Demon race, heart demon. The word “demon” comes up a lot in svsss and Chinese fiction in general, yet what "demon", or 魔 (Mó) actually means in this context can be a little hard to grasp. The idea of demon as a race of people is obvious enough just by reading the story; it’s when we talk about Mó as a more abstract concept that things get murky.
魔, or Mo, originate from the name of the Buddhist figure of Mara, a celestial being who attempted to disrupt Siddhartha Gautama’s cultivation on the eve of his enlightenment. In Chinese, Mara is also known as Tiān Mó, or Heavenly Demon, because he rules the Sixth Heaven, the Heaven of Desire. It should be noted that Mara is not exactly a Satanic figure, despite the fact he also represents opposition, death, and temptation. In more abstract terms, Mara can mean:
Although Mó originate from Mara, its use in the Chinese language has evolved over time, sometimes taking after a more Western concept of demons. Words that involve Mó include:
魔障 (mo zhang) - “Mo barrier/obstruction”, referring to Mara obstructing the Buddha. In common slang this usually means an obsession. “I’ve gone mo zhang” = “omg I’m obsessed and losing my mind.”
着魔 (zhao mo) - “to touch/succumb to mo”, to be intensely obsessed.
走火入魔 (zou huo ru mo) - often translated as “qi deviation”; more on this later.
魔法 (mo fa) - “Mo techniques”, the western concept of magic.
恶魔 (e mo) - “evil mo”, the christian idea of the Devil, or any demonic being in western mythology 😈
I’m not the biggest fan of the literal spelling of “Heart Demon”, because it draws too neat and reductive a parallel with the idea of “inner demons”, which is not quite the same. To me, inner demons usually refer to some kind of fear or weakness, and while Xin Mo could be caused by a fear or trauma, it’s primarily associated with some kind of fixation, disruption, or something you cannot let go of. In other words, Xin Mo is a ruinous fixation one must break free of.
Then we have zou huo ru mo, or “set off/run off fire, enter mo”. It probably became “qi deviation” in translation because the first part of this word, zou huo, refers to when your qi circulation goes haywire in Daoist cultivation. The second part, ru mo, or “enter/fall to mo,” has to do with the Buddhist concept of mo we’ve been discussing.
In a nutshell, “qi deviation” refers to things going Wrong due to improper cultivation practices. It must be noted that qi deviation is not like a heart attack; people do not randomly qi deviate because they’re experiencing strong emotions or stress, as it’s sometimes portrayed in fandom. You might however qi deviate because these negative emotions or xin mo cause you to cultivate improperly—during critical moments of active cultivation, not when you’re just walking around or having an argument. In some stories you see people qi deviate because they’re jumpscared during a critical moment in cultivation, which requires intense concentration. Or they rush themselves and take on more they could handle, like yqy and lqg.
In common everyday speech, zou huo ru mo usually means becoming overly obsessed with something. Say if I decide to start lifting, but become obsessed with it to the point I’m ignoring everything else and practically living at the gym, and I eventually land myself in the ER because I overtrained, someone might say “you’ve gone zou huo ru mo.” (Now that I think about it, this is exactly what happens to lqg…)
The common thread here is that all these concepts relate to themes of obsession or madness, which is not the first thing you associate with the Western idea of demons.
I borrowed Shen Yuan from @grubus fic "Shen Yuan of No Relations" for this one. Poor kid deals with a lot of stuff! Shizun's stern lecture does not help him calming down one bit.
i need help, im trying to find this qijiu fic and its driving me insane. the only lines i can remember is yqy going "i thought you knew there's no other option for me than to go back" or something like that, they're communicating about xuan su and yqy qi deviation. and then there's also a scene of sj going "there's no way i could ever hate you" or something like that. pls pls pls im going insane trying to find it, i dont know if its a real fic or if my daydreams just cooked this up but im starving for it
I'm not very sure anymore if qi deviation into a dog and deageing is canon or fictions, but since qi deviation is so overpowered and Shen Jiu has had a lot of it, he might as well be proficient at it to the point he can control what outcomes he wants.
