On December 15, 2025, Ni Zhange, Professor of Department of Religion and Culture, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, delivered a lecture titled “Tamed Apocalypse, Engaged Nihilism, and Cthulhu-Cultivation Novels in Contemporary China” at Yenching Academy. This lecture was the ninth one in the China Studies Lecture Series for the 2025‒2026 academic year and was hosted by Lu Yang, Director of Graduate Studies.
Interview Notes
Before the lecture, Prof. Ni Zhange generously participated in a video interview, taking a positive view of the relationship between academic research and creativity, seeing them as being mutually supplementary instead of a zero-sum game. The professor eased young scholars’ concern that academic work may undermine their creativity by pointing out that boundary-breaking imagination needs to be translated into concrete outcomes. Academic research is grounded in painstaking factual rigor and logical reasoning, while literary creation requires self-discipline and persistence. Moreover, Prof. Ni emphasized the importance of broadened perspectives, particularly for the early and late phases of academic research. In her opinion, imagination and pragmatism are the two pillars for the refinement of thought and expression.
Professor Ni argued that the core value of humanities lies in its reflexivity—the constant critique and reconstruction of existing knowledge structures and perceptual frameworks. She took AI-authored content as an example: AI writing is in essence data-driven correlation and text generation, and the process [of AI writing] is like how written script was created and then utilized in divination or sacrificial rites in antiquity. In this sense, the perception that writing is unique to humans is a historical construction. Prof Ni emphasized that AI matters because it urges us to reflect on and shatter the anthropocentric notions long been taken for granted. She argued that there is no need to demonize AI; rather, AI shall be regarded as a catalyst and instrument for more penetrating humanistic inquiry.
The professor shared her opinions on interdisciplinary research. She observed that interdisciplinarity resides in transgressing boundaries and cultivating a thinking paradigm that is capable of “establishing associations” across different fields of knowledge. She drew on cognitive neuroscience to suggest that while memory may decline with age, the capacity to integrate experience and forge associations strengthens, and that cognitive peak may arrive later in life. Interdisciplinarity precisely cultivates a higher-order capacity in one’s youth, equipping individuals to transgress boundaries, uncover latent structures, and bring unseen associations to light. Prof Ni stressed that interdisciplinarity is not only an intellectual training, but more of a self-cultivation. Through interdisciplinary research, humanistic education goes beyond its disciplinary boundary and forges wisdom of life in individuals.
Lecture Review
Ni Zhange opened her lecture with “the clash and symbiosis of cultural crossing,” observing that online literature is undergoing unprecedented waves of innovation, epitomized in Cthlhu-cultivation novels. Two seemingly opposing cultural systems are combined in a new genre, revealing infinite possibilities of literary creation and reflecting the spiritual predicament and value pursuit of contemporary youth. A long-established scholar in literary and social studies, Ni Zhange revealed the cultural framework and real-world symbolism behind this cultural crossing, through close reading of the texts and mapping the logic of fusion.
The professor first delineated the features of the Cthulhu mythos and Chinese cultivation novels. Created by the American writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890‒1937), the Cthulhu mythos fuses romantic nihilism and Western esotericism and constitutes a “cosmicism” in which the universe is cold and humans are insignificant. The Cthulhu mythos reflects on industrialization and the cult of reason, and its popularity has been fueled by popular thirst for the mysterious and the supernatural. Cthulhu thus re-enchants a disenchanted world, conveying agnosticism and despair; and it dissolves contemporary sacredness to counter human arrogance. The mythos’s readership overcomes nostalgia by constructing a new mythology; it responds to the falsehood of modern life though imagined virtual realities, even using the mythologies as a grimoire, or spellbook.
Ni then turned to Chinese cultivation novels, which are rooted in the Daoist neidan tradition, encompassing neidan (internal alchemy, physical cultivation for longevity), xiuzhen (cultivation of authenticity and wholeness), and xiuxian (cultivation of transcendence beyond the human condition). Twenty-first century cultivation novels borrow multiple traditional concepts from Daoism, including breath regulation, meditation, massage, dietary regimens, sexual cultivation, and adherence to ethical precepts; they place ancient cultivation within a reconstructed narrative framework of liberal arts education and lifelong entrepreneurship, as well as competition and collaboration in the production and circulation of knowledge and information. Chinese cultivation novels are, in essence, a narrative of cognitive capital and labor, fashioning human capital and the posthuman. The surface narrative of “physical cultivation and ascension to immortality” conceals the “cognitive capitalism” of the digital era: Cultivators are tethered to lifelong self-optimization and constantly vie for resources, mirroring the real-world labors who are molded as “human capital”.
The professor went on explaining how the Cthulhu Mythos and Chinese cultivation novels have encountered, clashed, and been fused. She noted the popularity of Chinese translations of Cthulhu in 2010s laid the groundwork for the later combination of the two genres. Daogui Yixian (The Strange Immortals of the Daogui World) and Daozu Shi Kesulu (The Patriarch of Dao Is Cthulhu) are two landmark works of Cthulhu-cultivation novels, revealing the underlying associations and internal affinities between the two seemingly opposing systems.
