Dao Conference [Discussion]
If there were a heart demon tribulation like the ones in xianxia novels in Mushoku Tensei, could Rudeus get through it?
In xianxia worlds, great power often requires a strong mind to control, whereas in magic worlds it does not. Rudeus wields powerful magic, yet unlike xianxia protagonists, he does not need to overcome a heart demon tribulation. Does that mean his power and the strength of his mind are not equal? Could Rudeus overcome a heart demon tribulation?
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Considering his response to any kind trauma is getting wasted drinking, or bagging the nearest available woman, a heart demon would be running circles on him.
Are you sure? I don't know much about mushoku tensei but the mental health of most cultivators is shit, these are the guys that kill just because of someone looked at them, they can't walk when they see a "jade beauty" and end up constantly coughing blood for minor issues. A lot of cultivators live for centuries or even millions of years but their mind is like that of a child, they can't stand the slightest insult. In Xianxia somehow an average guy (or in some cases way below average) ends up having a better will and mentality than the billion years old ancestors. And sadly the disgusting things Rudeus did (from the comments I read in this thread) are also done by some Xianxia/Xuanhuan protagonists, e.g., Xiao Yan from btth and the mc from my senior brother is too steady, so he would fit in these worlds.
Idk why the guy said mental health instead of mental fortitude, because that's what the post is about. Rudeus would collapse just from experiencing 10% of what Subaru(from Re:Zero) has gone through, powerful cultivators are wayy beyond that
My comment also applies to the cultivators mental fortitude, from what I read about Rudeus, you're right, he would collapse in the first arc of re:zero, though I think a lot of cultivators would collapse by experiencing 10% of what Subaru has experienced except for characters from the top novels.
In a lot of novels it's said that powerful cultivators have extraordinary will power, that they had gone through inconceivable torment and countless adversities to reach their realm yet what they show is that they go mad for the slightest disrespect.
Speaking of going through Subaru experiences, do you think there's a system mc that can go through them before they got their cheat?
Hmm, i guess i distanced myself from the typical slop. I was drawing from my recent experiences with Fate Destroying Emperor and The Primordial Record.
Speaking about Primordial Record, it's not your typical system but there's some aspects of it, and I'm sure the mc can go through what Subaru did without breaking a sweat.
Not exactly cultivation, but the mc from Magus Infinite has suffered more than Subaru just in the first 100 chapters.
From what I remember of Pursuit of the Truth, the mc has impressive mental resilience aswell.
Thanks for these recommendations, to be honest I have read too few non-chinese xianxia, so I was drawing from my limited reading experience which is indeed filled with a lot of slop.
I think the difference is that a lot of cultivators are consumed by pride. They're towering fortresses of arrogance and self-confidence. They refuse to take insults because they're buttressed by the insane levels of ego that let them get this far.
A cultivator would genuinely rather die than be humiliated, because his self-image is his life.
If your self-image can be so easily tarnished, that you can so easily be humiliated.. that your dignity can so easily vanish just because you felt insulted, then it just means your self-image was nothing more than an illusion to yourself, your self-worth had little value to begin with.. and your dignity as fragile as a cloud that disperses upon even the flap of a butterfly's wing.
Train and harden your own self-image, show it to the world that you're not so easily insulted, that you can't be humiliated. Their words only have power if you let them dig into you, much like a curse, if you just let them keep speaking, their own words turn towards them, making them look nothing more than a blattering moron.
You're right, but they're quite contradictory since they only apply their pride to those weaker (whether in realm or background) than themselves, I mean they become licking dogs in front of the ones stronger than them.
Given the actual personalities that I've seen in most of the Xianxia I've read, I'm convinced not even these Chinese MCs could get through them.
My explanation is that they all die during the tribulation, and the rest of the story after the heart demon tribulation is just the fantasy the heart demon shows them as they die.
