Cultivation Chat Group (修真聊天群) is a Chinese web novel by Legend of the Paladin (圣骑士的传说) that takes a satirical approach to Xianxia stories. Song Shuhang, a modern-day student, is accidentally added to an online chat group full of people who discuss supernatural things such as cultivation, monsters, tribulation, and so on; slowly, he learns that this world is real and joins it himself.
It was later adapted into a Manhua.
Cultivation Chat Group provides examples of:
- Ascended Fanboy: The Western Monk is an Occidental Otaku obsessed with martial arts and Chinese culture. Against all reason, he somehow managed to not just make his way to China and become a cultivator, but became a reasonably talented one. Shuhang notes that the Western Monk's mandarin is better than his own and, on seeing him performing funerals, that he is an actually very competent Buddhist monk.
- Auto-Revive: Many magical treasures in the setting will revive their owner automatically if they die. Later on, Shuhang has a tendency to go through them at an alarming rate, to the point where at one point he thinks to himself that his specialty in the chat group is dying a lot.
- Bad Future: One of Shuhang's accidental group tribulations originally resulted in a timeline where most of his friends died. Fortunately, a future version of Soft Feather came back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, creating the current timeline.
- Born Lucky: Senior White's luck is absurd. When Shuhang asks him how cultivators make money, he replies that he just goes outside and finds it on the ground. Shuhang's own luck is noted to be impressive as well, given his fast development.
- Though both have heaven-defying luck, the difference between Senior White’s luck and Shuhang’s luck is that Senior White’s luck puts the danger on those around him, while Shuhang’s luck attracts all the danger towards himself.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Most high-level cultivators are weird, but Senior White takes the cake - he absentmindedly takes things apart, regularly zones out to the point of falling and causing massive explosions, has an obsession with launching things into space, and so on. Nonetheless, his power makes him a respected cultivator.
- Child Prodigy: Several child cultivators are shown to be incredibly smart. However, "Loli" Shi, an 8-year-old girl, currently takes the cake by getting admitted to Shuhang's college and doing better than most of his classmates.
- Complete Immortality: Anyone who becomes the Heavenly Way will become this, attaining a body that is completely indestructable and unkillable.
- Creator Career Self-Deprecation: One of Shuhang's friends is a webnovel author; he also tends to end up as something of a Butt-Monkey, including getting kidnapped and forced to pump out chapters for a fan.
- The Diss Track: Doudou, a monster dog owned by Yellow Mountain, has a song he calls the "Song of the Stupid Yellow Mountain" which he uses to mock him at several points in the story.
- Dreadful Musician: Dharma King Creation's singing voice is feared throughout the cultivation world, as it can inflict horrible existential pain and injury to any who listen. His crowning achievement thus far is putting 300,000 people in the hospital by merely livestreaming his singing. Of course, he himself thinks he is a great singer.
- Drives Like Crazy: Fairy Dongfang Six's driving is positively murderous to the point where the only reason she hasn't killed people with it yet is because she can use her powers to limit the damage. Senior White's obsession with speed makes taking a ride with him fairly terrifying as well, since he tends to use talismans to accelerate vehicles to supersonic levels.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Senior White is supernaturally charming and very attractive to the point where women are floored and straight men question their own sexuality. Yellow Mountain in particular is familiar with this effect due to having helped White in the past.
- Curiously, Shuhang doesn't seem to be affected as he doesn't feel like anything is particularly different when interacting with White. However, Yellow Mountain draws certain conclusions from this.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The liquid ball of metal is completely unable to understand why Senior White Two would use his one opportunity to act as the Wielder of the Will in the material world to help ensure Shuhang, who he barely knows, is capable of future advancement.
- Evil Counterpart:
- Each Heavenly Way ends up creating a perfect copy of themselves within the Netherworld during their ascension. The Counterpart would have all the memories, abilities and personality of the original from before their ascension, but it would eventually change due to the influence of the Netherworld. Said Counterpart would act as the Ruler of the Netherworld during the rule of the Heavenly Way, but disappears again when the Heavenly Way withdraws from it's position.
- Senior White Two is a downplayed example to Senior White; while he is a ruler of the netherworld and therefore technically an evil counterpart to Senior White (and sometimes reminds people of this), his evil is more of the Poke the Poodle variety, especially compared to the more genuinely evil liquid ball of metal who serves as his co-ruler.
- Fortune Teller: Immortal Master Copper Trigram is one, and is extremely bad at it. In fact, he is so bad that each one of his predictions is actually the exact opposite of what will happen. This ironically makes him one of the best fortune tellers around, provided that one knows to expect the opposite result.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Lampshaded by the Scarlet Heaven Sword, which thinks to itself that Shuhang has a tendency to die immediately whenever he acquires an Auto-Revive magical treasure.
