Glossary / Tribulation and Inner Demons
Tribulation and Inner Demons in Chinese: 34 Terms and Their English Renderings
What happens when a cultivator pushes past a ceiling: thunder, trial, and the part of the mind that fights back.
34 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 入魔 | Fall to Demons | Losing control of your own cultivation until the inner demon takes the wheel. It happens to the impatient, and it happens fast. |
| 突破失败 | Failed Breakthrough | The attempt that did not take. The realm drops, the body suffers, and everyone in the sect hears about it. |
| 心魔入侵 | Inner Demon Invasion | The inner demon getting in, rather than merely surfacing. From here the character is no longer entirely in charge. |
| 飞升雷劫 | Ascension Tribulation | The last tribulation, fought at the very top of the ladder. |
| 九重雷劫 | Nine-Layered Lightning Tribulation | Nine waves of lightning. The highest grade, and the one that ends legends. |
| 杀劫 | Slaughter Tribulation | A tribulation answered with killing instead of endurance. Bloody, and effective. |
| 火劫 | Fire Tribulation | Burning rather than striking. Tests the body's endurance instead of its defence. |
| 风劫 | Wind Tribulation | A wind that strips flesh from bone. Rare, and used when the author wants a quieter horror. |
| 魔劫 | Demonic Tribulation | Demons invade during the breakthrough. The genre's way of staging a siege inside a single room. |
| 天人五衰 | Five Signs of Heavenly Decay | The marks that appear when an immortal is dying. Sweat, dirty clothes, wilting flowers, and two more nobody remembers. |
| 劫云 | Tribulation Cloud | The cloud that gathers before a strike. Its size is the difficulty rating, stated in chapters. |
| 劫雷 | Tribulation Lightning | The individual bolt. The count matters; the first is a test, the ninth is the verdict. |
| 九九重劫 | Eighty-One-Fold Tribulation | Eighty-one strikes, the highest tier in most systems. Happens once in a book, if at all. |
| 大天劫 | Great Heavenly Tribulation | The tribulation at a major threshold rather than a minor one. Wipes out bystanders by default. |
| 天地异象 | Heavenly Omen | Strange weather announcing a breakthrough. The genre's version of a press release. |
| 紫气横空 | Purple Qi Across the Sky | The auspicious version. Means someone important just succeeded. |
| 血云压顶 | Blood Cloud Overhead | The opposite. Means the tribulation is angry, or the character has been cheating. |
| 雷霆淬体 | Lightning Tempers the Body | Using tribulation strikes to strengthen rather than survive. Popular, and fatal for everyone who tries it badly. |
| 避雷针 | Lightning Rod | A literal object or artifact that diverts the strike. Considered vulgar, used constantly. |
| 替劫 | Substitute the Tribulation | Making something else take the hit. Works once, and the price is always disproportionate. |
| 反噬之苦 | The Pain of Backlash | The after-effect of a forbidden method. Written as internal damage rather than visible wounds. |
| 心魔缠身 | Haunted by Heart Demons | The persistent version. Symptoms are insomnia, then paranoia, then a scene nobody wants to write. |
| 走火入魔前兆 | Signs of Deviation | Early warnings: ringing ears, hot palms, dreams that repeat. Used to build dread before a fight. |
| 无劫飞升 | Ascension Without Tribulation | Skipping the trial entirely. Means the heavens approve, or that someone else is paying. |
| 偷渡天劫 | Smuggling Past Tribulation | Getting someone else to advance without a trial. Attracts attention, which is the downside. |
| 天劫 | Heavenly Tribulation | Heaven's test at a breakthrough. Lightning, fire, or something worse aimed at the person. |
| 雷劫 | Lightning Tribulation | The most common form: bolts aimed at the cultivator, not the landscape. |
| 心魔劫 | Inner Demon Tribulation | The tribulation turns inward and attacks with your own memories. |
| 心魔 | Inner Demon | The worst version of yourself, grown inside your own mind. Speaks at every weak moment. |
| 魔障 | Demonic Obstacle | A mental block that feels like an outside attack but comes from inside. |
| 劫数 | Tribulation | Loosely, any unavoidable disaster. 'His tribulation has arrived.' |
| 渡劫失败 | Failed Tribulation | Not simply death: the body may survive while the soul does not, which is worse. |
| 九死一生 | Nine Deaths, One Life | A near-certain death survived. Used for tribulations and for impossible odds. |
| 天雷 | Heavenly Lightning | Plain lightning called down by heaven, as opposed to a person's technique. |
Tribulation scenes are where the genre is most theatrical and most repetitive at once. The vocabulary is small, so small mistakes stand out. Drawn from the cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com and the older Daoist sources they borrow from.
Where these words turn up
Stories on this site that use them the way the notes describe.
Half a Step to Immortality: When They Broke the BetrothalSeven years in seclusion, a broken engagement, and a tribulation nobody expected.天劫, 雷劫 My Rival Climbed Into My Bed to Ruin My CultivationA rival tries sabotage by seduction and picks the wrong target.心魔Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary