Xianxia

Xianxia, literally immortal heroes, is a genre of Chinese fantasy literature heavily inspired by Chinese mythology and shaped by Taoism, Chan Buddhism, Confucianism, Chinese martial arts, classical Chinese medicine, folk religion and alchemy. It developed as a subgenre of both wuxia and the shenmo genre of gods-and-demons fiction before emerging as its own distinct tradition by the late nineteenth century, and it is often compared to Western high fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction and to Japanese ninja fantasy fiction. Its protagonists are typically cultivators seeking spiritual enlightenment, immortality and supernatural power, or transcendent beings called xian who have already attained such power, while antagonists are often rival clans of cultivators or malevolent supernatural beings such as demons, ghosts and monsters. Concepts drawn from classical Chinese philosophy, including internal and external alchemy, feature prominently, and the genre's stories commonly span multiple cosmological realms, typically including the immortal plane, the mortal realm and the underworld.