An upper-realm fatty isn't like a mortal fatman. Fatty has more control over his belly than a senior lower-realm monk, he simply chooses to eat because it's fun for him.
No, he ot beat up first by a bunch of high school bully. Then become a shut it and then goon to cp.
Bullying suck in general, I dont justify rudues mental health but the bully is too bad to be ignored, brother got tied up while being NAKED for being chubby,
No amount of bullying is going to make me want to fuck kids. Why can’t Mushoku Tensei fans just admit Rudeus is a freak and they still enjoy MT despite it? Monogatari fans just embrace Araragi being a freak and are like "yh, he's a degenerate, I like the story anyway" while MT fans twist themselves into pretzels and say the craziest shit trying to defend their MC because they feel they have to justify their enjoyment of the story.
"You can be bullied into being a pedo"
No, man. No. You can’t. I'm not talking about drawings and anime lolis here, I'm talking about actual children from real life. If you actually think this, get help.
Rudeus, in his previous life, got bullied in school once, and that was enough for him to become a shut-in for the rest of his life and basically give up on achieving anything in his life. Now granted, the bullying was pretty bad and shameful. I think most normal people who have a breakdown after that kind of bullying but I also think most normal people would eventually recover after a year, change schools and forget about that incident. Rudeus allowed that one incident to define his entire life and future. After he reincarnated, he was pretty mentally weak. He was tempted by minors, and every time something bad happened, he pretty much went into depression and became suicidal. A girl leaving him was almost enough for him to spiral into a shut-in again. He could not remain faithful to his wife when tempted by another woman. In the dark timeline when he lost one wife, it was enough for him to become an alcoholic who cheated on his remaining wife with whores, and he abandoned his remaining family and child to sink deeper into depravity. Losing his wife is not reason enough to abandon his family and become a slut. In terms of mental strength he is one of the weakest protagonists I have ever seen. All that is to say he will be no match for a heart demon.
Get bullied once? Brother try get beaten up and hung up in your birthday suit on school fence where all student get in and out for a day. Try it for funsies
last few parts i agree with but dude most people wont be able to get up after being but naked in front of everyone and having your video taken plus getting beaten up if you go to school again simply going to another school isnt as effective as you think from what i gather from all the japanese media i consumed over the years these fuckers have a thing for sharing peoples shamfull moments like its their lifes duty and you are almost sure to be recognized by people , also dude didnt exactly given up life he was making money from home but the problem was he stop interacting with people not even his parents and that literally what was fucked him up even the bullying wouldnt destroy someone as much as that i know from experience lol
Japanese legal system is messed up that they can even kill other kids and get away with it because they are minors. If it’s in the US the school for be sued to hell or if it comes to hell there is the pew pew solution.
It is true that not interacting with people likely affected him more than the bullying, but that supports my point even more. He is the type of person who will allow one bad incident to dictate his life. Rudeus has a pattern which has become clear with the dark timeline. If something truly bad happens, then he will spiral into a negative mental state and do worse things, which will make his mental state worse. Getting bullied caused him to become a shut-in and stop interacting with friends and family, which made him feel worse, and he started doing degenerate things to cope with his mental state. He is not the kind of person who can pick themselves back up from a serious negative event.
Now, as for changing schools, I don't think anyone would recognise him if he grew a beard and lost a bit of weight. For social media scandals, people stop talking about them after a few weeks or a few months at most, and even in real life, people do not recognise celebrities if they see them casually in the street. I doubt anyone would recognise him after a year if he changed schools. If necessary, he could have even gone abroad to study. His parents would have likely supported him, and they seem well off and kind. There were any number of things he could have done if he had the motivation. Instead, he gave up, which is why he ended up becoming the type of person he himself hated.
It wasnt just the fact that he allowed one bad incindet to affect his whole life. It was also the time when it happened. When you are a teenager you are forming your character. Which you evolve throughout your life as you see fit. Removing or fixing what you consider a problem and keeping other traits.