Maybe Shen Jiu runs away from the sect because martial siblings are mean to him and Yue Qingyuan never answers his question, using the shapeshifting into animals and controlling his age to disguise and does whatever he actually desires. And when the peak lord or his martial siblings come to find him, they're surprised.
Maybe it's less dramatic and he just uses this skill in nighthunts, and people get impressed how this Qing Jing disciple and later peak lord has such a unique skill and might have invented a new branch of cultivation at such a young age.
after everything, jiang cheng finds himself experiencing frequent minor qi deviations — not that anyone realizes, since most of the time zidian will discharge the excess volatile qi to stop the qi deviation in its tracks before it can get too severe.¹
unfortunately, so many minor qi deviations have had a negative effect on his mental health — specifically, the worst problem would arguably be the hallucinations of his dead family.
it was something that started small but slowly got worse — at first, just whispers of speech that sounded eerily like his parents... eventually, full-on vivid hallucinations of his entire family — his parents, his sister, even his brother...
astonishingly, there actually is a possibility for a cure — it wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be quick, but there exists a solid chance...
alas! jiang cheng refuses to even consider it. he knows he should, but he simply cannot bring himself to — not when this is the closest thing to his family that he has left.
and sure, he has jin ling! but jin ling is naught but a baby at this point — he treasures him, of course, its his only sister's son afterall! but as much as it sickens him to admit, he would forfeit that little baby's life in an instant if it would get him his family back... even just one of them.
but time goes by, and jiang cheng grows to love jin ling as a son — as unwilling to give him up as he would be with jiang yanli herself.
but the thing about raising a baby, is that you don't really filter yourself around them. afterall, why would you? it's not like they're going to remember any of this anyway, not when they're still this small.
but. but. the act of not filtering yourself around a specific person... it can be habit forming. you can forget yourself. when alone with them, you can completely forget that you would normally censor these things around other people. afterall! you've never stopped yourself from doing it around them ever before!
this is all to say this: jin ling grows up with an uncle (father) who talks to people who aren't there.
over the years, there's a lot of confusion over it — times when jin ling thought, maybe, that he was talking to their ghosts... until he gets a little older, and actually learns about ghosts and how they work, and realizes that it can't be that...
he never asks his uncle about it, because ever since he was small any time that he would try to mention it or bring it up, his uncle would get angry and defensive; he would lie and insist that jin ling had heard wrong, that he hadn't been talking to anyone, that he had no idea what he was talking about...
eventually jin ling learned to stop asking... but he never stopped wondering. afterall, how could he? when jiang cheng would address those not-ghosts as a-die, a-niang, a-jie, and — most damning of all — wei wuxian.
he got older. his uncle stopped denying it, but would still avoid any questions about what they were...
(jiang cheng didn't want to admit to his nephew that his dear uncle was crazy and saw dead people... didn't want to worry him...)
but as time passed he slowly eased up enough that jin ling could mention it sometimes, offhand and casual-like... say things like, "is grandmother bothering you again?" or "you should listen to mom more!"
(jin ling may not know their personalities first hand, but he can infer things based off of what his uncle would say and how he'd re/act, the faces he'd make...)
time passed by, and he got older. eventually, jin ling learned what was wrong with his uncle. he learned about hallucinations and what they were, how they worked... he understood that the people his uncle saw and spoke to weren't real, they weren't there...
but he didn't do anything. afterall, uncle had always been like this and he seemed fine. some of the hallucinations bothered him, sure (*cough* madame yu *cough*) but others... jin ling can't even imagine trying to take jiang yanli, his mother, away from jiang cheng...
he knew about what caused the hallucinations, too — afterall, how could he not? jiang cheng raised him and would frequently endeavor to spend as much time with him as possible. it's only inevitable that eventually, one day, he would witness his uncle having a qi deviation.
it would either have to be during a time when he wasn't wearing zidian so the spiritual weapon could not ease his qi — perhaps while sleeping or bathing? — or the qi deviation would have to be severe enough that it overpowered zidian's attempts to mitigate it.
during this time, jin ling would finally find out about his uncle's frequent minor qi deviations. maybe it was while he was trying to sleep or bathe, and so when jin ling sees/shows up/happens upon him, jiang cheng has to ask his nephew — through gritted teeth slick with blood — to bring him zidian, quickly.
jin ling would watch as jiang cheng slid zidian on and it immediately started sparking harsher than he'd ever seen it do before. and he would be concerned, of course, that the sparks would hurt his uncle — and so to stop him from ripping it back off, jiang cheng would then have to go through the mortifying ordeal of admitting to your nephew that you secretly suffer from frequent minor qi deviations.
and of course, after that, jin ling would never be able to forget. and so any time he saw zidian going haywire with wild sparks, he would assume (correctly) that his uncle's qi was veering into the danger zone, and so out of fear for his uncle's safety and sanity he would do his absolute best to help his uncle calm down before he hurt himself.
of course, this gets interpreted incorrectly by outsiders — they see sect leader jiang getting pissed off, zidian throwing off sparks, and they see little jin ling frantically trying to calm his uncle down, fear clear in his eyes... it doesn't paint a good picture, suffice to say.
for years and years and years, no one outside of jin ling is aware of jiang cheng's struggles with hallucinations and qi deviations — right up until one day, wei wuxian is raised from the dead.
and, well... it's one thing to try to hide something from strangers — but siblings? they're a lot harder to fool.
(that's not entirely true — jin ling may know the most, and he may be the only one that jiang cheng is even semi-open about it with — but he's far from the only one to ever suspect anything, to notice anything. the closer a disciple is to jiang cheng, the higher up they are, and/or the more they interact with him, the more likely they are to know something is up — to notice the little things jiang cheng does that he thinks no one notices... but they do — they do notice. they just... choose not to say anything. to trust in their sect leader, who has yet to ever lead them astray.
...but they're not the only ones to notice something's up, and unfortunately the next person is a lot less nice... afterall, what with jin ling and all it is only inevitable that jiang cheng will end up spending a fair amount of time with jin guangyao... and, well... let's just say that the scene in the temple goes a lot differently in this au — what with all of the additional secrets jin guangyao has undoubtedly been gathering on jiang cheng...
maybe this is when wei wuxian and et all finally find out. maybe wei wuxian's been suspecting for some time that something's up with jiang cheng but he couldn't put his finger on quite what...
until jin guangyao unflinchingly announces it in front of everyone in the temple, without hesitation. he's been waiting to use this information, this blackmail, for a while now... and finally, the opportunity has arisen.)
---
¹idea for jiang cheng's qi deviations and zidian's effect on them from anonkun's "hating the hand life has dealt us" on ao3 (strongly recommend)
(it's a sort-of crossover fic with svsss about the og shen jiu being reincarnated as jiang cheng except when jiang cheng regains his memories of being shen jiu he flat out rejects them to the point of accidentally developing a sort of dissociative identity disorder where he sees himself and shen jiu as two separate people just inhabiting the same body)
I would like to talk about if JGY played turmoil before or after the stairs (novel canon only).
Let's look at an example of NMJ at the beginning of the war (ER ch48):
And thus, the past Jin GuangYao wasn’t like his future self, always being scolded by Nie MingJue. In fact, he was regarded quite highly. Wei WuXian had heard too much of those jokes about how “LianFang-Zun fled whenever he heard that ChiFeng-Zun arrived.” Every time he saw Meng Yao in these memories conversing with Nie MingJue peacefully, even impressively, he felt that it was rather incredible.
[WWX's inner thoughts:]
Nie MingJue, the one who almost seemed to go into invincible rages during the Sunshot Campaign, was sealed under layers upon layers within a cramped, dismal room, unable to ever see the light.
We have a clear indication of NMJ losing his ability to control himself long before the stairs, here is his outburst directly after the war (ER ch49)
Meng Yao also seemed as though his energy had run out. He tried to avoid the attacks, yet his feet had almost slipped, revealing how difficult of a situation he was in. After taking a while to catch his breath, it was as if he had finally exploded. He suddenly shouted, “ChiFeng-Zun!!! Don’t you understand that if I didn’t kill them, you’d be the one who died then?!!”
