To mortals, anyone born with any kind of spirit roots was considered a potential immortal. Even if those people never practiced cultivation arts, ordinary martial training and a life free from serious injury or illness were enough to grant them longer lives than common people. Living past a hundred was nothing unusual. In the cultivation world, however, spirit roots were only the most basic requirement for cultivation. By themselves, they could hardly be considered a special constitution.

Luo Chen had found that cultivation aptitude came down to three factors: the spirit root, the divine soul, and the physique. There was not much to say about the spirit root part; the number and quality of one's spirit roots determined cultivation speed. It was as straightforward as it could get. There were certain nicknames for rare varieties, like heavenly spirit roots and anomalous spirit roots, but they all fell within the same regular framework.

Divine soul aptitude, meanwhile, encompassed a person's comprehension, temperament, innate soul foundation, and even the wisdom they might have retained from a previous life. It was an extremely complex matter. As for the physique part, that concerned the body's natural qualities—muscles and bones, meridians, acupoints, and so on. For example, someone like Li Yingzhang, with the Ninefold Winding Body, possessed meridians fundamentally different from those of ordinary people. Those born with the so-called divine strength were much the same; the structure and density of their bones and muscles were far beyond those of normal individuals.

These three forms of aptitude were not as clearly divided as they seemed at first glance. During infancy and childhood, in particular, they could influence and alter one another. Most commonly, variations...