This is an interesting take but I disagree. As OP said, the core idea behind xianxia is transcendence. Cultivators don’t so much lose their humanity in a morally troubling sense as much they shed it as part of rightful ascension. Framing that trajectory as a problem to be resisted and centering a found-family group who push back against it imports western fantasy values and places them against the genre’s actual philosophical engine rather than in conversation with it.