An Elder's Revolution - The Art of Sect Politics

“Alright, thank you all for attending this little speech of mine. Right of the bat, let me make one thing clear: The fact that disciples of all ages have been allowed to attend means that the level of knowledge amongst all of you is quite diverse. What this means is that those of you who are more curious, educated and/or more advanced are going to be hearing some or even many things they already know. Despite that, I am pretty confident that nearly everyone here is going to be able to take away at least one or two things they didn’t know previously.

Now, before we dive in: Cultivation is a human invention. There is no great heavenly path that was laid out for us. There is just the way nature is. The path that we now call cultivation was first charted by the earliest ancestors of our civilization, hundreds of millennia ago as a way to better survive this hostile world of ours. It has been in constant development over all of this time.

What we are talking about today, the way of cultivation that all of us practice, is called ‘soul cultivation’, more commonly known as ‘true cultivation’. It is, in many ways, the best path of cultivation that is commonly known to us, hence it’s widespread use. This path of cultivation dominates the three continents our civilization spans over. It is however by no means the only existing path of cultivation. You might, for example have heard of ‘false cultivation’, better known as ‘body cultivation’ or the infamous practice known as ‘demonic cultivation’.

For now, you only need to know these paths exist. What you are treading on is, I say so with certainty, a strictly superior path to all other paths that exist within your or even my reach. There are stories and myths of far-of lands where completely foreign methods are practiced, but even insofar as these might be true, they are beyond any of our reaches.

The only time you would need to worry about the other types of cultivation is thus, when you step out of the sect into the world without being supervised by sect members. Something that won’t happen before you become members yourselves.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into soul cultivation. Today’s speech won’t focus on any specific details, but will instead serve as an outlook on the path that you are all just beginning to walk upon. We will start from the first realm and work our way up from that.

The Qi Gathering Realm should be familiar to all of you, since all of you are either in this realm or have finished it already. It is simple really. All around us, permeating everything in the world, both living and not living, is an energy known as Qi. Utilizing this energy is the central thing that all cultivation is based upon.

The realm of Qi Gathering is about one thing and one thing only: learning to sense this energy, learning to move it, and drawing it into your body. This Qi that you draw into your body is different from that which naturally permeates you. Since you have willingly drawn it into the bounds of your existance, you will subconsciously hold it in place. Some of it may escape your grasp again, but as you get better at controlling Qi, your body will slowly start being filled with denser and denser Qi.

The control you learn to exercise is key to this realm. Without it, it is impossible to progress further. A powerful cultivator could instantly fill your body with the densest Qi, without the control it would do nothing but disperse again. This is why, uniquely, there are no shortcuts through this realm. Some have more talent in moving Qi than others, but everyone can eventually learn it through effort and training.

Once you have reached sufficient control over your Qi that you manage to fully saturate your body with it, it is time to continue on into the second realm. The average person will take about five years for this step.

The next realm is the realm most of you are currently in. The realm of Body Reformation. This Realm is the first time you will actually use Qi for something. While previously, nothing truly separated you from a mortal, this Realm will mark your true embarking on the journey of cultivation.

The essence of the second realm is to use Qi to modify it in preparation for future cultivation. It is simply a physical setup so the further steps can be taken. You will be guided through the different stages of the Realm by your instructors, but just to give you an outlook: The first thing you will do it to make a subtle change to the entirety of your biology to transform your body into a natural vessel for Qi

This is what you need the Qi you have gathered in the previous realm for. Once that is done, Qi will naturally stream into it and you won’t have to worry about holding it in place anymore.

This change will take you roughly another three to five years which ties into the reason we recruit you between the age of ten and twelve. The realm’s stages after this require your body to be mostly matured, as it will otherwise interfere with your future development. It simply doesn’t make sense to start cultivating much earlier than at ten years old.

Once the Qi is flowing into your body, there are several further changes you will need to make on it, before moving on to the next realm. It takes an average of ten years to finish it with proper focus and supervision.

While saturating your body with Qi is quite healthy, this Realm is also the first to grant you a significant increase to your natural lifespan. While the average mortal will only grow around seventy to eighty years old even under the best conditions, those that have completed body reformation will naturally live to about one hundred and twenty-five and additionally be immune to most natural diseases.

As a sidenote before we move on, body cultivation essentially boils down to an infinitely repeating cycle between a modified version of these realms and extensive physical training. Not only does this lead to a sharper initial increase in power, but it is also significantly simpler to accomplish. That is the reason for its prevalence among cultivators who are not part of any sect.

Moving on, the third step in soul cultivation is the Core Formation Realm. It is remarkably similar to the first Realm in that your main objective during it will be drawing in Qi. The key difference is, that now with your reformed body, holding it in won’t be what you will be concerned about.

With Qi flowing freely into your body and remaining there, your body’s natural state is now already being saturated with Qi. The problem is, that the amount of Qi that can fit into your body isn’t anywhere near enough to accomplish what the step to the next realm needs you to do.

For this reason, you will start drawing in additional Qi and condense it from its original non-tangible form into a semi-tangible core within your abdomen.

In this form, the Qi will have extremely strange properties. To the touch, it acts most like a gas, but with its own gravitational field, strongly attracted to the center of the core. Visually, it will also start out in a gaseous form, but as you condense it more and more, it will first take on the appearance of a liquid and then of solid matter.

According to these changes in appearance, the realm is roughly divided into the low, the middle and the high stage of completion. These stages say little about the strength of the cultivators though, as simply having a lot of Qi within your body doesn’t really make you much stronger.

Now, demonic cultivators go on by driving forcefully driving pathways through the entirety of their body and filling them with Qi, making them able to utilize it directly. Higher realms will see them develop these pathways further and further, outfitting every part of their body with incredibly fine sub-pathways. While this does accomplish the goal of making them more powerful, it will also start messing with their bodies ability to feel things and eventually with their brain, stripping them of their ability to have emotions and empathy. Over time they become little more than intelligent beasts, bloodthirsty and callous.

That used to be the standard pathway of cultivation, allowing only those willing to throw away all that makes them human to progress further than everyone else. Luckily, better methods have since been developed, though some cults, worshipping the old ways, remain to this day. The better method that I am talking about is of course soul cultivation, and we will now start exploring the realm that gives it its name.

The fourth realm of soul cultivation is the Soul Realization Realm. Once you have reached the peak of the Core Formation Realm, meaning that you have filled you core with Qi to the fullest, which takes those who finish it an average of twenty-five years, you will finally start working on your first proper breakthrough.

Up until this point, moving between realms isn’t really an issue, it is just a matter of having to complete one step before moving on to the next. Hypothetically, you could even continue to utilize Qi to change your body while you are already in the core formation realm. Doing so would be a terrible idea, sure, but it would be possible.

What you will now encounter is different. While the Realms up until now are all divided purely for the purpose of definition, from now on, they are separated by actual challenges, walls that you will have to overcome in order to step into the next realm.

Stepping into the Soul Realization Realm will be achieved by utilizing the Qi in your core to draw a manifestation of yourself, something that we have taken to calling the soul, into the physical world.

Now, understanding this part without having learned how to feel your soul and how to utilize your Qi in order to achieve this part is practically impossible. Don’t beat yourself up about it though, you will have plenty of opportunity to research it once you come close to needing it. By that time, none of you will be disciples anymore, so you won’t be guided through it, but the sect does provide the opportunity to do so without requiring any form of payment.

For now, just know that the soul is the ultimate thing that makes you ‘you’ and that once you have manifested it into the world, it will become the new center of your existence. You will be able to experience the world in a wholly different way and critically, you will gain the ability to utilize your soul to interact with Qi in completely new ways.

From this point on, the soul is the central key to your cultivation and only then will following the path of soul cultivation begin to truly pay off.

Let me warn you though: The manifestation of your soul will not be an easy task and as such, not everyone will succeed the first time they try. The problem is, while later breakthroughs are the same in that regard, unlike them, this one can’t be repeatedly tried.

Your attempt at breakthrough will see you utilize the entirety of the Qi you have accumulated in your core. Should you fail, you will be left without a core. While forming another one and attempting breakthrough again is possible, attempting to do so is pointless if you don’t have access to an abundance of resources to speed up the progress.

As I said previously, completing a core takes an average of twenty-five years. Cultivation is always a race against time, and losing those years would usually be the same as losing that race. By the time you would have finished your second core, you would already be around seventy-five years old, unless you possess an ungodly amount of talent or recources to help you along the way. That would make it truly difficult to finish the next realm within your lifespan. Not impossible but difficult.

