox spirit of a thousand stories, devious in some and tragic in most. Cultivation novels split hard between the two readings, so check the tone of the book. |
| 白泽 | Baize | The beast that knows the name and weakness of every monster. A character who owns a Baize diagram can identify anything, which is a very convenient power. |
| 毕方 | Bifang | The one-legged fire bird. Its appearance in a text is usually a warning that a fire is about to matter. |
| 重明鸟 | Chongming Bird | The double-pupil bird that drives off evil. Temple carvings use it as a ward, and so do defensive formations. |
| 精卫 | Jingwei | The bird that fills the sea with pebbles, one at a time. Novels use her as shorthand for pointless persistence that the plot then rewards. |
| 帝江 | Dijiang | The faceless, six-legged bird of the western mountains. Its appearance is closer to a warning than a character. |
| 陆吾 | Luwu | The tiger-bodied guardian of the Kunlun gardens. He is the gate check for anyone trying to walk into a sacred mountain. |
| 开明兽 | Kaiming Beast | The nine-headed guardian of the gate to Kunlun. Nine heads means nine questions before entry, in some versions. |
| 英招 | Yingzhao | The horse-tiger bird that tends the divine gardens. Minor, but useful for a scene that needs a caretaker with teeth. |
| 西王母 | Queen Mother of the West | The goddess of the western paradise and keeper of the peaches of immortality. Every immortality plot owes her something, whether or not she appears. |
| 瑶池 | Jade Pool | The Queen Mother's lake, and by extension her whole court. Peach-banquet scenes are set here, and someone always gets left off the guest list. |
| 蟠桃 | Peach of Immortality | The peach that adds centuries of life. Three grades in most tellings, and the theft of one is the start of a war. |
| 琼浆玉液 | Jade Nectar | The drink served at the heavenly banquets. In novels it is a consumable that repairs the body better than most pills. |
| 方寸山 | Mount Fangcun | The mountain where Sun Wukong learned his seventy-two transformations, hidden so well that nobody could find it unless they were meant to. Its name means square inch, which is the joke. |
| 斜月三星洞 | Slanting Moon and Three Stars Cave | The cave inside Mount Fangcun where the master taught. Read as a character puzzle, the name spells out the word for heart. |
| 花果山 | Mount Huaguo | The Flower-Fruit Mountain, home of the monkey king and his stone. Adaptations treat it as a kingdom; some novels later treat it as occupied territory. |
| 水帘洞 | Water Curtain Cave | The cave behind the waterfall on Huaguo, found by jumping through and not dying. It is the first test in the monkey king's story, and the reward is a home. |
| 昆仑 | Kunlun | The mountain range that myth treats as the axis of the world, with the immortals living at the top. In cultivation fiction every sect claims a branch of it, and every map puts it northwest. |
| 昆仑墟 | Ruins of Kunlun | The abandoned upper reaches of Kunlun, where the old palaces are. Ruin-exploration arcs use it as the standard high-level dungeon. |
| 蓬莱 | Penglai | The island of the immortals in the eastern sea, visible but unreachable. Any novel with a sea voyage has someone looking for it. |
| 瀛洲 | Yingzhou | One of the eastern immortal isles, home to herbs and strange birds. Alchemy plots need it for ingredients that cannot be bought. |
| 方丈 | Fangzhang Isle | The third of the eastern isles, and the one most often used as a hermitage. Careful: the same characters also mean the abbot of a temple. |
| 须弥山 | Mount Sumeru | The mountain at the centre of the Buddhist cosmos, with the heavens stacked above it. It gives a novel a sky ladder that is already on record. |
| 雷音寺 | Thunder Sound Temple | The temple at the end of the westward journey. In fiction it is both the destination and the thing that turns out to be a test. |
| 大雷音寺 | Great Thunder Sound Temple | The full name of the temple, used when a scene wants to sound official. Fake temples along the road borrow the name to trap pilgrims. |
| 东胜神洲 | Aparagodaniya | One of the four continents of Buddhist cosmology, the one where the monkey king was born. Novels set their starting region here when they want mythic weight. |
| 四大部洲 | The Four Continents | The four landmasses of Buddhist cosmology, arranged around Mount Sumeru. Using the real names gives a world map that is already structured. |
| 九重天 | The Nine Heavens | The layered sky above the mortal world, each layer ruled by a different court. Ascension plots count their progress by which heaven they can reach. |
