While the various powers were rushing over, Darius and his Branded Servants became active as they moved onto the Core Formation stage of cultivation.
Naturally, they first learned the relevant Transmuted manuals for them.
[Core Formation Technique - Manual
Durability: 200/200
Grade: Basic
Description: Contained within is the required knowledge to obtain the Core Formation skill. Due to the high quality of the material and the penmanship, the success chance of learning the skill is increased by 100% while its effectiveness is increased by 500%.]
[Golden Body Technique - Manual
Durability: 200/200
Grade: Basic
Description: Contained within is the required knowledge to obtain the Golden Body skill. Due to the high quality of the material and the penmanship, the success chance of learning the skill is increased by 100% while its effectiveness is increased by 500%.]
Unfortunately, only the Branded Servants could learn these skills right now as the others were still slowly increasing their familiarity with both the Qi Cultivation/Body Refinement and Foundation Building/Body Foundation techniques.
Breaking through to the Core Formation stage required one to condense their newly formed dantians nurtured throughout the Foundation Building stage into an ethereal and illusory core that was similar to a miniature sphere within your dantian.
The Core Formation stage involved a major Heavenly Tribulation since it was essentially going from Amateur to Journeyman. While the other continents paid different prices to climb the stages, the cultivators of Pan paid them through these Heavenly Tribulations.
The essence of Core Formation was to turn the Qi within your dantian into a near solid core through compression, creating a miniature singularity within your dantian that contains the essence of your Qi.
The benefits of this were great. Firstly, the cultivator could store exponentially more Qi within the same amount of space. Secondly, the compression of Qi to form the core exceedingly purifies your Qi and makes it more solid.
Thirdly, the existence of this singularity allows you to begin auto-cultivating, or passive cultivation. It continually spins on itself, revolving like a planet in orbit. This generates an outward pull towards the neutral Spirit Energy around you and is sucked into the core and auto-refined into your Elemental Qi that is automatically at the same level of purity and quality as what you originally had.
Of course, the downside of this was the fact that your cultivation speed would slow down greatly regardless of talent. It just had to do with how cultivation and becoming stronger worked.
Each stage involved you adding a new power or feature to yourself that either actively or passively increased the quality of your Qi through compression or increased your ability to control Qi.
This naturally meant that the Qi you absorbed for Qi Condensation 1 to 10 was not the same as the Qi you had in the Core Formation Stage.
If the quality and quantity of Qi were 1 point at Qi Condensation, it was obviously going to be at 100 points at core formation.
So the Qi you possessed had changed and upgraded in quality and quantity, but the Qi you absorbed, which was neutral Spirit Energy, was the same as always. So to meet the current quantity and quality, you needed to absorb more and convert it upwards.
However, the problem was that your absorption speed was only slightly better than the previous stages, leading to the objective reason why one's cultivation speed slowed down greatly as they went on.
The Core Formation realm was split into 3 stages: Void Core, True Core, and Golden Core.
Void Core was taking your new dantian and then compressing it from the edges until it formed a core shape, and it would gain the basic abilities of a golden
core, which were the benefits listed above.
In this stage, your Qi is like water, having become gaseous in the core, and your core's walls/edges were thin and illusory.
True Core was refining the borders/edges of your Void Core until it finally became solid. This also compressed it further until the Qi inside your core had gone from gas to liquid. The increase in purity and quantity here is great, and the gap that separated cultivators began from here.
Golden Core is the final realm and the Core Formation stage and the peak of it. Here, you had refined your core into perfection, its glowing golden edges shining with immortal light as Qi was dragged into your body in torrents passively.
Every benefit from the earlier stages is greatly magnified, but so too are the detriments. Here, your Qi had become fully solid and shines like crystal, looking magnificent.
Core Formation encapsulated levels 21-30.
Level 21 was Early Void Core.
Level 22 was Middle Void Core.
Level 23 was Late Void Core.
Level 24 was Early True Core.
Level 25 was Middle True Core.
Level 26 was Late True Core.
Level 27 was Early Golden Core.
Level 28 was Middle Golden Core.
Level 29 was Late Golden Core.
Level 30 was Peak Golden Core.
Each level brought great changes to the cultivator and their power, mostly shown in their Magic and Willpower stats. Don't forget, on average for a human, Journeyman was 20 to 50 points.
Half of those 30 points added came from Golden Core, and the other half came from Nascent Soul.
Golden Body was similar to the above, but as usual, was handled differently. Whereas you compressed your Qi into a core in your dantian, for Body Refinement, you did it to your heart.
Not only do you let your heart become a core, but it disperses some of its special characteristics unto your body, greatly increasing Power and Constitution.
Likewise, its sub-realms were Void Body, True Body, and Golden Body.
[Core Formation Technique - Level 1000 (1) Skill
Grade: Intermediate
Cost: None
Description: This is a sub-technique within Qi Cultivation that specifically aims at using mental power to compress the dantian into a core. The better the dantian and the more pressure effected when compressing the core, the higher its quality and the greater its function. By using this skill, your Qi is perfectly compressed, and your core functionality is at the highest depending on your talent and bloodline. Currently, this skill adds 1000% (1%) extra perfection to your Core.]
[Golden Body Technique - Level 1000 (1) Skill
Grade: Intermediate
Cost: None
Description: This is a sub-technique within Body Refinement that specifically aims at using physical power to compress the heart into a core. The better the heart and the more pressure effected when compressing the core, the higher its quality and the greater its function. By using this skill, your Qi is perfectly compressed, and your core functionality is at the highest depending on your talent and bloodline. Currently, this skill adds 1000% (1%) extra perfection to your Core.]
They right away used 2000 skill points to upgrade it to the current level. The skill points they previously had in abundance and seemed like they had little use now seemed so little in the face of the utility of these skills, and the fact that if they kept this up for every cultivation tier, they definitely would not have enough to go all the way.
Before they started cultivating, though, they gathered together and expressed their confusion to Darius about the disparity in stat gains throughout
the Foundation Establishment and Body Foundation levels, despite having the same talent and using the same skill.
To that, Darius answered, "This involves the second thing that all cultivators of Pan value above talent, and that is bloodline!"
"Xela has the Royal Elf bloodline, so her increase was around 7 times that of a human with the same talent. Gunner has the half-Giant Royal bloodline, so his increase was ten times that of a human of the same level."
"I have the bloodline of the Dragon Ancestor, but I'm still a fledgling, so my increase was only 15 times that of an average human with the same talent as us. Luna is a Moon Elf and the progenitor of her race, so her increase was 30 times that of an average human of the same talent."
After explaining this, everyone seemed to understand and nodded. Darius also added, "You should know that from henceforth, the quality of your rewards for cultivating at each stage will be affected by your bloodline quality, so the gap will only grow."
The Branded Servants could only share helpless looks. Bloodline was something you were born with, and unless you had fortuitous encounters like Darius to change yours, it was unlikely that you could ever change it.
However, it was possible to upgrade the quality of the bloodline using special methods, but one had to be a Grandmaster at least to achieve something like that since it required great power.
Darius actually knew many ways to achieve this, but it wouldn't help any of his Branded Servants, as they already had the best bloodlines of their various races and clans.
As such, they could only continue to cultivate and strive to reach the peak of Golden Core as soon as possible.
