In the world's actual history, Tlod invented the currently used cultivation technique, known as 'soul cultivation,' through his own effort. The cultivation technique he invented was the raw, most basic form and had 9 realms: Energy Gathering, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Divine Soul, Substance Soul, Multiple Soul, Void Soul, Soul Transformation, and Perfect Soul, also called the Perfection Realm.
As evidenced by their names, his newly invented technique focused on the soul. The first two realms, Energy Gathering and Core Formation were preparations for forming the Nascent Soul. It was named the Soul Cultivation Technique for a reason.
His original invention was the foundation of the new system, like the computer's operating system; future generations could improve and build applications on its foundation.
After he left, many cultivators invented cultivation techniques based on his basic soul cultivation. One example is Heaven's Way Technique, which is based on the soul cultivation Tlod invented but is an improvement built on the foundation of Tlod's work.
However, in the Inheritance World, Jack gave Tlod the raw cultivation technique Tlod invented in the future. Many advanced cultivation techniques were built through a lot of hard work on top of the basic soul technique. With all of these available, Tlod improved his original design greatly.
The current basic soul cultivation technique is widely used; anyone can easily obtain it and cultivate it all the way to the Perfection Realm without issue. In fact, it is easier to cultivate only using the basic technique. The only issue is that the fighting strength of those who cultivate the raw technique is much lower than that of those who cultivate with specialized cultivation techniques.
The basic soul cultivation technique produces a very peaceful mana with low sharpness and weight, making it unsuitable for casting spells and fighting. It would increase lifespan the same, but when it comes to fighting, it would be a disaster.
Over the years, many people have researched mana and discovered a lot of useful information regarding it. Mana has a few characteristics: sharpness, weight, affiliation, purity, and bias.
Sharpness refers to its suitability for casting immediate spells. It would not come into effect for casting slow, long-term spells, but in battles, one has to cast spells instantly, so the sharper the mana, the quicker one can cast spells. Weight refers to its suitability for casting complex spells. The heavier the mana, the more stable and suitable it is to cast complex and unstable spells. However, increased heaviness reduces sharpness, so it is all a balance. Affiliation refers to its element. There are many elements, such as fire, cold, wood, life, death, etc. Mana with fire affiliation can cast fire spells at a much lower cost, better quality, and ease, and mana affiliated with cold can cast cold-related spells with more ease and less cost. Purity refers to how smooth it is. Purity is very important; if the mana is too impure, it can cause spell failure, which could be deadly in battles. Bias refers to its charge. It is like a blood type for mana; there is no obvious difference. Positive and negative mana work the same; only in some specific Daos and spells can mana bias make any difference.
There are many other characteristics, but those are often studied in super sects and are not that useful in battles for general cultivators.
The sects that researched mana gave the initial value of +1 to the values of the raw soul cultivation technique. The basic soul cultivation technique produces a sharpness of +1, weight of +1, no affiliation +1, purity of +1, and bias of +1.
Heaven's Way Technique produces mana with a sharpness of +114, weight of +230, affiliation of heavenly fire +178, purity of +450, and bias of +101. These numbers make it one of the best cultivation techniques in the world.
The Brown family's main cultivation technique, called 'All-Encompassing Golden Blood,' has a sharpness of +72, a weight of +93, an affiliation of earth +99, a purity of +368, and a bias of -8.
In short, the basic technique is incomparably worse than the specialized cultivation techniques. A late-stage Soul Transformation cultivator who uses only the raw technique would lose in a battle to a Soul Transformation cultivator who just broke through using the 'All-Encompassing Golden Blood' technique.
A peak Perfection cultivator who only cultivated using the basic technique would lose to all other perfection cultivators. Still, even though they are much worse than other peak perfection cultivators, they are perfection cultivators, after all. A peak perfection cultivator who only cultivated using the basic technique can still defeat all late perfection realm cultivators, no matter who they are or what technique they cultivated. The difference in the perfection realm is too big; even if their weight, sharpness, and other attributes are low compared to others of the same realm, they can still defeat lower realms easily.
Tlod created the basic soul cultivation from nothing, with no cheating. This time around, though, the Tlod in Inheritance cheated and, as a result, created a much better basic technique.