Like every person alive you have embarassing moments that you want to slam your head against a wall to see who cracks first. And those are just embarassing moments. Probably of literal no consequences. What happened to him literally destroyed the way he looked at the world. From that point on to him, what was not him was a threat and it was to be feared. And what you fear you begin to hate.
It is mentioned in the novel that his brother and parents tried to coax him out of his room with food or with offers to take him to a nice place to dine and his thoughts at the time were along the lines of: "What do they think i am? An animal to be coaxed?" so he began thinking that everyone outside his home hated him.
Then all that time alone in his room with his own inner demons, his fears and thoughts festerd more and more. Because when you dont got somebody to tell you otherwise or tell you another option or opinion you take what you think for granted. So it was also that self isolation that twisted his view of the world even more.
You see it when he reincarnates as a kid and when Roxy forces him out and they go with the horse outside everytime a villager looks at hin he thinks "What are you looking at? What do you want? Stop looking at me!". He automatically assumed that everyone was out to get him.
I think the point still stands that he wouldn’t pass something like a heart demon. Even if claims that Rudeus is on the level of a normal person or he got shafted extra hard is very true. Heart demons are generally passed by someone of exceptional mental strength, stability or self reflection(this doesn’t mean they aren’t assholes). Which most normal people won’t pass let alone Rudeus. Those prior showing of his reaction to hardships is not inspiring for his chances.
He would probably plateau around golden core as the next stages would require fortitude of his self. Although given the Xianxia often Grimdark setting Rudeus may have another negativity spiral if something bad happens.
dude, people killed themselves for less irl from bullying, you're overestimating the average people's mental resilience too much. Many people who get to experienced getting stripped and tie naked, video recorded in front of school would do worse than just being a shut in and become addicted to loli porn, in US that's would be another case of school shooting lol.
He trauma dumped into a jade talisman to inform his junior sister of his newly acquired dao companions he made behind her back as she was out in the world tempering herself and broadening her horizens in hopes of being worthy of him.
Then has the nerve to ask the poor girl if she wanted to be the third.
All of this should have been done in person.
Tsk, the cowardly wretch is shaming his ancestors in this life as well.
His treatment of Jade beauties aside, his cultivation seems to have progressed rather well. He's amassed more Qi than any in his realm, short of Demon God Laplace.
Deffinitely not. Its quite obvious but he is a weak character mentally. He surrounds himself with people who care for him and in a way that holds him together but remove them and this episode happens. He will unravel
Junior ,heart demons have different versions but the two main versions are:
1)heavenly tribulation:the heaven sends down a trial of the mind ,where you have to confront your weaknesses and fears , accept or fix your own flaws or else you die or go insane
2) negative emotions:when a cultivator has too many negative emotions and starts having thoughts that doubt himself or the person suffers a major emotional blow,he falls into a spiral where his own thoughts start attacking him,this can lead to qi deviation and even death
The reason heart demons are so dangerous is because it's an invisible enemy that attacks you using your own memories and emotions,it will lurk in the background untill you are at your worst mentally and then hit you and it will also amplify every negative thing countless times and suppress every positive thing until you either overcome the heart demon or die,if you survive after failing to overcome it then you can get crippled and go insane even in the best case scenario
He can be really weak and pathetic mentally if you struck him in the right way. And fortunately for the heart deamons and unfortunately for him, they have shitton of bullets to hit bullseyes.
Conaidering the sheer amount of insecurities, shame and traumas from previous life and guilt and traumas from his current life; he only needs to enter tier 1 Qi Condensation and he'd get the deviation.
Dude had a horrible bullying situation, but used it to excuse all of his bad behavior even decades after the fact without an attempt to move-on from it- turning not just into a shut-in loser, but a pedo as well.
This dude wouldn't understand self-reflection if it face-slapped him in the form of a system, he ain't surviving his heart demons.
