@JourneymanGeek Wait, no, this is xianxia not wuxia technically :P

The flying kung fu stuff

>.>

eh...

deep breath

Its been almost 40 years and I probably was barely out of diapers :D

and I don't speak chinese ... so I've no idea why I was watching those

So, in xianxia there are different ranks of cultivation. They’re generally referred to with materials - for example, the earliest ranks might be wood or copper, while the middle ranks might be jade or gold. At some point, you aren’t referred to with materials anymore but with concepts - for example, nascent souls. Everyone starts off at the lowest rank, and they cultivate to grow stronger.

Cultivating can include training, meditation, discovering inner truths, etc, and the purpose is to strengthen, refine, and condense something called a core. Over time, this core begins to take on certain elements that make the cultivator who they are.

ah

I didn't know that :D

The core doesn’t actually exist - it’s more of a concept (until you die - then the core materialises and can be extracted).

The higher your cultivation rank, the more the world physically alters itself with your presence, and the higher your spiritual power, presence, and control (unless you take shortcuts - more on that later).

The general goal of cultivation is to become immortal, but in the books main characters generally cultivate to right some kind of wrong. The main character is generally someone that’s been seen as weak their entire life, and is the lowest cultivation rank, at least right at the beginning.

The higher someone's cultivation rank, the more authority they have. If you’re in a position of power, it’s because you’re a higher cultivation rank. It’s a very might-makes-right society.

People also train in fighting styles and other techniques, and these styles serve to strengthen the cultivator and aid in their training. Their techniques have to match the cultivator, otherwise their foundation will be shaky. Generally, the more common a technique is, the weaker but more applicable it is - that is, it’s more likely it’s going to work for someone.

Pretty much the only techniques that apply to everyone are cycling (moving energy throughout the body) and opening meridians (creating more places for energy to cycles and making the channels stronger).

@Otaku generally the rarer a technique, the stronger it is, but also harder to learn and more specific.

Techniques can range from different cycling techniques, to different martial arts styles, to different abilities.

The stronger something is, the more conceptual it’ll be - cultivation is all about discovering things about yourself and applying it to the world (or vice versa), so the more concepts present in a technique, the higher it’ll be able to carry you.

To aid in cultivation, there are certain cheats you can take - for example, pills, which can help with cycling, clearing bad energy, healing wounds, granting insight, or more. These can be actively toxic when at low qualities, and deadly at high ones. If you take a pill much higher than your rank, you’d likely die immediately, or at least never be able to cycle again due to your meridians or core rupturing.

(Though pills can help with fixing those problems to)

You can also consume beast cores to gain insight or jumpstart an ascent to the next rank, or something else, which can greatly help with increasing power.

Everything living has a core, and can cultivate, but generally plants take much longer to awaken and gain consciousness. Beasts and animals have cores as well, and tend to grow very fast and be more powerful. However, they are completely unable to deviate from their path and at a certain point, they will be unlikely to ever ascend to the next rank.

To gain power, you have to follow your path, and the more powerful you are and the more ingrained on you your path has become, the more backlash there'll be if you go against it. Paths can be pretty much anything - ways of life, certain styles of techniques, resonating concepts, etc.

At some point, there will be underlying concepts in everything you say and do, so if you have a path aligned with water and say the word rain at a high rank, it could immediately start pouring if the slightest bit of power is imbued.

@Otaku however, too many cheats and you could have a very unstable foundation or permanently stagnate.

Every cultivation book has progidies, and the main character usually is one - people that understand more about their concepts, paths, etc, and are able to cultivate faster than pretty much everyone else. They’re pretty much the only people that have a chance of getting to the high ranks.

That wasn’t everything, but a lot of the main points.