This was actually the same as saying, ‘I’m the one who saved your life so you can’t kill me or else it’d be immoral.’ However, Jin GuangYao was indeed worthy of his reputation. The same meaning but a different wording, and he was able to create a contained sense of frustration and a reserved sense of sorrow. As he had expected, Nie MingJue’s movement halted. Veins stood out under his forehead.
Having paused for a while, he clenched the hilt of his saber and shouted, “Very well! I’ll kill myself after I kill you!”
Meng Yao shrunk immediately after his previous outburst. Watching Baxia slash toward him, he sprinted off at once, scared lifeless. Of the two, one struck with madness and the other fled with madness. Both staggered, still soaked in blood. In such amusing circumstances, as Wei WuXian chopped at the future Chief Cultivator through Nie MingJue, in his heart he split his sides laughing. He thought that if not for how Nie MingJue was under heavy injuries and lacked spiritual power, Meng Yao would probably have been dead already.
Obviously JGY has been a spy for WRH and isn't playing any kind of music for NMJ at all. So this is an example of how far gone NMJ already is after the SSC.
Still in the same chapter (since this is all Empathy with WWX) we have an example of NMJ's anger. I believe this is still before JGY plays Turmoil:
Nie HuaiSang, who was touching them tenderly, mumbling as he compared the inscriptions written on each one. Immediately, veins protruded from Nie MingJue’s forehead, “Nie HuaiSang!”
Nie HuaiSang fell at once. He really did fall to his knees from the terror. He only staggered up after he finished kneeling, “B-b-b- brother.”
Nie MingJue demanded, “Where is your saber?”
Nie HuaiSang cowered, “In… in my room. No, in the school grounds. No, let me… think…”
Wei WuXian could feel that Nie MingJue almost wanted to hack him dead right there, “You bring a dozen fans with you wherever you go, yet you don’t even know where your own saber is?!”
Nie HuaiSang hurried, “I’ll go find it right now!”
“There’s no need! Even if you find it you won’t get anything out of it. Go burn all of these!”
All of the color drained out of Nie HuaiSang’s face. He rushed to pull all of the fans into his arms, pleading, “No, Brother! All of these were given to me!”
Nie MingJue slammed his palm onto a table, causing it to crack, “Who did? Tell them to scurry out here right now!”
The last quote is before JGY starts playing for NMJ, he's about to play for NMJ for the first time asking "Where is Er-ge's guqin?" and WWX confirms this by saying that JGY took over from that point.
That means NMJ is already threatening to burn NHS's things and has been acting violently since around the midpoint of the war. My theory is that the SSC exacerbated the saber spirit and has been the cause of NMJ's outrage. This is not an excuse for his behavior, but the cause behind it is the saber spirit not JGY.
Here is WWX's confirmation that clarity was working (ER ch49)
After that, Jin GuangYao would travel from Lanling to Qinghe every few days, playing Sound of Lucidity to help quell Nie MingJue rage. He tried his hardest, without speaking even a single word of complaint. Sound of Lucidity was indeed effective. Wei WuXian could clearly feel that the hostile energy within Nie MingJue was being suppressed. And when playing the guqin, the way that the two conversed and got along even had a hint of the peace they’d had before they had fallen out. He began to think that maybe the so-called busy reestablishing the Cloud Recesses was just an excuse. Perhaps Lan XiChen simply wanted to give Nie MingJue and Jin GuangYao a chance to ease their tension.
This confirmation spans JGY playing for NMJ for a while. JGY is doing this every few days and WWX says it is working, they're even turning into what they were before NMJ was overtaken by the saber spirit. There is 0 reason to think that JGY has started to play turmoil yet when WWX himself feels the effects of NMJ's anger like it is his own and he is saying that the music is calming.
Why would JGY take out so much time in his life, why would he sacrifice so much, if he really had given up on NMJ? JGS is angry at NMJ for wanting XY's head, if JGY can soothe NMJ so that he can think rationally, if NMJ will back off after calming down, there would be no need for murder on either side. (NMJ's or his own head.)
The next line is the start of the staircase scene.