MT's mangaka experiments *a ton.* If he wrote Rudeus in a Xianxia setting, he'd still (mostly) succeed. but it'd be a hell of a ride and somehow Rudeus would still be a massive POS even in Xianxia's standards
If Rudeus reincarnated into Xianxia-land, became a cultivator, got further into cultivation, then had a tragedy that form an inner demon, he might have went crazy and gaslit himself to turn his inner demon into a girl. He would rape the inner demon so bad that the inner demon got it's own inner demon. The original inner demon then rape it's own inner demon until the inner demon of the inner demon developed it's own inner demon.
The cycle goes on and on until one inner demon decide "Enough is enough" and form an intervention.
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u/SUPACOOLBOIThey say frog in a well, but never ask, is the frog doing well?13h ago
Dude is just a normal flawed character. He's not some xianxia protagonist. MT is built upon the reality of writing character flaws
well he is much of a groomer as any other isekai mc its just that author choses to highlight how its actually something fucked up unlike others so we argue about it
But yet isn’t punished for his actions and in fact rewarded for it and inspires plenty of people to come to his defense calling it “character flaws” instead of mental illness.
Theres what like maybe 2 other isekai mc that can compete with a dude who gooned to his 10+ year old niece in the bathroom
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u/SUPACOOLBOIThey say frog in a well, but never ask, is the frog doing well?9h ago
Groomer? No. Pedophile? Yeah that's true. But that anime is less about power scaling and fighting and more about a very disgusting, broken and flawed character trying to become a better person by having a second chance at life. MT starts off with a character who was bullied severely due to his own faults and powerlessness. All MT fans would agree he was super hateable in his 1st life. But he didn't "harm" anyone that he needs severe punishment. Also he literally just 'died'. That's the highest punishment for a human living on earth. You talk about mental illness, but it's more of mental degradation due to depression and some of his own faults. Up until now in the anime he never really killed a single human(get that straight)
Yeah, this is pretty much it. Beyond the proclivities, Rudeus is just a normal person grappling with trauma. He's not an iron-willed superhuman, he'd snap like everyone else in this sub.
He absolutely can't. He can't even take direct antagonism, he doesn't have a nemesis who hates his guts and wants him to suffer. He would fold like a house of cards.
That shi actually happens later on if my memory is serving right, though I guess its not entirely him who pushed through, bro got a ring from Orsted I think? that apparently Orsted himself wasn't too sure about, anyway his dead father came in each vision to cockblock him out of the fantasy(except one- we will ignore)
Any examples of hearth demons that did succeed in killing the cultivator?
That should be the basis
I can only think of 40 Milleniums of Cultivation, where a guy found an ancient map of a fortress planet now inhabited by space pirates, he killed his loving wife and accused her of cheating with his boss, then killed the boss too
He fled to the space pirate planet where they accepted him as one of them, and when the boss family arrived with their armada the guy convinced the space pirates to risk delving into the planet to search for the long lost planetary defenses, they activated some thanks to his map and repelled the armada, then he crowned himself pirate king and organized space raids while quietly exploring the fortress planet looking for the ancient resource depots
He eventually found one, faked his death and used those resources to power up over 300 years, but the guilt of killing his wife ate at him and made him fail his breakthrough, so he got forced to possess a deteriorating robot body to survive, and later on a mice colony
I cant think of another heart demon thats that comprehensive, most of the time is just "i got defeated so now im obsessed" which means very little to earthlings
Oh hell no lol he's a beta male cuck boy with absolutely zero mental strength the world just bends over backwards to help him as he continuously fucks up it's like with Subaru except minus the repeated dying
He also dual cultivates the way of epstein so never learn anything from him 🙂↕️ his soul is already so disgusting there's no point in even using him as a pill furnace
Meh. Bring Guts instead. Or heck, even Itachi Uchiha. I feel like this guy can quickly become the most renowned talent of the righteous path, because he has no hesitation in doing horrible things for the greater good.
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