All that is to say, you shouldn’t rush this breakthrough the first time. As much as wanting to gain time on your path forward is understandable, patience will pay off here, as failure will cost you dearly.

One should only attempt this breakthrough once they are absolutely sure that they know what they are doing.

Putting the issue of breakthrough aside, once you have stepped in this realm, you will be able to utilize your soul in a number of ways. Of those, two are especially notable:

The first one is the ability to utilize Qi to strengthen movements of your body. By directing Qi to reinforce an action with additional energy, you will be able to perform singular feats of great strength. In a similar vein, you can use this to improve your bodies toughness to defend from attacks.

The second is the so-called ‘soul sense’. Scholars used to call this ability ‘divine sense’, but that term doesn’t accurately portray what this sense is. Essentially, it is your soul’s ability to perceive the world around you. You will be able to track movements and the location of physical objects as well as the flow of Qi without ever laying your eyes upon them.

Both of these abilities will grow stronger as you progress your cultivation further.

The way to progress through the Soul Realization Realm is harmonizing your soul with your body in which it now resides. This process requires intense meditation, but it will also bring you great benefits. Whereas the abilities I just discussed will require intense focus to use at first, the further you progress into this realm, the easier it will become.

The breakthrough this time around is not so much stepping into the next realm, but finishing the process of harmonization of this realm. The further your body and soul are already harmonized, the harder it will become to harmonize them further. This process is only finished, once they are in perfect harmony, which will lead to the unification of soul and body.

This process takes those who complete it an average of fifty years. Take these words with care though, as they can be deceiving. The average person needs far more than fifty years to finish this process. The fifty year average only accounts for those who manage to achieve that breakthrough. It doesn’t measure those who don’t though.

Many cultivators die of old age, still chasing this breakthrough. Others give up, once they realize that it is out of range for them. On average, only every tenth cultivator who manages to manifest his soul also manages to achieve unification of soul and body. Members of our sect are given much better chances at this, but still only one out of three manage to take this step.

If you want to be amongst those, you will need incredible perseverance and determination. But you can do it.

And for those of you that do, incredible benefits will be waiting.

For a cultivator who achieves the unification of their soul and body, the abilities that they would previously need to concentrate to use will become a permanent part of them. Their body will now be strengthened at all times without needing to think about it and the soul sense will become just as natural of a sense as sight, smell or hearing are to them.

That is not all though. Unifying your body with the manifestation of your ego will solidify its place in this world and thus drastically increase your lifespan. Where you could previously grow to be roughly one-hundred and twenty-five years old, you will now be able to live up to an average of two-hundred and seventy-five years, more than doubling your lifespan.

And all of this is still just what you receive from finishing this realm. However, through completing the unification, you will also open up the gates to the next realm, which you will now be able to step into without any further difficulty.

All that is to say, this breakthrough is what most who pursue the path of soul cultivation strive for as their ultimate goal. Some don’t even start stepping into the next realm, many don’t make an attempt to ever complete it. In any case, those who have reached this point can truly call themselves an accomplished cultivator.

That being said, cultivation is a pursuit of excellence, and where much has been achieved, there is always more to reach for. That in mind, let us focus our attention on the fifth realm, the realm of Dao Attuning.

This is the first point at which our cultivation meets the Dao. Most of you have probably heard the term at some points in your life, if you haven’t, don’t worry. I shall explain it as far as you will be able to comprehend it.

The Dao, or rather the Daos represent the mystical essence of that which our world is made up of. When I say essence here, I don’t mean it in the physical way of some kind of energy. I mean it as the central and final truth of existence. The Daos are concepts, they are rules that govern the elements.

You will only be able to even start grasping this concept, once you can observe the world through your soul. That is because a Dao is to an element, what your soul is to you. Soul cultivation is as powerful as it is, because it allows us to perceive and interact with the Dao.

At the start of the Dao Attuning Realm lies a choice. A choice that will define your path as a cultivator from that point onwards. The choice, which Dao you want to pursue. Our sect mainly pursues the Dao’s of Earth and Water, but it allows you to freely choose one of your own.

