Core Formation Realm expert—an existence that was like a behemoth in this part of the region. Any cultivator at this level was respected wherever he went.
They held so much power that any one of them could wreak havoc and dominate cities alone. They could walk in the sky, split rivers, and destroy the earth.
Just one casual attack could put even the strongest Perfection Stage Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator in a life-and-death struggle.
Most of the prominent families and factions in the royal city had at least one Core Formation expert backing them.
Even the Zang royal family's strongest expert was at the perfection of this level. They relied on their staggering number of seven Core Formation Realm experts to dominate the whole region.
Even without their identity as a branch family of the Bai imperial family, no one would dare to oppose them.
In the royal city, only three other powers had such experts as pillars: the Formation Association branch, the Alchemy Association branch, and the Lao family.
The former two didn't interfere in local politics, as this was a rule set by the main branches. As for the Lao family, they were a loyal affiliate family of the royal family and boasted two Core Formation experts.
There were other factions with such strength in the region, but they were in different cities, as none of them dared to use the royal Zang city as a base and risk being suppressed by the royal family.
Lingtian bowed in the direction of the presence he felt and then walked in. He understood the message clearly: don't mess around if you don't want to die.
If an expert at this level wanted to hide his presence, there was no way a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator like himself could sense him.
Lingtian knew his time was limited, so he didn't waste any time and started looking for the Spirit Foundation Technique.
Just moments later, he found it. It was the first technique displayed in the cultivation section. He took it and started reading.
He found it not too simple and not too complex. It described the process of using spirit energy to refine the meridians and the locations of the nine major meridians and the 81 minor meridians and how to tackle each one of them.
According to this technique, the human body has nine major meridians that have to be unlocked and refined to the limits before reaching the perfection of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
In the Essence Gathering Realm, cultivators used their blood meridians to channel essence energy to cultivate.
But in the Foundation Establishment Realm, they needed to open special meridians that only someone with a spirit root could have. They were directly linked and the basis of the future cultivation.
As for why mortals couldn't cultivate even in the Essence Gathering Realm, it was because without a spirit root, they couldn't sense the essence energy at all. The higher the grade of the spirit root, the more essence energy they could control and absorb.
Every major meridian was linked directly to the spirit root, and each one of them had nine minor meridians spread all over the body.
To perfect a foundation, only the major meridians were necessary, but to open a major meridian, three corresponding minor meridians linked to it had to be opened first.
So actually, it wasn't necessary to open all the meridians, just the nine major ones and 27 corresponding ones to be considered at the perfection stage and try to form a core and breakthrough to the Core Formation Realm.
But the catch was that the more meridians a cultivator could open, the stronger he became, as the power he could generate was directly dependent on the number of meridians he could use, and the higher the chances of successfully forming a core would be.
The chances of someone who opened just 27 minor meridians were nearly nonexistent. Without some priceless heavenly treasure or some high-level pill, they basically had zero chance of breaking through in their lifetime and would be stuck at the perfection stage until the day they die.
And the grade of the spirit roots was essential in this matter, as a low-grade spirit root would have only three minor meridians corresponding to every major meridian, so just 27 in total, they were essentially doomed from the start.
A mid-grade spirit root would have six minor meridians corresponding to every major meridian, giving a good chance to the cultivator to form his core. Statistically, one in a thousand of such talents could form a core eventually.
As for the high-grade spirit root, it had all nine meridians, but they were much harder to open than their perfect-grade spirit roots counterparts.
It was for this reason that only high-grade spirit root talents and above were treated as the core disciples in any major power like the Broken Moon Empire or the Crimson Moon Sect.
The difference with the essence path and the spirit path started to shine in this realm because the energy used to open and refine those meridians would dictate which type of energy the cultivator could use.
If essence energy was used, they would become essence meridians, and if spirit energy was used, they would become spirit meridians.
But spirit masters still had to absorb essence energy through the blood meridians, as their spirit meridians couldn't provide the necessary nourishment for the body. But this was just for the normal functions of the body and had nothing to do with the strength they could unleash.
Having committed the Spirit Foundation Technique to memory, Lingtian realized only two hours had passed. He began searching for something crucial, aware that lacking martial art techniques at the Foundation Establishment stage diminished his chances against a peer.
Even though he had been at the Foundation Establishment realm for some time now, he knew that if faced with an expert at the same level as him, his chances of winning were very slim.
It took him half an hour to select a technique from the martial arts section, fully aware that relying on Essence Gathering stage techniques he had against a Foundation Establishment opponent was laughable.