Chapter 127: The Theory of Spiritual Roots

Thus, the two walked while chatting, though it was less a chat and more Han Li asking questions and the boy answering.

From the boy, Han Li gleaned a fair amount of cultivation-world knowledge without the boy realizing it, learning many common truths every cultivator ought to know.

For instance: cultivators are divided into three major stages according to their realm—Lower Realm, Middle Realm, and Upper Realm.

The Lower Realm includes five levels: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and Soul Transformation; the Middle Realm comprises three levels: Void Refining, Body Integration, and Great Ascension; the Upper Realm has only one threshold—Tribulation Crossing—and once crossed, one ascends to the Immortal Realm and attains longevity equal to heaven and earth.

Yet, while easy to say, actually cultivating to such heights is utterly unattainable.

Not to mention advancing through all three realms—even reaching the pinnacle of the Lower Realm, Soul Transformation, according to the boy, had never been achieved by a single person in all of Yuezhou; those lingering at Nascent Soul were exceedingly rare, only a handful of ancient monsters with immense fortune.

According to the boy, a cultivator's lifespan is intimately tied to their cultivation realm; each advancement multiplies one's life expectancy.

Among mortals, living beyond a hundred years is already an extraordinary rarity.

A cultivator who successfully establishes a foundation can easily live two hundred years or more; if one miraculously forms a Golden Core, living four or five hundred years is quite possible; and if fortune smiles again and one miraculously condenses a Nascent Soul, congratulations—you may very well live past a thousand years!

As the white-robed boy spoke, he kept clicking his tongue, deeply envious of those ancient monsters who lived eight or a thousand years—ten times the lifespan of ordinary people!

Han Li listened, dumbfounded; though he had vaguely guessed cultivators lived longer than mortals, he never imagined it could be this absurd—could someone truly live a thousand years? Wasn't that just a thousand-year-old tortoise? Han Li couldn't help but think with a touch of malice.

If Nascent Soul cultivators could live so long, what of Soul Transformation, the other Middle Realm realms, or even the Upper Realm? Would they not be impossibly long-lived?

Han Li finally couldn't resist, subtly probing the question.

"Who knows? Maybe they live even longer—or maybe they become immortal?" the boy said carelessly.

"Rumors say that any cultivator who truly reaches Soul Transformation and perfects it must leave our world and enter another, higher-dimensional space—no one knows what that space is, and no one has ever returned."

"If no one has ever returned, how are the realms beyond Soul Transformation even defined?" Han Li thought, frustrated; but asking this young master here would surely yield no clear answer, so he bit his tongue and held back.

Beyond cultivation realms, Han Li also gained a rough understanding of Yuezhou's cultivation sects and families.

The boy knew nothing of other regions, but regarding Yuezhou's cultivation sects, he spoke with great fluency.

From him, Han Li learned that Yuezhou had seven major and minor sects: the Concealing Moon Sect, the Huang Feng Valley, the Spirit Beast Mountain, the Qingxu Gate, the Hua Dao Enclosure, the Tianque Fortress, and the Giant Sword Gate; among them, the Concealing Moon Sect was the strongest, Spirit Beast Mountain second, and the others roughly equal, with no overwhelming disparities.

If these cultivation sects were the towering trees supporting Yuezhou's cultivation world, then the cultivation families were the vines clinging to them, dependent on the sects to survive in the cultivation realm.

The boy spoke mysteriously: any cultivation family with even a modest history traced its ancestors back to disciples of these sects—descendants of their bloodlines.

The reason for this lies in the "spiritual roots," common to all cultivators.

"Spiritual roots"—what they were, most cultivators didn't understand; but all knew that without them, cultivation was impossible, for one could not sense spiritual energy, let alone cultivate magic power!

Yet those born with spiritual roots were exceedingly rare—perhaps one in ten thousand, even one in a hundred thousand; even among them, only a tiny fraction could actually walk the cultivation path, while the vast majority lived ordinary lives, for spiritual roots were scattered too thinly, making it a headache for sects eager to recruit disciples.

Moreover, possessing a spiritual root did not guarantee suitability for a sect, for spiritual roots varied greatly in quality.

Generally, spiritual roots were classified into the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth; most people had mixed roots of two, three, or even all five elements; though they could sense spiritual energy, their cultivation results were abysmal—they could barely advance the five-element basic techniques beyond levels three or four, and usually never broke through to Foundation Establishment in their lifetimes.

