(Tomorrow is Monday again. Wang Yu still needs everyone's continued support. I hope you can keep me on the rankings. After all, this increases the chance of getting the editor's attention for a contract. As long as I am on the charts, Wang Yu will code 6000 words for everyone every day! Keep throwing your recommendation tickets at this book!)
And so, the two of them walked and chatted. Actually, "chatted" wasn't quite the right word; it was more like Han Li was asking questions and the youth was answering.
Without the youth even realizing it, Han Li managed to pry quite a bit of information about the world of immortal cultivation from him, learning a lot of common knowledge that any cultivator should know.
For example, the realms of cultivators were divided into three major stages: Lower Realm, Middle Realm, and Upper Realm.
The Lower Realm included five levels: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and Soul Formation. The Middle Realm had three levels: Soul Transformation, Body Integration, and Mahayana. As for the Upper Realm, there was only the Tribulation Passage level left. Once one passed this level, they could ascend to the Immortal Realm and live as long as Heaven and Earth.
It was easy enough to talk about, but in actuality, true cultivation was a distant dream!
Let alone advancing through all three major realms, even in the very first realm, the Lower Realm, reaching the highest level, Soul Formation, was something not a single person in the entire Yue Kingdom had ever achieved, according to the youth. Even those who lingered in the Nascent Soul stage were extremely rare, just a few old monsters with deep karmic luck.
According to the youth, a cultivator's lifespan was closely tied to their cultivation realm. Every advancement in realm meant a multiplicative increase in one's lifespan.
For an ordinary mortal to live over a hundred years was already considered a rare longevity.
But it was perfectly normal for a cultivator who succeeded in Foundation Establishment to live over two hundred years. If someone managed to form a Golden Core, there was a good chance they could live to four or five hundred. If another miracle happened, and you stumbled upon heaven-defying luck to condense a Nascent Soul, then congratulations were in order! Even celebrating a thousandth birthday was not out of the question!
When the white-robed youth got to this point, he kept clicking his tongue in admiration, expressing great envy for those old monsters who could live eight hundred or a thousand years. This was ten times the lifespan of an ordinary person!
Han Li listened, dumbfounded. Although he had vaguely guessed that cultivators lived longer than ordinary people, he never imagined it could be this ridiculous! A lifespan of over a thousand years? That would practically make them a thousand-year-old tortoise! Han Li couldn't help but think maliciously.
But if Nascent Soul cultivators could live this long, wouldn't those in the Soul Formation stage, the Middle Realms, and even the Upper Realm be even more ridiculously long-lived?
Han Li finally couldn't help himself and probed the question indirectly.
"Who knows? Maybe they live even longer. Maybe they just never die!" the youth said carelessly.
"According to rumors, any cultivator who truly reaches the Soul Formation stage and completes it to the Great Perfection must leave our world and go to another, higher plane. What kind of plane or world it is, no one knows. No one has ever returned to tell the tale."
No one has ever come back? Then how were the realms above Soul Formation figured out? Han Li thought, somewhat depressed. But there was no point in asking this young master in front of him. He probably couldn't explain it clearly. Han Li held back his question.
Aside from the realm classifications, Han Li also gained a rough understanding of the immortal cultivation sects and families in the Yue Kingdom.
The youth didn't know much about other places, but when it came to the matter of the immortal cultivation sects throughout the entire Yue Kingdom, he spoke with great authority.
From him, Han Li learned that there were seven immortal cultivation sects in the Yue Kingdom, large and small: the Moon Veil Sect, Yellow Maple Valley, Spirit Beast Mountain, Clear Void Sect, Blade-Transforming Dock, Heavenly Fortress, and Giant Sword Sect. Among these, the Moon Veil Sect was the strongest, with Spirit Beast Mountain a close second. The strength of the other sects was mostly similar, without much difference.
If these cultivation sects were the towering trees that supported the entire cultivation world of the Yue Kingdom, then the cultivation families were the branches and vines that twined around them, more or less. They had to rely on these sects to survive in the world of cultivation.
The youth said, in a mysterious tone, that any cultivation family with a bit of history had ancestors who were disciples of these sects, continuing their bloodline.
The reason for this all came down to the "Spirit Root," a concept shared by all cultivators.
What exactly was a "Spirit Root"? Most cultivators couldn't say for sure. But they all knew that if a person didn't have a Spirit Root, they couldn't even think about cultivation. Without one, you simply couldn't sense spiritual energy, let alone cultivate magical power!
But people born with a Spirit Root were far too rare among the ordinary populace. They were literally one in ten thousand, or even one in several tens of thousands. Even so, of those who possessed a Spirit Root, only a tiny fraction actually walked the path of cultivation. The vast majority lived out their lives as commoners. This was because people with Spirit Roots were very hard to identify; they were scattered too widely, giving a massive headache to the cultivation sects who wished to recruit disciples.
Furthermore, having a Spirit Root didn't guarantee you met the standards of a cultivation sect. Spirit Roots were not all the same; there were good ones and bad ones.
Generally speaking, Spirit Roots were divided into the five elemental attributes: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. Most people had Spirit Roots that were a mixed bag of all five or four attributes. Although these people could sense the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth, their cultivation efficiency was absolutely dismal. They could basically only train the basic five-element techniques of the Qi Refining stage up to the third or fourth level before grinding to a complete halt, and they would generally have no hope of crossing into the Foundation Establishment stage in their entire lives.
Thus, Spirit Roots with five, and even four, attributes were called "Pseudo Spirit Roots" by the cultivation world, to distinguish them from "True Spirit Roots," which only had two or three attributes and allowed for relatively faster cultivation progress.