This time, the basic technique had an initial sharpness of +50, a weight of +40, no affiliation of +1, a purity of +1,000, and a bias of +1.
If this technique spreads, it will take the whole world by storm. The specialized technique is on top of the basic one, meaning the initial value of the basic technique would be added to the specialized technique. If Jack cultivates his Heaven's Way Technique using this newly invented basic technique, his sharpness increases by 50, weight by 40, and purity by 1,000, all at no cost.
What's more, this new technique opens many doors. One barrier to designing more extreme specialized techniques is preserving purity above +100. This new basic technique increases purity by 1,000, meaning those who cultivate it can use techniques that reduce purity by -1,000 but remain above water. Jack himself already has many ideas about decreasing Heaven's Way's purity and instead increasing sharpness and weight.
For those already deep into cultivation, changing techniques is practically impossible. After all, if they want to change their basic technique, they must dissolve their current cultivation and start building from scratch. However, Jack is different; he has a system that can be used to get him back up easily.
His only real obstacle is the Heaven's Way Technique, which requires some calculation to check for compatibility and to tweak it to reduce its purity and increase its sharpness and weight. It is not easy and takes some time.
Fortunately, Jack has plenty of time.
...
500 years later.
After many years, Jack finally calculated the new basic technique with Heaven's Way for compatibility and found no issues; he also reworked Heaven's Way to increase its sharpness and weight. He had the technique up to multiple soul realm already, which made the reworking process much easier and faster.
After a lot of work, this was the final product:
Sharpness +1,059, Weight +702, Affiliation: Heavenly Fire +514, Purity -604, Bias +100.
The new Heaven's Way Technique is, without a doubt, the best cultivation technique in the whole world. It has a sharpness of over 1,000, which means Jack can cast spells faster than anyone in his realm, a weight of 702, which means he can cast very complicated spells without delay and very little chance of destabilization, and a very high Heavenly Fire affiliation, which would increase the fatality of his spells by a lot, and purity of -604, which is terrible. Still, because of the base purity of +1,000, his overall purity would be 1,000 - 604, which would be +396, which is not bad.
Generally, a purity of 400 is considered extremely good, with a neglectable chance of spell failure; increasing purity beyond 400 isn't helpful all that much.
With such an amazing cultivation technique, even without using exclusive spells of Heavenly Way, Jack is still confident he can defeat cultivators of higher rank in the same realm.
Jack believes that at the peak of the Multiple Soul Realm, he has a very small chance of casting spells that can break through Void Soul cultivators' defenses. Of course, even with such an amazing cultivation technique, he cannot defeat an ordinary Void Soul cultivator or even escape from them. The difference between ranks is way too big.
Still, if he miraculously finds a void soul cultivator who only uses the basic technique and no specialized technique, Jack believes he can fight and defeat them while being only at the peak of multiple soul realms! Of course, the possibility of finding a void soul cultivator who only uses the basic technique is far lower than being struck by lightning.
Even though he has the cultivation technique ready, he still isn't ready to dissolve his current cultivation. The reason is simple: lifespan.
He has already lived for thousands of years, which means that if he loses his cultivation, he will die before having any chance of increasing his realm. The biggest challenge for those who drop in the realm is their age; if a Nascent Soul cultivator who already lived 1,000 years drops to Core Formation, they would die immediately because Core Formation cultivators have a much lower lifespan.
Jack, however, has plans to fix it. He has a wealth of knowledge and a Perfection Realm grandma; he can invent a spell and give it to her to cast it on him. He already has a few ideas, such as the 'Temporary Immortality' spell, which sounds ridiculous; after all, immortality means never dying, which is completely inconsistent with 'temporary.' But still, for Jack, it is just what he needs.
Quite a few spells were made for this situation, where a cultivator plans to abolish their cultivation without dying of old age. But Jack didn't like those techniques; they were low-level, in his opinion, and had side effects, such as greatly damaging aptitude. He wanted a perfect spell with no side effects.
With this thought, he again went on a long-term closed-door cultivation.
...
Another 100 years passed in a blink.
Jack successfully invented the 'Temporary Immortality' spell using only knowledge from this world. He handed it to Daoist Snow, told her what he wanted to do, and asked her to help him.