I would like to propose that this is the place JGY decides to kill NMJ (ER ch49)
“Then why don’t you sacrifice yourself? Are you any nobler than them? Are you any different from them?”
Jin GuangYao stared at him. A moment later, as though he had finally either decided on something or given up on something, he replied calmly, “Yes.”
…and the something that he'd given up on, was NMJ.
🤯 A popular fan translation has 走火入魔 as “qi deviation”
🤯 The term “qi deviation” has taken on a slightly different meaning in the English-speaking fandom
Let’s go!
So I previously wrote about 走火入魔 in my critiques of CQL Episode 22 and Episode 39.
However, there are a couple of nuances here that I’d like to expand on, starting with what 走火入魔 means in different contexts.
We first see the term 走火入魔 (“qi deviation”) appearing in Chapter 21 of the novel. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the novel with the translation (by Exiled Rebels), and their accompanying footnote.
So, what are the three possible meanings behind 走火入魔?
A negative consequence of practicing certain martial arts techniques
A deviation from the “righteous” path to questionable practices
Becoming obsessed by or addicted to something
1. A negative consequence of practicing certain martial arts techniques
This is a common trope in wuxia. Often, it refers to the practitioner experiencing a “qi reversal” as a result of practicing a certain technique. Prolonged practice can damage their meridians and internal organs. In some cases it results in permanent disablement of their wugong 废武功, and in others, death. “Unorthodox” techniques were more likely to cause the practitioner to 走火入魔.
It seems like this first definition best describes Nie Mingjue’s condition. Prolonged exposure to the saber spirits and the Qinghe Nie cultivation techniques affected him physically and mentally, which eventually contributed towards his violent death.
However in Nie Mingjue’s case, it wasn’t a martial arts (wushu) technique, but a cultivation one.
2. A deviation from the “righteous” path to questionable practices
This interpretation is broader than the first, and it has a Buddhist connotation. In this context, it could refer to the subject being “possessed” or influenced by demonic forces. It could also refer to the person being led astray from 名门正道 (orthodox path) to 邪魔外道 (unorthodox or demonic path).
By this second definition, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Wei Wuxian experienced 走火入魔 when he became the Yiling Laozu.
3. Becoming obsessed by or addicted to something
This last interpretation is entirely a modern one, and it has a darkly joking connotation.
For example, my 80-year-old aunt spends at least 4 hours a day playing Candy Crush on her tablet. There are no other apps on the tablet except for that one. My cousins like to joke that she has effectively 走火入魔 (fallen to the dark side).
What can we learn from this?
As the concept of 走火入魔 is well-known in wuxia, MXTX didn’t see the need to give a detailed explanation for a xianxia context when she introduced the term in chapter 21. She assumed that her (Chinese-speaking) readers would have a basic level of exposure to the wuxia genre, and that they would be instantly able to picture Nie Mingjue’s death.
On translation: the translation of 走火入魔 to “qi deviation” is actually a pretty good one. It accurately encapsulates what happened to Nie Mingjue in the first definition: a qi reversal as a result of cultivation techniques.
It also details his slow deviation from conventional cultivation paths into something more sinister, per the second definition. This is supported by Nie Huaisang’s explanation of saber cultivation in Chapter 26:
In fandom
“Qi deviation” seems to have a different meaning in the English-speaking fandom! I’ve seen it taken to mean:
An intense reaction to something shocking (e.g. Lan Qiren qi deviating when he sees Wangxian doing the nasty)
An overwhelming feeling of exhaustion or sadness (e.g. “work was a nightmare today, I’m qi deviating”)
A reaction on social media (e.g. “I’m qi deviating because of that fic”)
And, these are valid meanings as well! It’s honestly interesting how a translation can produce different interpretations in another language. It’s also amazing that it’s become an inside joke for the fandom — all hail the transformative power of language!
Since “qi deviation” has taken a separate turn from the original meaning of 走火入魔, you might say that the use of the phrase has, ahem... *deviated* from its original definition 😎
References
Kunnu
Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Baidu Baike: wushu definition, Buddhism definition, and modern definition