| 天宫 | Heavenly Palace | The celestial court, bureaucracy included. Comedy in the genre usually happens here, because a divine government is funny by default. |
| 凌霄宝殿 | Lingxiao Hall | The main throne hall of the heavenly palace, where the Jade Emperor sits. Every rebellion arc ends with a fight in this room. |
| 南天门 | Southern Heavenly Gate | The front door of heaven, guarded by soldiers who always lose. Fights at the gate are the genre's standard sign that someone has gone too far. |
| 瑶台 | Jade Terrace | The heavenly terrace used for banquets and audiences. Anyone invited to a banquet here is about to be tested. |
| 兜率宫 | Tushita Palace | Laozi's palace and the alchemy furnace inside it. The furnace produces both pills and, in one famous case, a monkey with better eyes. |
| 八卦炉 | Eight Trigrams Furnace | The furnace that refines pills and, occasionally, people. Being thrown into it is traditionally an upgrade rather than a death. |
| 斩仙台 | Immortal Execution Platform | The execution ground of heaven, where even immortals can be killed. Its existence is how heavenly authority enforces sentences. |
| 三百六十五路正神 | The 365 Orthodox Gods | The full roster of heavenly offices, filled by decree after a war. Novels use it to explain where all the minor gods came from. |
| 封神榜 | Investiture of the Gods | The list that turns dead heroes into gods, assigning each a post. Being on it is both a promotion and a sentence to bureaucracy forever. |
| 封神演义 | Investiture of the Gods (novel) | The Ming novel that most cultivation fiction quietly raids for characters. If a reader recognises a name vaguely, it usually came from here. |
| 西游 | Journey to the West | The westward pilgrimage story, endlessly adapted. Modern novels use it as a shared backstory that readers already know the ending of. |
| 悟空 | Wukong | The name the monkey king is given on ordination, meaning awakened to emptiness. In most adaptations he uses it only when he is being serious. |
| 美猴王 | Handsome Monkey King | His self-given title among the monkeys of Huaguo. In games it is the first costume, the one before the armour. |
| 齐天大圣 | Great Sage Equal to Heaven | The title he demands and heaven grudgingly grants as a joke. Every adaptation puts it on the rebellion's banner. |
| 弼马温 | Keeper of the Celestial Horses | The lowest heavenly post, offered to insult him. He discovers the insult in the same chapter he accepts it. |
| 孙行者 | Sun the Pilgrim | The monastic name he takes when he joins the pilgrimage. Used by the other pilgrims, never by his enemies. |
| 唐三藏 | Tang Sanzang | The monk who leads the westward journey, known for being helpless and stubborn. Game adaptations make him the escort target, not the fighter. |
| 唐僧 | Tang Monk | The informal name, used by everyone who wants him to shut up. Monsters call him this before they try to eat him. |
| 猪八戒 | Zhu Bajie | The pig general, demoted for drunkenness and gluttony. He is the one who wants to go home in every single chapter. |
| 沙悟净 | Sha Wujing | The sand general, the quietest of the four. In games he is the tank nobody picks until the boss fight. |
| 白龙马 | White Dragon Horse | The horse that is actually a prince. Adaptations rarely let him speak, which is a waste. |
| 牛魔王 | Bull Demon King | The monster who was once the monkey king's sworn brother. The first big betrayal in the pilgrimage, and still the best written. |
| 铁扇公主 | Princess Iron Fan | The owner of the fan and the bull king's wife. Getting the fan requires negotiating with her, which is the actual plot. |
| 红孩儿 | Red Boy | The bull king's son, who fights with fire and looks like a child. Adaptations love him because he is small and terrifying. |
| 金角大王 | Great King Gold-Horn | One of two demon brothers with a gourd and a rope. The gourd scene is the most quoted trap in the whole book. |
| 银角大王 | Great King Silver-Horn | His brother, the one who does the talking. Together they are the benchmark for a two-boss dungeon. |
| 蜘蛛精 | Spider Spirit | The weavers of Spider Ridge. Their webs trap, their hospitality poisons, and their bathhouse scene is the most adapted in the pilgrimage. |
| 白骨夫人 | White Bone Lady | The demon whose three disguises nearly split the group. Remembered for killing a family that never existed. |
| 玉皇大帝 | Jade Emperor | The administrator of heaven. He does not fight; he delegates, which in this genre is the scariest trait of all. |
| 王母娘娘 | Lady Queen Mother | Runs the peach orchard and the banquets. Every list of guests excludes someone whose revenge becomes an arc. |