- The Hand Is God: The 8th Heavenly Way used the appearance of huge transparent hands to capture the protagonist and move him to a special prison area that makes the world forget the prisoner.
- Item Farming: The modern Heavenly Tribulation produces missiles and nuclear bombs rather than just lightning, and White deliberately extends his time while undergoing his tribulation to obtain as many as possible.
- Master of Disguise: Immortal Master Copper Trigram is also incredibly good with disguises, to the point where his appearance can be indistinguishable from whoever he's disguising as. In fact, nobody in the group knows what 'his' actual gender is, as Copper Trigram can appear perfectly convincing as a man or woman.
- Not Helping Your Case: Fairy Dongfang Six responds to accusations of being a terrible driver by....threatening to run people over with her car.
- Oh, Crap!: Due to his heaven-defying luck, any situation where Senior White happens to wander away or unexpectedly disappear makes the other members of the group react like this once they realize what happened, since it usually means something is about to hit his previous location that wouldn't be able to deal with if he were there. And Senior White is a Person of Mass Destruction capable of effortlessly scouring the surface of an entire planet, so things dangerous enough for his luck to remove him from the vicinity in order to protect him tend to be bad.
- Poke the Poodle: Senior White Two proves his evilness as the ruler of the neitherworld by doing things like... ensuring that Shuhang pays off a debt to him via taking the payment out of his later rewards.
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: Shuhang feels this way about the Buddhist kasaya someone gives him; it offers excellent protection, but he wants to have a cool Daoist look and not a Buddhist one, so it completely clashes with his image. Several of his later upgrades and techniques have similar problems - very strong, but looking humiliatingly terrible.
- Shout-Out: To his dismay, Shuhang has a tendency to end up looking like Marvel Comics characters as a result of Rainbow Pimp Gear upgrades.
- When one of his strengthening baths goes awry, he temporarily ends up outrageously muscular and green, with only his Magic Pants remaining intact. He specifically calls himself "Hulkhang".
- Later, Northern River’s Loose Cultivator offers him a suit of "Black Iron Godly Armor" that makes him look like Iron Man.
- When he's practicing the Blade Dragging Technique, which is a flying sword technique where your sword flies in front of you and you get dragged behind it, someone else in the chat group photoshops his sword into a hammer and draws little lightning bolts coming from it.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Young Master Phoenix Slayer (a monster cat), has made it his personal mission to terrorize Doudou (a monster dog) in revenge for previous humiliations. He is known as Doudou's great nemesis by the group.
- Spirit Cultivation Genre: The series is a satire where a man stumbles upon an online chat group for cultivators, despite having no knowledge of the supernatural himself.
- Talking Animal: There are many 'spirit beasts' or 'monsters', which are really just varieties of plants or animals that can cultivate. Once they reach certain stages, they are able to talk and even take on human forms.
- Talking Weapon: The Scarlet Heaven Sword, the life-bound treasure and personal weapon of Daoist Priest Scarlet Heaven. Later on it accompanies Shuhang, serving as a friend and ally to the point where it tends to accidentally refer to Daoist Priest Scarlet Heaven as its "former" owner.
- Too Dumb to Live: Thrice Reckless Mad Saber is well-known for doing and saying incredibly stupid things, especially involving people who are much more powerful than him. Many in the group wonder how he hasn't gotten himself killed yet, and can only conclude that he's just really lucky.
- Immortal Master Copper Trigram gets in on this as well, due to his propensity for fortune telling. When he performs his divinations, he neglects to inform anyone that the opposite outcome is true, often resulting in terrible outcomes for his customers. This is bad enough, but he also has a tendency to disguise himself as various (powerful) members of the group when he does so, leading his customers to confront them about "their" crappy fortune-telling. The group members have concluded that the only reason Copper Trigram is still alive after doing this for so long is because he's a Master of Disguise.
- Doudou, Yellow Mountain's pet dog, does this in relation to Yellow Mountain himself. He constantly annoys Yellow Mountain with his insults and disobedience, along with running away at any opportunity. His crowning achievement, however, is blaring out the "Song of the Stupid Yellow Mountain" (which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin) in front of a large public audience. In response to this, Yellow Mountain goes into Tranquil Fury and resolves to really punish Doudou this time....by marrying him to a ''male'' dog.
- Unflinching Walk: Thrice Reckless invokes this intentionally when they're testing magical explosives, deliberately posing for pictures of him walking away from the explosion without looking back.
- Xianxia: The story focuses on Xianxia tropes, of course, with a particular focus on the aspects that have appeared repeatedly in recent webnovels.
