"As you might have heard from those Seniors in your Clan, the process known as cultivation today is an act that serves to augment one's longevity to the point of a quasi-eternal life, and at the same time greatly increase our strength in order to successfully accomplish ridiculous and superhuman feats such as flying, slashing apart mountains, defeating thousands with a single wave of one's sleeve... all in all, it's basically the way to accumulate the one true currency of our world: power."
Cheng Hao poured some tea he had prepared during his explanation in two cups. He then handed one to the girl and took one for himself. He took a sip and continued his explanation, "Cultivation as of today is commonly divided into the three vast Realms, namely the Mortal, Ageless and Immortal Realm. For today, we shall focus on the first of the three... the Mortal Realm! Stepping into the Mortal Realm is the first step one must take to graduate from being a normal person into becoming a cultivator! At the same time however, even a peak Mortal Realm cultivator won't extend his longevity noticeably. Humans for example would cap at a hundred and twenty or so years at most even at the very peak of said Realm. As this is hardly any different from a normal mortal's lifespan, experts dubbed it the 'Mortal' Realm. It will only be with the Ageless Realm that one shall gradually stop aging, while, with the Immortal Realm, one will finally be able to life for thousands, tens of thousands of years, increasing the amount with each subsequential breakthrough. In the eyes of true experts, it is only when one steps into the Ageless Realm that one can be considered a 'true' cultivator. Most take a hundred or so years to reach this level, with those who are slightly faster taking from sixty to ninety years to accomplish the same task..."
Cheng Hao trailed off and then spoke with a knowing smile. "The current record holder however, is a certain man known as Xu Ling. He stepped into the Ageless Realm at age twenty-four and created a ruckus in the cultivation world. After that, he created a legend when he entered the Immortal Realm at the 'young' age of sixty-one. Although a certain person..." He sent an inquiring glance at Xiao Wu as he spoke, "surpassed him just a few decades later when he became an Immortal Realm cultivator at fifty-nine, Xu Ling's first achievement remains intact! This person was known as the Evil Saint and was one of the most handsome and talented man in the cultivation world!"
Xiao Wu frowned: of course she knew of the Evil Saint and of his achievements in cultivation. She couldn't help however but feel as if something was wrong about what the young child had told her: wasn't his depiction of Xu Ling placing the Evil Saint into a too bright of a light?
Goldy rolled his eyes. "Pff. Show-off."
Cheng Hao retorted, "It's called loving oneself! Anyways, twenty-four years is the mark we are going to be chasing after! I'm confident that if you put in the effort, you might just be able to succeed before you even step into your teens! So our actual objective is accomplishing exactly what the Evil Saint has done... in half the time! Before you turn thirteen and are still twelve years old, I'm planning on having you step into the Ageless Realm…"
"Pu!" Xiao Wu spat out the tea. Somehow Cheng Hao must have predicted this as he closed a now damp umbrella and put it back into the miraculous Heaven&Earth pouch.
"S-Sorry!" Xiao Wu immediately apologized, but then shook her head in disbelief. "It's just... twelve years old? We're both children, I'm eight myself, and we both have yet to start cultivating... how exactly are we supposed to accomplish what even that Xu Ling himself couldn't?"
Cheng Hao chuckled and answered her question with another question, "Very well then, let me ask you this: do you know at what age this so called 'Evil Saint' began cultivating?"
Xiao Wu opened her mouth to speak, but she did not make a sound… because the records of her Clan did not mention that! She sent an inquiring glance at a laughing Cheng Hao. "W-when did he start?"
The golden-eyed youth opened his mouth to speak and said with a smile, "He began cultivating at the ripe, old age of twenty-one! He took roughly four years to become an Ageless Realm cultivator from a cultivation-less mortal!"
"As a matter of fact, I'll have to apologize: what I told you earlier was actually an intended clickbait!" Cheng Hao smiled as a scheming glint flashed across his eyes. "To the world, what we will accomplish will be exactly that: surpassing the Evil Saint by a landslide and even going as far as accomplishing exactly what he did... in half the time! What we will be REALLY doing however, is accomplishing the same feat as he had… except we will be doing that starting twelve years before he did! I'll be turning nine soon, while you are still more than half a year away from your birthday. That means we even have slightly more than those four years before we turn thirteen! Since the Evil Saint has done it before, it's definitely possible! We'll even have some leeway that will allow us to take things slowly… So! What do you think?" Cheng Hao winked, "Are you ready to beat a legend… and become a myth yourself?"
Xiao Wu gulped: her Clan had been declining ever since they had lost the war against Tian. Had it not for the secret legacy left behind by the Jade Emperor that had been Lord of the Heavens before Tian, they would have definitely been kicked out of their own home! But if she could really shock the world and show that her Clan had yet to fall, and had actually even given birth to a never-seen-before genius... wouldn't her Clan's noble name be recovered just like that?
Yes!
Now that she had been made aware of the possibility… she was more than willing to beat a legend and become a myth!
"Oh? I see you are quite intent... Good! Very good! Then, I'll be asking you to discard any knowledge of cultivation you may have, as I'll be teaching you everything... anew! If you can do that and follow my instructions from here on, I can guarantee that, no matter what happens, the moment you turn thirteen your name shall already have shocked the world!"
