Cultivation

***Cultivation*** in the world of **Against the Gods** involves the pursuit of strength by following the 'Profound Way' (修玄 *xiuxuan*). The 'Profound Way' of the world gifts each mortal innate profound veins which allow them to cultivation profound strength. Various key components of the 'Profound Way' are described below.

## Realms

A person's cultivation level can be separated into: Nine Mortal Realms, Seven Divine Realms and True God Stage from the Ancient Era. Each realm goes from level 1 to 10 before they can advance to the next realm and the 10th level of a realm is considered the peak of that realm. Once someone goes past level 10 of a realm but does not enter the next realm it can be considered 'Half-Step' into the next realm. The Divine Tribulation Realm has only 9 levels and the Divine Extinction Realm has 19 levels (the 10th level is called Divine Limit Realm and has another 9 levels).

When one's profound strength grows, it essentially means that the density of the profound energy in their profound veins is growing, that their profound energy has become slightly more compressed. Once it reaches a certain level of compression, a fundamental change will occur, that is also when they enter a new realm.

Once a cultivator rises for many more levels than normal, such as with the aid of medicine or legacies, it ia fundamental that they must take their time to stabilize their newfound power. The most direct consequence of not doing so is that they would be unable to stably wield their strength and the amount of time their physical bodies can keep up with unleashing that level of strength would be really short. Their power would also lack the refined control matching their realm: They may be able to unleash power matching their level, but their defensive abilities will show a lack of strength. In a clash of power between two people with the same intensity of power, the one with an unstable realm would receive a great backlash while the one with a stable realm would be left unharmed.

If they are injured instead, this condition will be way more severe than before and will start losing control over their energy and internal breathing.

Entering a new realm is normally an extremely difficult boundary for profound practitioners. This is why there are many who are stuck at the 10th level or Half-step level and never progress in their entire lifetime. This is also why Medicine that can increase cultivation are highly prized. The strength gain from crossing a realm is so large that it is generally impossible for someone at the 'half-step' level of a realm to win against the 1st level of a realm.

The profound practitioners of the lower realms and planets generally will only have cultivators in the mortal realms while those in the Realm of the Gods have greater resources and legacies which allow them to cultivate into the divine realms. People in the divine realms are not gods but merely slowly approaching the power of gods and obtaining a small fraction of their power.

The realms between the Divine Origin Realm and the Divine Master Realm are known as the Seven Realms of the Divine Way. It is the profound way of humans who had broken through their limits and ascended into godhood. But truthfully, it is ultimately just the divine way of mortals. Although it is a way beyond mortal limitations, and a way that tried its very best to get as close to godhood as possible, it ultimately failed to extend into the realm of the gods.

## Profound Veins

The purpose of profound veins is to hold profound strength. Each person is innately born with a set of profound veins. It starts growing from the time of birth and reaches maturity at around the age of fourteen. Although profound veins do not affect one’s life and death, it was still a part of the body.

The profound veins inside a human body are like a robust and mature tree with many “branches” spreading out in all directions, and on each “branch” laid a profound entrance. As for the “trunk”, it was the most important core position of the profound veins, the base of all the profound veins. On this base, there were no profound entrances.

### Damaged Profound Veins

If an adult’s Profound Vein became damaged, their power would leak but there were a variety of methods to repair that. However, if the Profound Vein broke in the early stages of infancy, the growth of the vein would start from a bad foundation and will only become worse.

## Profound Entrances

Altogether, a person can only have a total of Fifty-four Profound Entrances. An ordinary person is gifted with approximately ten open profound entrances while a person with high innate talent may be gifted with around fifteen open profound entrances. A person with twenty naturally opened profound entrances can be considered an exceptionally gifted talent. If one has more profound entrances opened, their cultivation of the profound, and their activation speed will increase. A practitioner with twenty opened profound entrances would undoubtedly cultivate and activate their profound strength twice as fast as a practitioner born with only ten opened profound entrances.

The number of innately open Profound Entrances essentially decided the height one could reach during his entire life because it was extremely difficult to open Profound Entrances postnatal. Extremely advanced miraculous medicine, chance, and luck; not even one of these factors could be absent. Using external forces to open Profound Entrances would be accompanied by extremely high risks; that even the slightest mistake would cause irreparable damage to the Profound Veins. In the entire Blue Wind Empire, the people who have achieved the supreme state of opening of thirty profound entrances, could not possibly surpass five.

When all fifty-four profound entrances are opened it is known as Heavenly God's Spiritual Veins. The cultivation speed will be the maximum and the owner will never hit a bottleneck.

Profound Entrances are also the trigger to activate Profound Techniques. For example, the Moon Splitting Cascade's most basic movement technique requires 37 Profound Entrance to be activated.

### **One Finger Profound Opening**

The ability to open profound entrances, by using only one finger! One Finger Profound Opening is actually the medical field’s ultimate technique. It only requires one finger to be able to quickly open a profound practitioner’s profound entrance postnatally! Unless one is extremely well versed in the human body and has reached the pinnacle of medical knowledge proficiency, it would definitely be impossible to accomplish.