Thus, those with five or even four elemental roots were called "pseudo-spiritual roots" by the cultivation world, to distinguish them from "true spiritual roots," which had only two or three elements and cultivated far more efficiently.

A single-element spiritual root, however, was called a "heavenly root," meaning a child of heaven; whoever possessed such a root—regardless of element—cultivated at two to three times the speed of ordinary cultivators, and upon reaching the peak of Foundation Establishment, bypassed the bottleneck to Core Formation entirely, advancing effortlessly.

While the astonishing speed of heavenly roots made other cultivators envious, their ability to form a Golden Core without any bottleneck made them nearly vomit with jealousy.

For if only one in ten Qi Refining cultivators could enter Foundation Establishment with the aid of a Foundation Establishment Pill, then among a hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators, perhaps not one could successfully form a Golden Core.

Such a staggeringly low Core Formation success rate made other cultivators seethe with envy at the heavenly roots' divine favor.

Thus, whenever a heavenly root appeared, every sect would fiercely compete to claim them, for such a person was effectively a guaranteed Golden Core expert, greatly boosting the sect's strength.

Yet the emergence of heavenly roots was so rare it was nearly negligible—perhaps one every few centuries. Far more common, however, were "mutant spiritual roots," not heavenly roots but also not standard five-element roots, appearing roughly once every twenty to thirty years.

A "mutant spiritual root" referred to a spiritual root where two or three elemental properties had mutated and been elevated.

For example: earth and water elements mutating into a "thunder root"; metal and water elements mutating into an "ice root"; and others such as "dark root," "wind root," and so on.

Though mutant root cultivators lacked the heavenly root's immunity to the Core Formation bottleneck, their cultivation speed was no slower than that of heavenly roots; and if they found a technique matching their element, they often became formidable experts, capable of matching three or four ordinary cultivators of equal level.

Thus, those with mutant roots were also greatly welcomed by all major sects.

Yet in the past, not only were heavenly roots and mutant roots nearly impossible to find, even ordinary true spiritual roots were exceedingly hard to locate.

Cultivation sects couldn't possibly test every child in every mortal household! After all, only one in ten thousand mortals was born with a spiritual root, and among five or six with spiritual roots, only one was a true spiritual root.

Under such harsh conditions, history recorded bizarre tales of minor sects dwindling to mere handfuls of disciples, nearly losing their lineage entirely.

Faced with this embarrassing situation, some thoughtful individuals eventually discovered that spiritual roots were far more likely to appear among those sharing the same bloodline.

For example, if one of two spouses possessed a spiritual root, their child had a one-in-four chance of inheriting it; if both parents had spiritual roots, the likelihood increased dramatically—even the possibility of all their children possessing spiritual roots was not uncommon.

This discovery thrilled those thoughtful individuals.

Under their influence, many young disciples of various sects were sent by their masters to settle in the mortal world, marry, and raise children, returning to their sects only after having offspring.

Thus, when sects needed new disciples, they directly selected children from their own disciples' families, greatly increasing the proportion of true spiritual roots.

In this way, the sects' chronic shortage of disciples was finally alleviated.

Though the chance of a spiritual root appearing among mortals remained low, the total number of those with spiritual roots steadily grew; families with inherited spiritual bloodlines produced disciple after disciple, and over time, as their lineages branched out, they became the cultivation families of today.

These cultivation families might lack advanced techniques, but they had no shortage of basic cultivation scriptures, gradually becoming peripheral branches of the major sects, with a degree of independence.

Thus, every cultivation family was backed by a cultivation sect—never to be underestimated.

The white-robed boy had not spoken so freely to anyone in a long time.

The feeling of being listened to with rapt attention gave him an urge to pour out everything, and his fondness for Han Li grew substantially; he blurted out all he knew about the cultivation world, clearly showing off before Han Li.

Han Li, naturally, listened with great pleasure, occasionally interjecting to provoke the boy into speaking even more enthusiastically; but unfortunately, the mist-shrouded slope, though distant from the village, was not far—after several hours of walking, the two arrived at its foot.

Such a short journey left Han Li deeply dissatisfied—he hadn't heard enough about the cultivation world and wished he could turn back and start over; yet he knew it was impossible, so he merely watched the boy fall silent, gazing with wide, eager eyes at the mist.

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