Chinese folk superstitions offer a key model for the Cthulhu-cultivation genre. “Tribulation transcendence” in a cultivation novel is essentially a “tamed apocalypse”, echoing the apocalyptic narrative in the Cthulhu Mythos. Buddhist and Daoist eschatology was passed down from vernacular fiction and revived in cultivation novels—a literary tradition that offers a cultural ground where the Cthulhu Mythos and cultivation novels meet.
Essentially, Cthulhu-cultivation novels convey a core idea of “antagonism between engaged nihilism and capitalist realism,” resonating with the mentality of the younger generation, who opt for “lying flat” as a counter to the pressures of “involution.” A protagonist is generally an individual who is cornered by harsh reality and who passively resists cognitive capitalism by embracing Cthulhu’s signature “ignorance and perplexity.”
Moreover, Cthulhu’s anti-anthropocentrism provides critical cultivation novels with a potent lens to penetrate “meaningless involution and labor alienation;” apocalyptic resistance in cultivation novels transforms the Cthulhu Mythos from sheer horror and grotesquerie into Chinese-adapted social criticism.
Prof Ni Zhange then conducted a dissecting analysis of Daogui Yixian (The Strange Immortals of the Daogui World) and Daozu Shi Kesulu (The Patriarch of Dao Is Cthulhu).
The story of Daogui Yixian unrolls in the parallel, opposing worlds of Baiyujing (the normal world) and Fushengtian (the Cthulhu world). The protagonist, who is “the Master of Lucidity and Perplexity,” loses his lucidity after being infected by Cthulhu. In the real human world, the protagonist is a schizophrenic high school student under crushing pressure of the college entrance exam, whereas in the Cthulhu Daogui world, he is a lower-rank cultivator who practices cultivation through self-mutilation. His doomed mission is to re-discover who he is and to protect Baiyujing with perplexity as a shield. The protagonist ultimately opts for relinquishing his lucidity to safeguard the order of the normal world by shrouding it in ignorance.
In Daozu Shi Kesulu, the Cthulhu-contaminated Taiji Dao (Earth 49327, a normal cultivation world) turns into the Taisu Dao (a Cthulhu-cultivation world). The Taiji Dao is itself actually a colony of “Earth 0” controlled by the Sage Corporation. The forces in the story fall into three factions—Xuanmen (Mystic Sect), Shenjiao (Divine Cult), and Xiangong (Immortal Palace, under control of Sage Corporation); heretical sects like Luo Teaching; as well as rebels who worship Wusheng Laomu (Unborn Venerable Mother) and want to return to Zhenkong Jiaxiang (True Home). The story centers around the struggle of Cthulhu cultivators [on Earth 49327] and other Earths against Sage Corporation and ends in a compromise between rebels and Earth 0—in the end, “enlightened” rebels yield to the fact that humanity is insignificant.
Professor Ni then examined the cultural value and social relevance of the fused genre. Cthulhu-cultivation novels in contemporary China disrupts the monolithic “endless ascension” narrative in conventional cultivation novels, while adapting the Cthulhu mythos to Chinese context. This fusion is in essence contemporary youth’s cultural response to real-world struggles. The anti-rationality of the Cthulhu mythos is employed to resist capitalism’s exploitation of cognitive labor, and the grudge against social stratification and economic decline is mirrored in cultivators’ apocalyptic rebellion. Cthulhu-cultivation novels exemplify how literature serves as a spiritual outlet and tool of critique.
Cthulhu-cultivation novels are an outcome of the interplay between the Cthulhu Mythos and Chinese cultivation novels. The ambiguity of the figure of Cthulhu deserves special attention: Cthulhu stands for global capitalism that “infects” contemporary China in Daogui Yixian (The Strange Immortals of the Daogui World), while symbolizing the unruly power of the proletariat against the colonizing Earth 0 in Daozu Shi Kesulu (The Patriarch of Dao Is Cthulhu). This ambiguity enables a more penetrating and powerful critical angle from these novels.
Q&A Session
Q: Nihilism in the Cthulhu Mythos is fundamentally antagonistic to the this-worldly ethos of traditional Chinese culture. How is this conflict toned down in the fused genre? Will the conflict be downplayed in cross-genre writing to seek resonance with a wider readership?
A: A fused genre is fascinating because of the conflict it deals with. “Cosmic void” in the Cthulhu Mythos doesn’t mean sheer surrender; it deconstructs the cult of rationality and the logic of capital. Meanwhile, the worldly ethos in traditional Chinese cultivation culture is translated into deliberate resistance against real-world challenges. The Cthulhu-cultivation genre has forged a dialectical approach to “nullifying involution through the void, and seeking meaning in rebellion.” The conflict won’t be downplayed in cross-genre writing; rather, the tension will be heightened, to reveal “the confusion and defiance” in contemporary society. Literary works can only strike a raw nerve in a timely fashion and arouse wider resonance by facing the conflict head-on.
Q: Will the critical edge of Cthulhu-cultivation novels become dull when the genre loses its momentum? How can this fused genre sustain its critical edge?
A: The critical edge isn’t a by-product of the buzz around a specific work; it originates from the keen observation of real-world problems. The critical edge remains relevant as long as issues like “involution” and “alienation by capital” persist. Writers need to sharpen their societal observations and stay alert to unwelcome elements piling up in their writing. Also, they must explore common ground between traditional Chinese culture and foreign cultures beyond the surface-level forms to build up a robust critical framework and ground their literary creation in contemporary society.