### **Known Profound Entrances**

* Shoulder Star
* Sunflower Dew
* Vacant Seed
* Heart Gate
* Earth Gate
* Heaven Gate
* Palace Gate
* Jadepool
* Jadewood
* Purple Fan
* White Tomb
* Sky Sunflower
* Cyan Sun

## Blood Essence

Using blood essence is a way to temporarily boost one's profound strength by a degree. However, this is not something most people will do, mainly only in a true life or death situation. Once used blood essence is almost impossible to recover. After using the blood essence, one's profound strength would drop by a huge amount. One's cultivation level could even drop. Using blood essence also exhausts one's life and future potential.

## Profound Arts and Skills

*Related Articles: Profound Skills and Profound Arts*
Profound Arts are the main arts that people cultivate while Profound Skills are the skills that can be utilized when a Profound Art has been cultivated to a certain degree. *(Example: World Ode of the Phoenix is a Profound Art while Empyrean Dance of the Phoenix Wing is a Profound Skill from World Ode of the Phoenix)*

* Profound Floating Technique
* Yin Yang Combination Art
* Remote Ignition of Profound Energy

## Profound Core

Common Beasts do not possess any Profound Cores within their bodies. Starting from Nascent Profound Beasts, Profound Cores would exist in all adult Profound Beasts, similar to the Profound Vein’s core inside the human body. Nascent Profound Cores were the easiest to acquire out of all Profound Cores, and their prices were also the lowest; they were usually around a dozen to a few hundred Yellow Profound Coins. However, with each rank higher in quality, its price would multiplicative increase. In the weak nations of the Profound Sky Continent, any single Earth Profound Core could be sold at an astronomical price. At the Sky Profound rank, they would be priceless treasures. And as for Emperor Profound Cores, they were essentially considered items from the legends.

## Laws

### Five Basic Elemental Laws

* Water Laws - The Water Laws focuses on control.
* Fire Laws - The Fire Laws of the world represents many things; Nirvana, Destruction, and Purification.
* Wind Laws - The Wind Laws focuses on speed.
* Lightning Laws - Lightning profound power that is of similar strength, in terms of pure power, will exceed the power of Ice or Fire and even the rest of the profound elements. But the practitioners who cultivate lightning profound power number the least. This is of course not without reason. Even though lightning profound energy is extremely strong, it is too volatile and is the hardest to control and manipulate among all the profound elements. It is also easy to harm oneself in the process of cultivation, to the point where you can damage your own profound veins. The higher a level you reach, the more this concept applies to you.
* Earth Laws - The Earth Laws focuses on defense.

### Higher Level Elemental Laws

* Light (Life) Laws
	+ Light is the complete opposite of Darkness, it is sacred and devoted only to create and save and never to kill or destroy. It can purify the mind and soul, purify all contamination and evil. Although light laws are the easiest to control, cultivating it has the strictest requirements. One must have a sacred body or a sacred heart, free from contamination and corruption.
	+ Life is the power of the Wood Spirit Race and originated from the Light Laws.
* Darkness (Death) Laws - Darkness is when one or more types of negative emotions reach a certain limit. The law becomes twisted, and profound energy mutates. The devil profound energy that it creates is even stronger than the profound energy of the same level, but it is also harder to control. Because devilish energy will only be created with extreme negative emotions, the ones who possess devilish energy all have twisted minds and beliefs. They are evil creatures that should not exist in the world or they can be directly called a demon or devil. It would agitate its user’s negative emotions and state of mind and it could even warp one’s personality.
	+ The negative effects above are due to the fact that humans aren't innately compatible with darkness profound energy, only the devil race is. Thus, the negative effects above apply to cultivators and creatures who utilize darkness energy in the current era unless they somehow attain perfect compatibility with darkness.

### Supreme Level Elemental Laws

* Space (Dimension) Laws - Space in different worlds and different planes were different and like other elements, they were ranked from high to low. Space in the Realm of the Gods has more complex spatial laws and are more difficult to break apart.
* Time (Reincarnation) Laws

### Origin of Laws

This is the origin of all Laws, above the Supreme Laws.

* The Law of Nothingness

## Profound Way

### Sword Path

* **Heavy Sword -** The heavy sword uses overbearingness as its principle. It is mostly used to fight against groups of people, cultivators who focus on the Heavy Sword Path needs to have a really strong body and physical strength so they can properly wield the sword, some of them are strong enough to wield the Heavy Sword like a Light Sword.

### Spear Path

The cultivators who focus on the spear path pursue speed and agility, most of them cultivate wind arts to improve their performance.

## Trivia

* Profound Practitioners can clean themselves with profound strength.
* To cultivate Light Profound Strength you need a Sacred Heart and Sacred Soul.
* After experiencing life and death, after crossing dimensions and reincarnation, Yun Che touched the law of nothingness that not even the Creation Gods and Devil Emperors have ever touched.
* The ultimate limit of profound strengths that a normal person can cultivate is three, and the ultimate limit of divine legacies one can obtain is also three.

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 821
2. ↑ Chapter 1249
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 942
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 285
5. ↑ Chapter 176
6. ↑ Chapter 1383
7. ↑ Chapter 921
8. ↑ Chapter 45
9. ↑ Chapter 7
10. ↑ Chapter 37
11. ↑ Chapter 1011
12. ↑ Chapter 89
13. ↑ Chapter 84
14. ↑ Chapter 392
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 Chapter 1379
16. ↑ Chapter 633
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 1314
18. ↑ Chapter 678
19. ↑ Chapter 886
20. ↑ Chapter 1545
21. ↑ Chapter 882
22. ↑ Chapter 1190