| 二郎神 | Erlang Shen | The three-eyed god with a dog and a blade, nephew of the Jade Emperor. Game adaptations give him the most elaborate attack animations. |
| 杨戬 | Yang Jian | Erlang Shen's personal name. He fights for heaven but keeps his own army and answers only when it suits him. |
| 太白金星 | Venus of the White Star | The heavenly court's envoy and professional persuader. He is the one who books the monkey king a job to keep him quiet. |
| 托塔李天王 | Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King | The commander of the heavenly armies. His pagoda is a binding artifact, and his son is the one who actually fights. |
| 哪吒 | Nezha | The lotus-bodied boy god, rebuilt after destroying his own body. Games give him fire, wheels and a spear; the original gives him grief and a grudge. |
| 李靖 | Li Jing | Nezha's father, and the reason the boy's story is about a family rather than a monster. Their reconciliation is the point. |
| 敖丙 | Ao Bing | The dragon prince Nezha kills in most versions. Recent adaptations make him a rival rather than a casualty, which changes the whole arc. |
| 敖广 | Ao Guang | The East Sea dragon king. He owns the pillar the monkey king steals, and he complains to heaven about it. |
| 姜子牙 | Jiang Ziya | The strategist who runs the war against the Shang. He is old, unhurried and never the strongest person in the room. |
| 申公豹 | Shen Gongbao | Jiang Ziya's rival, and the best line is that he refuses to look back. Every game gives him a hidden phase. |
| 妲己 | Daji | The fox spirit who destroys a dynasty through a king. She is the prototype for every femme-fatale antagonist in the genre. |
| 纣王 | King Zhou | The last Shang king, written as a cautionary tale about listening to the wrong person. His writing scene is where the doom starts. |
| 闻仲 | Wen Zhong | The Shang general with a third eye and a whip. Loyal to a doomed side, which makes him the honourable antagonist. |
| 黄飞虎 | Huang Feihu | The general who defects after his family is destroyed. The moral turning point of the Investiture war. |
| 燃灯道人 | Lamp-Lighting Daoist | An old figure who intervenes late and solves problems with objects rather than power. The genre's model for the wise backer. |
| 慈航道人 | Cihang Daoist | One of the figures who later becomes associated with Guanyin. Adaptations use the overlap to explain why a Daoist story has a Buddhist saviour. |
| 普贤真人 | Samantabhadra | One of the twelve, riding an elephant. In games, the mount is always the attack. |
| 文殊广法天尊 | Manjushri | The lion-mounted counterpart. His appearances are short and decisive. |
| 准提道人 | Cundi Daoist | A figure from the western side of the pantheon who intervenes without being asked. The plot armour of the orthodox side. |
| 接引道人 | Jieyin Daoist | The other western intercessor. Between him and the previous one, the orthodox side never loses a war it should lose. |
| 玉鼎真人 | Yuding Zhenren | Yang Jian's master. A teacher who trains one student and then steps back, which the genre finds suspicious. |
| 太乙真人 | Taiyi Zhenren | Nezha's master, who rebuilds him from lotus root. Every revival scene in the genre borrows from this one. |
| 云中子 | Yunzhongzi | A wandering immortal who delivers warnings and refuses posts. The character who is always right and never in charge. |
| 陆压道人 | Luya Daoist | A figure with an ominous artifact and no explanation. Used when a war needs an unfair ending. |
| 邓婵玉 | Deng Chanyu | A female general who fights with stones and wins against stronger opponents. Rare in the source, and useful for a translator. |
| 土行孙 | Tuxingsun | The short-statured earth traveller. Movement through soil as a personality trait. |
| 雷震子 | Leizhenzi | The winged thunder figure. In games he is a mobility pick, which matches the source better than it sounds. |
| 杨任 | Yang Ren | A figure whose eyes were replaced with hands that hold eyes. Adaptations either keep this or cut the character. |
A reader who does not know this material will miss half the references in any long novel, so the renderings below are the standard ones. Compiled from the free cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com.
Where these words turn up
Stories on this site that use them the way the notes describe.
Junior Brothers Turned into Gods, and I’m Just Here to Find a RabbitEveryone the protagonist trained became a god. He stayed behind to look for a rabbit.悟空, 敖广 I'm Not Dead Yet: When Did My Sect Go Insane?A cultivator returns to a sect that has quietly lost its mind.白泽Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary