0.3 What is Cultivation?

Cultivation is a concept that appears very frequently in Chinese Wuxia, Xianxia, and ancient-times novels. It is a concept that originated from Daoism: by absorbing spiritual energy from nature, one can strengthen his or her body and spiritual energy (qi). Most of the times, cultivation is done in a similar way to meditating. You just sit there and try to regulate your internal energy and also absorb the energy around you. Different places have different amounts of spiritual energy. Sects, clans of cultivators, are usually built around places with lots of spiritual energy, that way their cultivators can have an easier time when cultivating. Cultivation Sects are like schools. To get accepted, most will open a competition ceremony, where the winners of the competition will be accepted into the sect and be guided by stronger-level cultivators. Once accepted, elders or other masters will guide you and teach you special techniques and powers. These powers include flying, throwing fireballs, making the sky rain swords, etc all kinds of cool stuff. These powers require spiritual energy, so the more you cultivate, the more spiritual energy you’ll have, and the stronger your powers will be.

Cultivation, in simple terms, is just absorbing spiritual energy to make yourself stronger. Strength levels are split into realms, this book doesn’t have any so don’t worry about that lol. Cultivation is a heavenly-defying process; basically, mortals are not supposed to cultivate. So the Heavens will give tribulations to cultivators along the way, making the process of cultivation a very long and dangerous journey.

Cultivating is not easy. Only people with exceptional talents and access to a ton of resources like spiritual medicines can successfully cultivate. And if one gets accepted into a sect, that’s even better. The end goal of cultivation is to become an immortal.

Immortals are cultivators who have successfully reached the end. This can take a few decades for those EXTREMELY rare talents, up to centuries. And for most, they never make it there. The reason they’re called immortals is because the more you cultivate, the longer you can live. Immortals who reached the end of cultivation basically can live tens of thousands of years or even more, hence they are called immortals. Immortals are like Gods in western culture. Gods are usually in control of something, like Posideon is the god of the ocean. Voyagers would go pray and worship Posideon in temples to wish for a peaceful journey. It works the exact same way with Immortals. Some immortals are in charge of joy and sorrow, so you go worship them to hope for something happy to happen to you.

Once you become immortal, you no longer cultivate, instead, your strength is judged by how many worshippers and offerings you receive from mortals. Therefore, immortals in charge of more common things like marriage, joy, and knowledge, are worshipped more than others, since the immortals responsible for those things are also naturally stronger.

There is a set of rules called the Heavenly Rules. This states that immortals are not allowed to mess with mortal affairs. If you’ve read TGCF, you know what happens when immortals interfere with mortal affairs. This is because the world will not run properly if immortals do everything. Wars will become catastrophic, and when there aren’t wars, no one will want to work, since immortals can just use their spiritual powers. This way, society will become corrupt. Those who defy the Heavenly Rules will naturally get punished. Depending on the degree of violation, they will either become in charge of less common things, (making them receive fewer worshippers and hence making them weaker), or even be banished straight back to a mortal. This means all their hard work and past cultivation now returns to 0.

Additional note: When cultivating, there are two main body terms: Dantian and Meridians. Dantian is like a central gathering center for spiritual energy, and meridians are the routes and spiritual energy flows in. I don’t think this book really refers to them but I’ll leave it here just in case.