Chapter 4306 — Attributes and Achievements

To put it plainly, such people had talent to spare but nothing else. Either their time had not yet come and they were still too green, or they simply lacked the fortuitous strokes of fate. Whichever it was, in the eyes of the great powers of Chenxing Academy, that was a defect. Even if such a genius were admitted, nurturing them would devour resources, and there was every chance they would wither halfway along the road, leaving both the person and the investment lost.

This was not mere idle worry, but a thing with hard precedent behind it. Chenxing Academy had once made an exception and admitted several disciples of outstanding talent whose strength had not yet reached the threshold of the Golden Core stage, and had spared no expense, pouring a fortune into them. Yet in less than half a year, every one of those prodigies had perished, without a single exception.

In the end, Chenxing Academy was called an academy and looked peaceful enough, but it could not escape the old saying: where there are people there is Jianghu, and where there is Jianghu there are Jianghu's rules. And the most basic of those rules was this: no rookies below the Golden Core stage need apply.

After that, no one attempted such a thing again. Even if they were admitted, it would only ruin others and oneself—so why invite trouble?

Reaching the Golden Core stage was the most fundamental threshold of selection, exactly as the mortal world barred entry to minors under eighteen. As for the second selection criterion—possessing at least two spiritual root attributes—that bore directly on one's aptitude for cultivation.

Reading from the beginning up to here, Wei Zhao and Huang Xiaotao had not found anything particularly surprising. But when they saw the next sentence, both of them froze at once.

Only with two or more attributes was there the slightest chance of entering Chenxing Academy. As for single-attribute trash, they should not bother going up and disgracing themselves. A cultivator with a single spiritual root attribute, no matter how diligently they studied and trained, could at best stop at the Nascent Soul stage. To go one level higher was immeasurably hard, simply unrealistic.

"A cultivator with a single spiritual root attribute can at most reach the Nascent Soul stage?" The two of them could not help exchanging looks. To some extent, this did explain Wei Hebei's earlier remark about those who understood, understanding. Yet neither Wei Zhao nor Huang Xiaotao had ever heard such a claim before.

Spiritual root attributes only determined the direction in which one cultivated heart methods and martial techniques. Even a single attribute did not necessarily mean one could never rise above the Nascent Soul stage, surely? The words that followed in the booklet answered the doubts in both their minds.

Looking across the many cultivation realms, those below Foundation Establishment need hardly be mentioned. And even for the three great realms of Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and Nascent Soul—though each was harder to break through than the last—to some degree a certain success rate could still be guaranteed. The reason was that all three could be augmented by heavenly treasures and earthly materials during breakthrough and advancement.

For instance, Foundation Establishment Golden Cores, Golden Core Golden Cores, and Nascent Soul Gathering Golden Cores could all play a most crucial supporting role at the moment of breakthrough and advancement. When strength falls short, let the golden core make up the difference—this had already become a deeply ingrained belief among the vast majority of cultivators.

Some even put the pursuit of heavenly treasures first and secluded hard cultivation second. Behind this reversal of means and ends lay a perfect illustration of the formidable efficacy such treasures could exert during breakthrough and advancement.

Yet once past the Nascent Soul stage, one level higher—once one reached the Mystic Ascension stage, the Mountain Opening stage, and other realms truly profound and unfathomable, of which the world at large scarcely knew—everything was different.

It was not that heavenly treasures all lost their effect, nor that there were no corresponding miraculous elixirs. Rather, the auxiliary pill needed for a Nascent Soul cultivator to break through to Mystic Ascension—the Mystic Ascension Golden Core—was exceedingly scarce!

That the materials required for refining it were scarce was one thing; the main point was that this pill was a top-grade seventh-tier elixir, one that even a Yellow-tier seventh-grade alchemist could not refine. Only the legendary Mystic-tier alchemists could! And Mystic-tier alchemists were beings of legend—even if such a one existed, they would not lightly refine a Mystic Ascension Golden Core for just anyone.

Therefore, breaking through to the Mystic Ascension stage essentially depended on oneself. However vast and wealthy Chenxing Academy might be, it could not find someone to refine Mystic Ascension Golden Cores for these Nascent Soul disciples, and so it simply ruled them out altogether.

At that point, the only way to climb higher was to rely on one's own strength and foundation to achieve a natural breakthrough. And of the natural breakthrough methods explored to date that required no pills and truly worked, there was only one: cultivating heart methods of two attributes, circulating and fusing them together, and finally charging through the gate.

Beyond that, there was no other way to break through. So possessing two spiritual root attributes was the most basic requirement on the road to the Mystic Ascension and Mountain Opening stages, while three or four attributes made breakthrough all the easier—what people commonly called better aptitude!

This was what Wei Hebei had meant earlier: whether one possessed two or more spiritual root attributes directly determined the ceiling of strength one could attain, and no one could change that. The utmost limit of a single spiritual root attribute was the Nascent Soul stage; unless one could find someone to refine pills, no heavenly treasure, however fine, would avail.

"One must cultivate heart methods of two attributes at once, and only after they fuse can one break through?" This analysis, set down so earnestly in the booklet, utterly overturned Wei Zhao's former understanding.

After all, from the mortal world onward, the notion instilled in him by the outside world had always been that a cultivator could cultivate only one heart method and oral formula. It was said that after ascending to the Heavenly Dao one might have a chance to change it once, but that too was merely a change—not at all the simultaneous cultivation of two heart methods described here.

More crucially, the text explicitly stated that what needed to be cultivated was not simply two heart methods, but two heart methods of different attributes—and that was the very key to charging through the gate.

Wei Zhao could not help but wonder: cultivating two heart methods of different attributes at the same time—would that not truly court qi deviation?

Then, on second thought, he had not even heard of the Mountain Opening stage before; above that level, it was only natural that many things remained unclear to him. Just as back in the mortal world—who knew what lay above the Heavenly Dao, and who knew how one ought to cultivate it?

One's tier directly determined one's horizon and understanding. What had seemed inconceivable in the mortal world was long since taken for granted now. Likewise, the things Wei Zhao found so staggering upon first hearing of them would cease to astonish him once he truly reached such a realm.