The Modern Cultivation World (Part Two)

"Blessed Land! It should be the source of spiritual veins, and have the same nature as the nine great spiritual-vein nodes in the Nine Provinces of The Nine Cauldrons World."

Gu Sheng secretly speculated. He thought of Skyflood Palace inside Mount Dayan. Emperor Yu must have had a reason for building his treasury there. Those more than one hundred thousand drops of Essence of the Northern Sea were, in plain terms, compressed and transformed spiritual Qi of Heaven and Earth.

This thing could not appear from nothing. Moreover, so many Demon Beasts had gathered in Skyflood Palace in the past. It was very possible that it was a Blessed Land.

"Ha~ Greed knows no satisfaction. In the end, he still became a prisoner!"

Gu Sheng continued reading. According to Yi Youzi’s research and speculation, the terror of the Dharma-Ending Age had exceeded the expectations of those great experts. The spiritual Qi within the Blessed Lands had also been continuously declining. After the Dharma-Ending Age, it had not completely dried up, but it was only slightly better than the outside world. It was enough to cultivate magic power, but in the current era, wanting to form a Golden Core was simply a pipe dream.

There was another issue. Because the people inside the Blessed Lands had cultivated their magic power in an environment with a much higher concentration of spiritual Qi than the outside world, they were extremely unsuited to the outside world. It was like an ordinary person going to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. They would be like a dead fish the moment they came out, unable to move their magic power freely.

After cultivators of this type stayed in the modern world for some time, their magic power would instead decline or even dissipate. Moreover, compared with those who had painstakingly cultivated in the mortal world, their magic power was of very poor quality. Aside from having somewhat more profound techniques, they were otherwise useless when facing cultivators of the same realm.

Furthermore, if these cultivators stayed outside for too long, they could easily be assimilated by the outside world. Once they became tainted by the aura of the mortal world, the other cultivators within the Blessed Lands would also refuse to accept them.

Thus, there was nothing worth envying about the cultivators inside the Blessed Lands. They were merely a bunch of people penned up in a pigsty. Those were Yi Youzi’s exact words, but why did Gu Sheng feel that the fellow was simply envious and resentful? No matter what, the people inside lived longer than those outside.

Besides cultivators, there were also Wizards, Gu Masters, Onmyoji, and the like in the modern world. They were all considered heterodox paths among cultivators. They were just as rare as cultivators, while the largest group was the martial artists.

Martial artists were the easiest of all cultivators to get started as. However, although entering the path was easy, cultivating real ability was extremely difficult.

The martial artists of the modern world were similar to the Internal Fist practitioners of The Nine Cauldrons World’s Earth. They had also explored their way forward after the ancient orthodox martial arts—similar to the Nine Cauldrons Martial Arts, with Essence Refining Stage, postnatal and innate stages, and so on—became difficult to enter. Like Internal Fist, they refined essence into force, then condensed force into Qi.

The entry-level stages for martial artists were Ming Jin and An Jin. There was no distinction in superiority between them, but An Jin was more difficult to master than Ming Jin. After mastering both Ming Jin and An Jin, one merged and circulated the strength of the entire body, condensing it into a single stream of Qi. This was the Spiritually Transformed realm, also called the Transformation Realm.

A martial artist at the Transformation Realm corresponded to a cultivator at the Foundation Establishment Stage. Both had refined a crucial stream of Qi and could be considered to have stepped through the threshold of cultivation.

If the Internal Fist Transformation Realm and cultivator Foundation Establishment were taken as the threshold for cultivators, then one could count every cultivator in China, or even throughout the world, with perfect clarity. Why? There were simply too few of them. With technology so advanced, what difficulty was there in counting such a small number of people?

But everyone liked to embellish their own importance, didn’t they? Thus, beginners at Qi Refining, along with martial artists who had mastered a single type of force—Ming Jin and An Jin—were all counted as cultivators. That was how the seemingly enormous base number came about.

