Intent

“As to the Intent manipulation, you should view it like a martial cultivator. All Intent comes from the same place…” Sir Huang tapped his heart. “It, more than anything, builds on experience and accumulation.”
—Ha Lan Huanghttps://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36051/memories-of-the-fall/chapter/824066/chapter-21-turning-point-part-1Intent can mean a bunch of things. At its most basic it is a kind of Empathy/Psionopathy that allows people to have a degree of control or perception over their surroundings in various ways. Usually, Intent is used in conjunction with qi manipulation but it doesn't always have to be. Due to the way Physical Cultivation differs in subtle (and not so subtle) ways from Spiritual Cultivation, Physical Cultivators tend to be slightly better on average at manipulating Intent at a given realm compared to Spiritual Cultivators where all other variables (like law quality/experience etc...) are equal. Both, however, are far behind Martial Cultivators and Dharma Cultivators in this regard.
This is not to say that it is just a thing of the lower realms. 'Intent' exists at all levels and is a fundamental part of the way the cosmos functions. At its most fundamental it is akin to a kind of Law that governs the movement of the natural energies of the world. Everything has some kind of Intent; be it to grow, to live, to die, to go from one place to another.
In most cultivation systems in the Martial Axial Regions, it will emerge organically through sustained practise with and exposure to qi during Qi Refinement. At Golden Core comprehending these emergent Intents and crafting them into something unique to a cultivator/practitioner is an integral step in advancing towards Soul Foundation and opening up a Sea of Knowledge.
== Types of Intent ==
=== Martial Intent ===
The spiritual willingness to kill and do harm to your opponent.
=== Dharma Intent ===
Mysterious and related to the karmic ties that connect people together.
=== Soul Intent ===
Or Soul Perception, relates to the intuition of the soul, based on its strength. perception of this aspect of it is fundamental to connecting with your own soul and opening up your Sea of Knowledge.
=== Natural Intent ===
Manifest inertia of the natural world. Can be slight or all-encompassing.
== Uses of Intent ==
Qi Manifestation - at its most basic, all qi requires some guidance from the wielder, this is intent.
Soul based attacks - soul attacks require impetus from the mind to have any form of direction, this is also intent.
Weapon Augmentation - a common variant, usually done along with qi manifestation, involving shrouding a physical medium with a form of intent, this usually requires some comprehensions regarding the soul or an advanced method to practice.
Transfer of knowledge - usually done via the medium of qi, this is also a subtle form of intent, very widely applied but very rarely mastered.
Synergistic deployment and direction of formations - harmonisation of formation centres in multi-person formations requires manifest intent, this is why active formation control is largely limited to Golden Core and above and not properly common until Nascent Soul.
Inheritance - Similar in many ways to 'transfer of knowledge', but specifically relating to comprehensions of various things. This can be very simple things like transferring a Spiritual Art from one person to another or very complex like the passive imprinting of memories into physical mediums like blood. Another complex variant is passing on of Perfected Intents to others. This can only be achieved by those who have truly mastered both the intent and the medium within which it was created. the very earliest this can be achieved is the Immortal Realm for very basic Intents. It is usually a hallmark of Inheritances of the Dao Immortal Rank or higher, where the person passing on the knowledge has grasped laws and properly founded their principle, gaining a holistic understanding of how Intent's interact with things within the Mortal Step. The more profound the intent, the harder it is to pass on. Even with this, the Intent as originally seeded will not be identical, forming from the recipients own interpretations. Imprinting extant, complete intents can be done but is usually not beneficial as it builds a false foundation and requires the recipient to have a very strong soul. In extreme cases, this latter approach is basically an offensive or evil art depending on the nature of the Intent as the likelihood is that the recipient will be unable to shoulder the received comprehension and either die from soul shock or be subsumed by it, turning into a mindless monster controlled fully by that intent.