2041 A.D, May 28th.

The day that the fate of Earth and every living being on it would be changed forever. In the future, later generations would look back and remark how this was the day that changed the fate of Earthlings.

However, that didn't occur for many years until after this event.

This event came to be known as the Stellar Shattering.

At around 11 A.M, while the sun was burning bright in the sky, out of seemingly nowhere an asteroid, the size of which had never been seen before, sized at a circumference larger than even that of Jupiter, rivalling the sun itself, hurtled towards the sun at incredible speeds.

From the time when it entered the detection of NASA and other space research institutions across the world, it took only a minute and a half to traverse the Solar System, crashing directly into the sun.

As the world watched on in horror as seemingly a second sun, pure black like a maleficent beast, crashed into the sun at unsurpassed speeds, they braced for a terrible cataclysm in the skies.

However, what they expected to occur didn't, rather the black sun seemingly fused into the golden sun.

Immediately though, strange occurrences seemed to happen on the sun. At first the sun gained a visible black tint around its edges. Then it began to contract and expand repeatedly, over the course of 4 hours, almost doubling in size, however shockingly its heat seemed to have been completely contained.

As every human on Earth watched the sky with baited breath, shocked by the repeated changes in the sun, the most shocking and fundamentally important change occurred. The so called 'Stellar Shattering'

At around 3:48 P.M. the sun which had been contracting and expanding, suddenly and without warning turned completely and utterly black, appearing as if it had completely solidified. For a brief moment the entire Earth was plunged into darkness.

Moments later, however, a radiant light, unseen before in the Solar System appeared.

The solid black sun, exploded!

Rather than a wave of rapacious flames, wiping out any and all life in the Solar System however, what presented itself to the people on Earth was hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of lights formed from the fragmented black sun after it exploded, shooting out across the Solar System, heading towards the numerous planets and other cosmic satellites in space.

The moon, the Earth, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and any other object of a seemingly pre-determined size in the Solar System, all these fragments seemed to gravitate towards them.

Especially towards Earth, at least a third of all the fragments headed towards Earth, as if these fragments were sentient and could sense the abundance of life-force on Earth compared to all the other planets.

As these radiant lights spread out all over the Solar System, within a few minutes of the fragments landing on Earth, every human being without fail underwent a pain they'd never experienced before, as if their fundamental genetic makeup was being changed.

Aside from mankind, every single living being, every beast, every blade of grass, everything seemed to undergo a significant fundamental change.

After a minute or so the pain instantly left all these living beings' bodies. What replaced the pain was a feeling of having their shackles lifted, as if they had underwent years upon years of evolution in an instant.

Every being could feel a new source of energy in the air, to varying degrees, depending on the natural talent awakened after these changes, however at least to some degree every being could detect a new energy, suffusing just as deeply into the world as the air they breathed in.

In the coming years, this energy would become known as... spirit Qi!

In the sky where the sun had been, there was now an object seemingly looking exactly like the sun, however it was pure black, yet still radiated a light source just as bright and radiant as the sun of the past had.

It appeared to be roughly half the size of the sun, and based on what those that awakened with the greatest talent could sense, there seemed to be a shockingly large amount of spirit Qi emanating from this black sun, and along with the spirit Qi diffusing from this black sun, the spirit Qi from the fragments that had split from the sun after it shattered also permeated the atmosphere of Earth with startling speed.

As spirit Qi spread throughout the Solar System, and people began to search fervently for these mysterious fragments which had landed on the Earth, a new era began on earth.

This new era would harken somewhat of a reversion to the past in terms of laws, with the strongest fist being the one that had the final say.

However, it would be a true golden age for Earth overall in terms of their development.

This is the era of cultivation!

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After the Stellar Shattering Earth was plunged into a frenzy. All over the world people would find fragments every single day, uncovering records pertaining to the so called civilisation of cultivators and the rules and laws that cultivators operated under, as well as information about the realms of cultivation that one could achieve.

There were six realms made known to the people on Earth, Qi Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, True Fusion and Void Ascension.

Collectively these 6 realms were gathered together to form one entire great realm, referred to by those in the wider universe as 'the 1st step'.

The talent of every cultivator was determined by their spiritual root. On Earth due to the fundamental changes in genetics caused by the advent of spirit Qi, every human contained a Spirit Root, however the majority of humans, at least 80%, possessed Spirit Roots which meant that based on their talent alone they would never be able to breakthrough the Qi Condensation realm.

