This will only be of interest to those who read Chinese fantasy and might be curious about the cultivation hierarchy in Fan Li’s home world. I originally worked this out for the Chinese cultivation novel I attempted to write, from which I also drew the character Fan Li herself.
There is terminology here that people familiar with the genre will know without explanation. There is a common lore in cultivation novels that readers generally don’t have to be taught. You can think of this as similar to how people in Dungeons and Dragons or Final Fantasy style fantasies don’t have to be taught what magic users, vanguards, elves, orcs and whatnot are. The Chinese readers just already know the stuff, and Western readers kind of pick it up after reading enough Chinese novels.
I’m not going to explain the terms here, but anyone curious and wanting to know more can ask questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.
The path of cultivation begins with ‘mortal’ or ‘ordinary’ people becoming students of the Dao. We refer to their stage only as ‘Body Tempering’, and it doesn’t have a stage number, since they are technically no different than ordinary humans.
Those novices who turn out to be unable to open their body’s inward gate will continue in this realm and instead will grow as physical cultivators (i.e. martial artists), sword cultivators or scholarly cultivators. They still have the longevity and strength benefits of a tempered and purified body, and their own disciplinary means to extend their lives, but have no path to immortality.
Those who do open their inward gate, however, sometimes referred to as the carp leaping through the dragon’s gate, follow this subsequent series of stages (as well as substages within them that I do not list here.)
Stage One – Blood-and-Qi Refinement
Entrance: Opening the inward gate
Peak: Complete linkage of heart and senses
Substance: Blood-and-Qi
Stage Two – Qi Condensation
Entrance: Intake of external qi
Peak: Saturation of the dantian.
Substance: External Qi
Stage Three – Spiritual Refinement
Entrance: Internal Union of Yin and Yang
Peak: Saturation of the meridians.
Substances: Yin Qi and Yang Qi
Stage Four – Soul Refinement
Entrance: Development of the Pure Qi body
Peak: Full expansion of the dantian (sufficient to permit growth of a golden core)
Substance: Pure Qi
Stage Five – Golden Core
Entrance: Development of the Golden Core
Peak: Fruition of the Golden Core
Substance: Golden Qi
Stage Six – Spiritual Seed
Entrance: Dantian transforms into a spirit pond.
Golden core transforms into lotus seed, germinates into Spiritual Lotus
Peak: Blossoming of the Spiritual Lotus
Substance: Earthly Qi
Stage Seven – Nascent Soul
Entrance: Spiritual lotus seed pod opens to reveal Nascent Soul
Peak: Nascent soul fully formed
Substance: Spiritual Qi
Stage Eight – Heavenly Initiate
Entrance: Nascent soul opens its eyes
Peak: Cultivator fully merges with Nascent Soul. (This is equal to the Peak Non-Mortal state from the Heavenly perspective, and is the level that Erebos the Ascendant is forcibly clinging to, in order to continue maintaining his bindings on Astaroth.)
Substance: Heavenly Qi
Stage Nine – Immortal
Entrance: Ascension
Peak: Unknown to either denizens of the Mortal Realm or to the lower Immortal Realms. The stages are the Fundamental Realm and the Harmonic Realms, which could theoretically be infinite. There are theories that whoever reaches the peak becomes one with the Infinite All, or Almighty God, or whatever is the highest existence.
Substance: Immortal Substance (Qi no longer applies, as it is not of the Mortal Realm)
