Now that things were in motion, Darius and his people returned back to the sweetness of cultivation. Previously, they had reached the peak of Foundation Establishment as well as Body Foundation and had broken through to the Core Formation, coalescing their dantians in their abdomen and heart respectively.
Throughout the core formation stage, they used their level 1000 Core Formation and Golden Body skills learned through the True Supreme System to blaze through the stage. This stage was mostly like Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment, just suck in as much Spirit Energy as you could and then compress!
Compress! Compress! Compress!
From Qi Condensation to peak Golden Core, the goal was just to suck endlessly and compress, plain and simple. Here, the only talent you needed was the quality of your Spirit Root and maybe the initial development of your Magic stat.
Also, your bloodline could play a good role in granting you better stat gains per breakthrough, but then again, cultivation outside of being human was near impossible. Otherwise, the continent would not be dominated by humans and dragons, phoenixes as well as the rest of the top races from Unyris would have run over to cultivate and then take over the continent for themselves.
The reason Darius and co could cultivate despite the disparity in races was obviously due to the True Supreme System. After all, Darius was no longer human except for bearing the physical look of one, Gunner was half-human at best and the other two were pureblood elves.
Hence, only they could enjoy these crazy stat bonuses among cultivators. Anyone else who tried to replicate this would be faced with hurdles of the likes that they could not comprehend.
Back to the matter at hand, the process of Core Formation and Golden Body was just to turn your entire dantian - which was shaped like pill (hence the name 'Dan' which means pill in Chinese) - into a spherical core through compression.
So like this. You breakthrough into Early Void Core - which was level 21 - and then your dantian undergoes its first compression, going from the pill shape in your lower abdomen for Qi Cultivation or in the core of your heart for Body Refinement into a translucent spherical core with grids all over it.
After the first compression, your Qi which had been mostly wisp-like and formless condenses into a palpable gas that flows within the sphere calmly. The quality of the Qi is far higher than before and now you can launch attacks and various skills or spells relating to cultivation with much better effect.
Due to compression, your Qi's visible quantity has been lowered as only the bottom half of your core is full. Of course, the density was just made higher, the actual mathematical quantity was still the same.
So going from level 21 to level 22 was basically just cultivating to refill the core. Now in your core, you have about 3/10 of your Qi being extremely condensed from your earlier breakthrough from Foundation Establishment and the remaining 7/10 are what you just absorbed.
The quality of it might not be the same - and most likely will not be due to the science of cultivation - due to the Core Formation technique you used to absorb and compress it. The 7/10ths is still high-quality compressed Qi, but it is not as dense or perfect as the 3/10ths which underwent far more severe compression.
Now your core is full again, and so you do the same thing you did during peak Foundation Establishment. You use a mixture of your mental power and passively absorbed spirit energy to compress your core and squeeze it like how one would try to wring a wet towel dry.
If you succeed without crushing your core due to its fragility - because your earlier cultivation foundation was poor or your earlier techniques were dogshit - or not using enough force and failing to breakthrough - due to lower mental power as a result of a stunted Magic stat or your willpower is weak so you couldn't tolerate the pain - then your Qi will be compressed again.
Your core will become smaller and then rebound back in size after the breakthrough, and its edges will become studier which meant two things. Firstly, it would be harder for enemies to 'cripple' you by destroying your core and secondly, your next breakthrough will be harder because you need more force to compress your core.
However, within the core, your gaseous Qi had become a little more solid and thicker, and the base quantity within had gone from 3/10ths to 6/10ths now. Your core was basically more than half filled, meaning you now only had to fill in the remaining 4/10ths.
This meant your cultivation time to fill the core is shorter, but that was the only good part. After all, now you had to compress again and that was not only painful, but much harder.
So breakthrough again and now you are in late-stage Void Core at level 23 and your core was now 9/10ths full of the high-quality compressed gaseous Qi. You fill in the last 1/10 and then prepare to breakthrough again to Early True Core, which is level 24.
This is a semi-major breakthrough so the threshold of failure is higher than the smaller stages between Void Core. If you succeed, your core's exterior which was translucent and illusory, as well as the Qi which was gaseous and nearly formless now becomes liquid while your core remains translucent but is far more solid and resilient.
It has also become 30% larger, meaning you can store more Qi. This was only just one of the many benefits though, as with the breakthroughs came liquid Qi which was far denser than gaseous Qi and yielded far better effects in battle.
To give the best analogy, your martial arts or cultivation spell is like a gun, and the Qi is the bullet. The gun remains the same, but the bullet has gotten bigger, harder, and far more lethal.
Of course, the rules were the same. Early True Core had 3/10ths pure liquid Qi and you would cultivate to fill the remaining 7/10ths. The speed and quality varied based on your various talents and your Core Formation technique.
Once full, rinse and repeat the Void Core stuff. Level 25 was Middle True Core and you had 6/10ths filtered liquid Qi and 4/10ths unfiltered liquid Qi. Level 26 was Late True Core and you had 9/10ths filtered liquid Qi and 1/10th unfiltered liquid Qi.
Breakthrough occurs once again and this time, it is quite significant. Your solid True Core morphs into a resplendent Golden Core that shines like a disco ball in your dantian/heart and spins around very fast like a Beyblade.
The grids on it are very narrow and interlocked, and it's not fully opaque, so you cannot see the situation inside without an introspection technique or doing the vague gauging yourself.
Same rules as before, the core is 30% larger and can store more Qi. The Qi which was liquid has not fully become solid like crystal, making the Golden Core extremely heavy, which is why it generates so a strong pulling force of passive Spirit Energy absorption.
Funny enough, it was basic science. If two planets were compared, one with a density/mass of 10 and one with a density/mass of 100 where both were to spin, Planet B with 100 points would have a stronger gravity well and centripetal force than Planet A with 10 points.
Every breakthrough in cultivation was not casual, it had been researched and discovered by great pioneers who risked their lives after doing careful research, then future generations built upon it endlessly until it was refined into the perfect system it was now.
Level 27 was Early Golden Core and you had 3/10ths solid Qi of great purity and have to fill up 7/10ths of solid Qi with questionable and varying quality based on factors already mentioned.
Level 28 was Middle Golden Core where you had 6/10ths solid Qi of great purity and now had to fill up 4/10ths solid Qi to make up the difference then breakthrough.
Level 29 was Late Golden Core where you had 9/10ths solid Qi of great purity and now had to fill up the little bit remaining. Here, when you filled your core up and began the penultimate compression, you would squeeze your core into perfection and it would bounce back being full of 10/10 pure Solid Qi.
Level 30 was Peak Golden Core, and your core was sitting in your abdomen/heart area shining like the sun, spinning furiously, and feeling heavy. It was completely full and at the peak of its power. Its hardness was enough that you doubted you could squeeze it any further, for it had become completely resistant.
However, that was fine, because your journey along the path of Core Formation/Golden Body had come to an end. Now before you stood a gigantic hurdle that had crippled many geniuses and talents for hundreds of thousands of generations, the barrier to Nascent Soul!