The Spirit Roots that these 80% of humans had would typically be a so called Bronze Spirit Root, because of its bronze colouring when inspected.

A Silver Spirit Root would allow one to cultivate through the Qi Condensation realm and to the peak of the Foundation Establishment realm without any bottlenecks, and a Gold Spirit Root would allow one to cultivate to the peak of Core Formation without any issues.

Above a Gold Spirit root there were Elemental Spirit Roots, which aside from allowing one to cultivate to the Nascent Soul realm, also gave a special affinity to whatever element the Root belonged to, and if one had a mutated Elemental Root, a combination of more than one element, the cultivator could even have the chance to breakthrough to the True Fusion realm.

Aside from these Elemental Spirit Roots there were myriad unique and special Spirit Roots which provided greater talents and unique abilities even beyond the Elemental Roots to cultivators born with them, with there even being a list recorded on one of the fragments uncovered on Earth, the Heavenly Spirit Cannon, which recorded the 999 Spirit Roots discovered to be beyond and above even an elemental Spirit Root, which would aside from unparalleled cultivation talent also impart special abilities aiding their owners in unique ways depending on which root they had.

Less than 1 in 3 billion on Earth would have a Gold Spirit Root, and the chances of an elemental Spirit Root, was 1 in a trillion, a truly astronomical figure.

As for a Spirit Root beyond that of an Elemental Spirit root, one of the mysterious and special Heavenly Spirit Cannon roots, one had never been recorded in the 200 years following the introduction of cultivation to Earth's civilisation.

Of course, even for those with Bronze and Silver Spirit Roots, the lowest of the low, there was always a chance for them to surpass the limits set by their natural talent, changing their fate and achieving breakthroughs in defiance of the heavens, however even so the chances of them being able to achieve a breakthrough higher than a realm above their natural talent limit is very very low.

Aside from this there were fragments which contained inheritances on cultivation techniques, martial techniques to enhance one's combat abilities and more mysterious techniques. The lucky chances that some people came across when finding these inheritances changed their fates completely, allowing them to find a pathway to greatness and glory overnight.

Although pandemonium didn't ensue overnight, there were fights breaking out over fragments, as well as widespread mining from the various world governments focused on finding fragments.

However before the world could truly begin its entrance into the cultivation world, within a week of the Stellar Shattering the beast tides began.

Just as the search for fragments had truly gotten underway the world was plunged into war, with tides of mutated beasts, stronger than before and able to take bullets without fear of death, rushed humanity.

Without ample time to prepare humanity was plunged into a dreadful war against beasts.

Due to the head start the beasts gained, they gained an upper hand almost instantly and in the end humanity had to pay a staggering price to win the war, only winning when the first breakthrough to Foundation Establishment occurred, 28 years into the war, allowing them to turn the tide and eventually beat back the beasts after another 2 years of fighting.

During the fighting, the Earth itself slowly seemed to morph, as if the spirit Qi intrinsically wanted to change the makeup of Earth.

The vast majority of the landmasses on Earth gravitated together over this 30 year warring period, reforming into a huge continent much like the Pangea of the jurassic ages, with the remaining 10% of land forming scattered islands in the vast ocean left behind by the reforming of a super continent.

As the War came to an end, while the beast population of Earth had almost been eradicated, the surviving beasts being pushed back into the sea and very few islands left behind, humanity itself had lost around 13 of its 15 billion members, having only 2 billion left.

From this relatively small population humanity began to regrow, and combining the laws of the so called cultivation world and the laws of Earth, a balance was formed, between political rule and the strongest fist rules.

A new coalition was formed, the so called Global Alliance, formed from the 7 sects and 2 clans that rose to prominence in the 50 year period after the war.

In this period a true state of stabilisation occurred and cultivation truly took off, with more and more of the fragments on Earth being uncovered.

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At this 50 year mark, colonisation occurred, with humankind finally moving into the stars and settling on other planets, and within 20 years every single planet in the Solar System had a colony of the Global Alliance on it.

This expansion into the stars led to this era, the second era in the cultivation epoch, after the Age of War, being known as the Age of Expansion.

And 180 years into the Age of Expansion, around 110 years after the expansion into the stars, and long after the war against the beasts, with true stability and prosperity having come to the Earth's world of cultivation, a child who would shake the very foundation of the Global Alliance and herald his own era, Ao Fi Lu, was born!