The Dao you pursue will determine your abilities, it will determine what resources can help further your cultivation and it will determine your place in this world. Not everyone fits well with every Dao, some people are exceptionally talented in a specific one. In any case, this choice isn’t an easy one, but it is also one that you will have plenty of time to think about before reaching that point.

Once you have made your choice though, you will truly be ready to step into the Dao Attuning Realm. You do this, by starting to imprint your chosen Dao upon your soul. Throughout this process, your soul will continuously change its nature as the element you have chosen becomes part of it and thereby of your very being. We call this process ‘attuning’ your soul to a Dao.

The reason this can only be done after achieving unification is this change. Should you attempt to impress a Dao upon your soul before unifying it with your body, the element would overtake it and thereby destroy your ego. Only the perfect bond to your body prevents this from happening, as it essentially keeps your soul’s structure intact and you in control, even while changing its form.

As you start attuning your soul to an element, you will start being able to convert basic Qi into elemental Qi. This elemental Qi will allow you to influence this element outside of your body. This ability in its different manifestations is the main form of offensive and defensive ability that high level cultivators use.

Elemental Qi can even be used to create the respective element, though this isn’t equally easy to do with all elements. Generally speaking, the closer an elements form is to that of pure energy and thus to Qi, the easier it is to create. While fire and lightning are effectively nothing more than just forms of energy and can thus be created extremely effective, solid matter like earth is extremely difficult and inefficient to create.

Another ability of an attuned soul related to that is that it is capable of storing great amounts of elemental Qi within itself. It will even convert some of the Qi that is naturally drawn into your body because of what you did in the Body Reformation Realm into elemental Qi on its own, providing you with a steady trickle of regeneration.

There are many other things an attuned soul is capable of, depending entirely on the element. Water Qi, for example, is great to be used in healing techniques, while fire Qi helps with forging and alchemy. Earth is great for building, sculpting and crafting in general, while someone with the wind element might even be able to already fly in this realm.

The further you progress in attuning your soul and thereby in the realm, the better it will become at those things. You reach the peak of the realm once you have fully attuned your soul. This may sound easy in theory, but in reality, it is an agonizingly slow process, that takes those who complete it an average of one-hundred and fifty years.

As I said, many cultivators never complete this realm in their lifetime. That is surely in part owed how hard it is to reach that point, but it is also in part due to a different thing: once you have finished attuning your soul, you will hit the next big wall. A wall so big, it borders closely on being insurmountable.

The step into the Dao Contemplation Realm is one that only fifteen currently living members of our sect have taken: The fourteen elders and the patriarch. That is despite thousands of members who have reached the peak of the Dao Attuning Realm during the time that those sixteen individuals succeeded.

The success rate at stepping into the Dao Contemplation Realm is hard to measure, but what is for sure is that it is so low that the entirety of the northern sect alliance only has about a hundred people who have managed to do so currently.

Reaching the Dao Contemplation Realm is achieved by examining your chosen Dao through your now attuned soul and contemplating its nature. Once you reach a high enough level of fundamental understanding of it, you will break through to the first step of the Dao Contemplation Realm.

The Realm itself is split into ten stages, each of which you can only reach by improving your understanding of the Dao you pursue.

The abilities that the realm provides are mostly dependent on the pursued Dao, but some, like flight, are something that every cultivator in this realm will gain.

I could go into more detail here, but while I encourage all of you to aim for it, the chances of this information ever becoming relevant to even one of you are rather slim.

There is also a realm beyond Dao Comprehension, but the only one to ever reach that mythical stage within this sect was our venerable founder, many millennia ago. Sadly, Information on it has long been lost to time, as far as I know.

To wrap up this speech then, let me say one more thing: The path I just laid out ahead of you is one of great length and incredible hardship. But as you ready yourself to walk it, don’t lose your hope or sight of what you want to accomplish. For all its hardship, this path is one that has been carved out by the very ancestors of humanity, by the founders of our civilization, by an uncountable number of geniuses, scholars and heroes.

You are not the first to embark on this journey and you will not be the last. It is that which gives you the fortune of not having to travel alone. Your peers, your seniors and even your juniors will accompany you, just as you will accompany them. I will personally help guiding you and lighten your burden, even if the steps you take will have to be your own. I ask all of you to do the same. Help each other along and if one of you falls, help them back up. If you do that, you will one day look back and be surprised by how far you have already come.”