True Monarch

True Monarch (真君; *Zhēn Jūn*) is the sixth stage of cultivations and considered as a senior-level character in the Cultivation World. During ancient times, prior to the Ancient Antiquity Era, this stage was only known as the True Monarch Realm. Only since the Ancient Antiquity Era this stage was known as the ‘Sixth Stage’ (六品; *Liù Pǐn*).

In All Heavens and Myriad Realms, due to several great tribulations it faced before, it’s rare to see a living a Seventh Stage or higher practitioner. As such, True Monarchs are normally the highest ranking practitioners that can be found in All Heavens and Myriad Realms. However, in the Nine Serenities there are still lots and lots of Seventh Stage or higher’s demons.

The leaders of major influences such as White Cloud Academy and World’s Horizon Wandering Temple are practitioners of this stage.

## Term of Address

### Official Title

Starting from this stage onward, a practitioner will be addressed by their stage and Dao Name. As such, a Sixth Stage will be normally addressed as True Monarch [Dao Name].

### Title Variations

Although True Monarch (真君; *Zhēn Jūn*) is the official title for the Sixth Stage, a practitioner may choose a variation of the term such as:

* Demon Monarch (魔君; *Mó Jūn*);
* Spirit Monarch (灵君; *Líng Jūn*);
* Sword Monarch (剑君; *Jiàn Jūn*); or
* Way Monarch (道君; *Dào Jūn*);

The terms will contain the word ‘Monarch’ (君; *Jūn*) in it.

## Fifth to Sixth Tribulation

Sixth Stage is the third Heavenly Moat in cultivation. To achieve this stage, a practitioner must have at least middle grade gold core. However, those with low grade gold core may break through to this stage if they encountered an against the heaven’s opportunity.

### Modernized Tribulation

First known record of modernized Heavenly Tribulation was when tribulation cloud started to form a cannon barrel during Always Far’s aborted Fifth Promotes Sixth Heavenly Tribulation. The cannon already locked on Always Far before the tribulation cloud was scattered by his retinue.

Song Shuhang estimated the strength of the modernized Heavenly Tribulation is around 20 megaton TNT equivalent.

## Minor Realms

There are four minor realms in the Sixth Stage. Each minor realm is interlinked with each other. The minor realms also requires the practitioner to mill with patience and precise work.

1. Gold Core Transforming into Spirit Lake
2. Life Wheel on the Lake
3. Ten Layers of Heaven
4. Lotus Opening Transforming Nascent

Those with the markless gold core will skip all four minor realms. The gold core will still exist in the Sixth Stage. After cultivating until the Seventh Stage Spirit Venerable’s degree, the gold core will change into a seed. From this seed, a lotus flower will bloom. This lotus flower will then gave birth to the nascent soul.

### Gold Core Transforming into Spirit Lake

Gold Core Transforming into Spirit Lake (金丹化灵湖; *jīn dān huà líng hú*) is the first minor realm of the Sixth Stage.

Just like its name, gold core or its equivalent will melt onto a spirit lake with various depths; with the depth of the spirit lake is based on the number of dragon mark on the gold core.

Normally. the shallowest lake is four layers while the deepest lake is nine layers.

#### Lake Soul

The Gold Core Composition on the gold core will materialize and appeared in the spirit lake. The more complex the Gold Core Composition was, the larger the structure it would have when it materialized. These materialized Gold Core Compositions were called as ‘lake souls’ by cultivators, and they were akin to the souls of the spirit lakes.

#### Armament Essence

After the lake soul was formed, it would continuously release a mysterious, energy-like matter in the cultivator’s spirit lake. This energy-like matter couldn’t enhance a cultivator’s combat power, but it was able to nourish and strengthen magical treasures. Cultivators called it ‘armament essence’ (兵元; *bīng yuán*).

A cultivator could place their magical treasures in their Spirit Lake, and use the ‘armament essence’ to nourish and strengthen them. This was especially so for living items as the nourishing effect towards them was even better.

### Life Wheel on the Lake

Life Wheel on the Lake (湖上命轮; *hú shàng mìng lún*) is the second minor realm of the Sixth Stage.

A strong lake soul will produce a bigger and deeper spirit lake. The time required to condense life wheel also became shorter and the life wheel will be stronger. This is the reason for higher number of dragon marks and complex core composition required during the Fifth Stage.

Living items and Heavenly Astral can shorten life wheel’s condensation time by several folds.

The wheel can be used for attack, just like monster practitioners using their core to attack. Even if the life wheel is destroyed during the attack, it can be reborn in the spirit lake. However, the life wheel’s attack is considered as weak and only have a single attack mode. As such, this attack is rarely used in a fight.

### Ten Layers of Heaven

Ten Layers of Heaven (十重天; *shí zhòng tiān*) is the third minor realms of the Sixth Stage.