Qi Refiners and force-based martial artists already possessed some abilities that ordinary people lacked, but their lethality was actually average.

To put it this way: if Ming Jin or An Jin martial artists fought professional assassins in a battle to the death, the ones who died might still be the martial artists.

Apprentice Wizards and Gu Masters at the same level as Qi Refiners could even suffer backlash and serious injury if they used a Ghost Curse to harm someone, provided that person had slightly stronger yang energy. Moreover, these things had limited power in the hands of apprentices, making it difficult for them to harm anyone.

Although martial artists and cultivators both needed to refine a stream of Qi, they were fundamentally different. A martial artist’s Inner Qi was of the same nature as the inner force and inner strength of the ancient martial arts; they were essentially the same thing.

A cultivator’s magic power was different. It incorporated Divine Essence and was equivalent to a low-grade version of Innate True Essence. In other words, the level of magic power was slightly higher than that of Inner Qi.

The difference was especially obvious in lifespan. A Transformation Realm martial artist’s lifespan was about the same as an ordinary person’s, while a Foundation Establishment cultivator could easily live past a hundred. Some even lived to be a hundred and twenty. This was a real, substantial gap.

Some people had investigated this issue before. The general conclusion was that martial artists suffered many hidden injuries from combat, while cultivators were excellent at preserving their health. Combined with the higher nature of their magic power and its superior ability to nourish the body, this was what created such a large disparity.

This was an almost unsolvable issue. The path of martial arts had always been tempered through blood and fire. Especially now, with the environment and resources both extremely scarce, blindly building a theory behind closed doors was a dead end.

Even so, there were still more people practicing martial arts than cultivating. At least martial artists had a goal. There would be no shortage of Transformation Realm martial artists in the world.

But cultivation was different! Someone might cultivate for their entire life and gain nothing. They also had to obey countless restrictions, preserve their virginity, abstain from meat and fish, and live an utterly miserable life. As for the cultivators within the Blessed Lands, although they lived longer, there truly were not many people who envied them.

In the past, when there were no recreational activities, a long life was an asset. But now, just look at the lives people led inside the Blessed Lands. They lived merely for the sake of staying alive, without the slightest enjoyment. They were confined to one place and subject to countless taboos: this could not be touched, that could not be used. It was enough to drive anyone mad.

Moreover, without forming a true core, one could live at most to a hundred and fifty. Compared to ordinary people outside, that was only an extra sixty or seventy years. If Transformation Realm martial artists took good care of themselves, they might not even live fewer years than that.

So, in the end, the Blessed Lands of the present were places people "despised." Of course, they only despised them verbally. When their lifespans were nearing their ends, every one of them would still want to enter. After all, a bad life was better than a good death, right?

"No wonder the Lord God needed to restrain the Reincarnators from the beginning."

Gu Sheng muttered to himself. He now understood why Ling Wei and Wang Lin had been targeted by the Lord God when they fought in the modern world at the beginning. After all, even if one refined a stream of Qi and became a Transformation Realm martial artist or a Foundation Establishment cultivator, as a Reincarnator, one would only have the strength of a peak First Star Level.

Wang Lin and Ling Wei were both Bloodline Holders. Werewolves and vampires were quite powerful in their early stages, with even the lowest level being peak First Star Level. They were also Chosen Ones with talents of their own, so they would have no problem fighting ordinary Second Star Level opponents.

A month ago, such combat power would have possessed considerable destructive force and easily drawn a great deal of attention. The Lord God now seemed to be preparing to lie low and keep a low profile. Those two thickheaded fools had charged straight into it. What else could be said? Not directly banning them from the system was already being merciful.

"Come to think of it, was I a little too high-profile today?"

At this thought, Gu Sheng felt somewhat uneasy. His hand, which rested on Liu Daimei, unconsciously tightened. Hmm? What was this? He lowered his head and met a pair of limpid eyes. There was no need to say anything…