Xiao Wu felt as if her blood were boiling! She felt her hair standing up and shivers going down her spine! After such a boastful declaration, Xiao Wu only had one question left...
"When do we start?"
Cheng Hao chugged down the remaining tea and hurriedly wiped his lips on his sleeves. He took out a gourd from the magical pouch and bit off the cork. "Well… I was planning right about now." Pah! He spat out the cork and smiled in a provocative manner. "What do you say?"
…
"Inferior, Basic, Advanced, Superior, Sung and Reverend. From lowest to highest, these are the six stages of the Mortal Realm!" Cheng Hao spoke. "Each stage is divided into low, mid and high levels, plus the unofficial 'peak' level when one reaches the bottleneck to the next stage. As we tackle these bottlenecks, our mindset should be exactly the following…"
"Suffer no defeat!"
"And, even if eventually defeated, seek for some kind of victory in that defeat, no matter how shallow! If we lose without gaining anything we would only be wasting our time, and we only so much of that!"
"Now, for when we actually begin cultivating: to begin on the road to martial cultivation one has to first step into the Inferior stage. To do so, there are multiple steps: firstly, to sense one's Qi, the source of one's cultivation; secondly, to draw in and absorb the Spiritual Energy; thirdly, to form and shape the Qi and the Spiritual Energy into the Qi Sea; fourthly, to finally condense that Qi Sea into the Pseudo-Core! Once one had accomplished all that, one will finally be able to claim one to be an Inferior stage cultivator!"
Cheng Hao's words made the young Xiao Wu frown: those steps were different from what the elders of her clan usually told her, and by a large margin at that!
"Brother Cheng? Weren't the steps just Qi Sensing and Spiritual Energy Absorption? Also, are you sure you didn't mistake the Qi Sea for the Qi River? I mean, isn't forming the Qi River the requirements to enter the second stage of martial cultivation, the Basic stage? What's the Pseudo-Core? Isn't forming the Core the way one enters the third stage, the advanced stage? Also-"
"Ahh…" a sigh from the child interrupted Xiao Wu's onslaught of questions.
"I see you have yet to discard those old fools' nonsense." Cheng Hao smiled bitterly and then waved his hands dismissively, "Well, that's to be expected, seeing that my appearance is that of a child. Pick something to write with, because this explanation will be long and it will be also full of important stuff you might need to note down." Cheng Hao took a long sip from the gourd and Xiao Wu did as she was told. She picked up a strange pen and a few sheets of paper from her own Heaven&Heart Pouch: she had decided to put her faith in this new brother of hers. She trusted him and it wouldn't harm to just listen anyways.
"Indeed, what you guys still dare call 'Experts' of cultivation have divided cultivation stages in Inferior, Basic, Advanced, Superior, etcetera, etcetera, in accordance with the requirements needed to enter the corresponding stage. Inferior is Qi Sensing, Qi River is for the Basic stage, the Core is for the Advanced, the Superior stage has the Satellite, and so on and so forth. That is not wrong, but it is not right either, and that was pointed out by Xu Ling in the past numerous times." Cheng Hao's eyes glinted intelligently, "You see, before Xu Ling was a heaven-shaking cultivator or a world-renowned genius, he had been an esteemed scholar. Even with his young age, his remarks could easily send even the most experienced of your 'Experts" in total panic, unable to utter even a single word of response that wasn't a curse..."
Xiao Wu smiled bitterly.
There he goes again with the Evil Saint fanboying... Just how high of a place does Xu Ling have in his heart for he to speak so fondly of him?
Goldy's smile however was even more bitter.
Eh, annoyed by his boasting, aren't you? And that's only after watching him for less than a day! I've lived with him for hundreds of years and at times I find myself at a loss when faced with the depths of his narcissism.
"Although those old idiots failed to see the genius in the system Xu Ling had thought up, after he smacked their face by breaking all kinds of cultivation records his efforts were acknowledged. Seeing that it has yet to spread however, I can only guess they must have hid their own idiocy from the world..."
Xiao Wu: yup, definitely an hardcore fanboy…
Goldy: and you ask why people don't like you? Get to the main point already!
"We have been following the methods to level up and conquer each stage that our ancestors had tried out themselves for way too long. We accepted this system as an unconditional truth, without bothering to find mistakes that we were influenced to think weren't there! After all, why would there be, after so many years of research carried out by some white-haired dumbasses in their dusty libraries? Irony aside, it is exactly for this reason that the cultivation world has staled and nobody has ever been able to reach the one, final goal of cultivation, the Immortal Stage: it is because the system has stopped evolving! However, Xu Ling together with the few who dared believed his words, broke away from that staleness. They thus became an army to be reckoned with in an unimaginably short time, all thanks to the incomparable cultivation speed coming from these new methods! In short, the point is..."
Oh, he got to the point!
God fucking finally!
"The 'changes', such as the Qi Sea, Core, Satellite, that happen with each level up and the sequence with which they happen, are all trivial at most and thus can all be played around with!"