This minor realm is very important since it combined all the previous stages foundation. First Stage’s Five Great Acupoints (五大窍穴; *Wǔ Dà Qiàoxué*), Second Stage’s Eighth Great Dantians (八大丹田; *Bā Dà Dāntián*}, Third Stage’s Four Extraordinary Meridians (四奇脉; *sì qí mài*), Fourth Stage’s Nine Immortal Bones (九仙骨; *jiǔ xiān gǔ*) and Fifth Stage’s Gold Core (金丹; *jīn dān*) determined how many layers can a practitioner condensed.

A life wheel’s quality plays a major role in this minor realm. A practitioner with high quality life wheel will have better speed and better efficiency when breaking through each layer of the Ten Layers of Heaven compared to those with lower quality life wheel.

### Lotus Opening Transforming Nascent

Lotus Opening Transforming Nascent (莲开化婴; *Lián Kāi Huà Yīng*) is the fourth and final minor realm of the Sixth Stage. This minor realm also known as the Transforming Lotus on the Heaven (天上化莲; *Tiān Shàng Huà Lián*). The minimum requirement to advance into this minor realm is the Sixth Layer of Heaven.

A lotus flower will bloom in the middle of the lake. In order to break through to Seventh Stage Spirit Venerable, the lotus must condense a nascent soul (元婴; *yuán yīng*). The water from the Mother-Child River can help condensing the nascent soul.

Geniuses will take about a hundred years only to complete this minor realm. Normally, a practitioner will need about 700 – 800 years even over a thousand years to condense the nascent soul. There are plenty practitioners who are stranded in this minor realm for their entire life, unable to advance any longer. This is the reason why this minor realm is considered as the most annoying minor realm.

Using a special method such as the «*Ape Dragon Nascent Soul Ingenious Method*» will shorten the required time by half.

## Spirit Lake Force Field

Spirit Lake Force Field (灵湖力场; *líng hú lì chǎng*) is the symbol of True Monarchs.

Whenever True Monarchs operated the spirit energy inside their body at full strength, they would create a Spirit Lake Force Field around their body. Inside this area, all the spirit energy of the Heaven and Earth would give priority to the True Monarch and help him first.

All the enemies below the Sixth Stage would have the regeneration of their spirit energy decreased, and the strength of their magecrafts would likewise get affected by the Spirit Lake. Aside from this, it had several other uses as well.

## Resurrection

Sixth Stage is a watershed, after achieving this stage, practitioner’s ‘soul’ will carry on a sublimation. Ordinary resurrection magical item, no longer have any effect on them. If a True Monarch or higher wants to come back to life, he must use a great array, plus complicated procedures, plus large amounts of valuable resources and spirit vein, plus a huge amount of spirit stones to activate the array. Moreover, array must be bounded to the said practitioner. Once bounded, the array can’t be transferred to anyone else.

## List of Known True Monarchs

1. Always Far
2. Ancient Lake Temple
3. Sword Monarch Azure Firmament
4. Scholar Contribute Society‡
5. Scholar Drunk Moon‡
6. Copper Trigram
7. Distinguishing Snow
8. East Six
9. Ancient witch Elise
10. Eternal Fire‡
11. Exterminating Phoenix
12. Falling Dust
13. Abbot Fathom Mystery
14. Faraway Place
15. Flood Dragon Tyrant
16. Green Jujube
17. Immortal Guest in the Clouds
18. Lychee
19. North River
20. Demon Monarch Pāramitā
21. Pear
22. Pineapple
23. Rain Moon
24. Seven
25. Sword Monarch Six Ears†
26. Song Shuhang‡
27. Susu
28. White Crane
29. Yang Xian
30. Yellow Mountain‡

Note:

* †: the character is deceased
* ‡: the character has broken through to a higher realm.

## Trivia

1. True Monarch was the first cultivation level mentioned in the novel.
2. Song Shuhang was the youngest individual to become a True Monarch in the history of All Heavens and Myriad Realms and Nine Serenities World, at the tender age of 18 years old.

## Links and References

1. ↑ Chapter 1428
2. ↑ Chapter 2509
3. ↑ Chapter 1077
4. ↑ Chapter 457
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Chapter 157
6. ↑ Chapter 2748
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Chapter 1781
8. ↑ Chapter 1009
9. ↑ TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The "ton of TNT" is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be 4.184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton (1,000 kilograms or one megagram) of TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, 4,184 joules of energy are released.

This convention intends to compare the destructiveness of an event with that of traditional explosive materials, of which TNT is a typical example, although other conventional explosives such as dynamite contain more energy.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Chapter 1845
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 1969
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Chapter 2070
13. ↑ Chapter 2139
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 Chapter 1719
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Chapter 1780
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 1971
17. ↑ If there is no against the Heaven’s encounter, the practitioner’s path of cultivation will end in this stage.
18. ↑ Chapter 1972
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Chapter 2068
20. ↑ Chapter 1463
21. ↑ Chapter 3060
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Chapter 895
23. ↑ Chapter 1905
24. ↑ Chapter 1739
25. ↑ Chapter 990
26. ↑ Chapter 1