Recursive Cultivation (Original Xianxia Cosmology)

[PrimalShadow]

This is an idea for an original xianxia setting.

In short, the Way of Cultivation in this cosmology involves creating a Dantian / Inner World, which is simultaneously a Qi storage organ and a functioning self-contained universe. This universe in turn can have its own cultivators, who in turn may open up their own Inner Worlds. The way cultivation functions encourages this; by having a vibrant Inner World filled with cultivators, one's own cultivation becomes faster and more effective in various ways. On the other hand, one's Inner World can also give rise to threats, especially if said World is poorly managed.

In this thread, I'll be describing the rules I've come up with for setting, outlining the broad ways that cultivation works, the way the multiverse is set up, and interesting patterns and anecdotes that this setting can give rise to. I have a decent amount of things outlined for this setting already, and I'll be posting it as long as there is interest. I strongly encourage anyone interested in this setting to post with comments and questions; it would make explaining this setting much more enjoyable for me, and I hope that people can point out things that I overlooked or entirely missed.

 

[Subrosian_Smithy]

Oh shit, this is a great idea. I've seen some xianxia fic involving inner worlds and plenty of xianxia fic where the will of the heavens is intelligently designed, but I don't think I've ever seen a xianxia setting where the two are part of one single phenomenon.

I assume these are questions you're going to answer on your own time, but how many layers of recursion are possible-? Is there an 'uppermost' world at the top of the 'stack' or does the multiverse just go on forever?

 

[PrimalShadow]

In this setting, by default Qi can neither be created or destroyed. Techniques are powered by Qi, but the Qi is not consumed in the process; it is merely dissipated and released. It is possible for longer term effects to "lock up" Qi, but that Qi is merely unavailable and not actually gone; when the effect expires, the Qi used for it will return to the world.

There is one exception to this rule, if it can be called that. In this setting, any world has a boundary, and outside this boundary is an endless sea of unreality. There are many names for this region and the material that it consists of: Primordial Sea, Endless Void, Primal Shadow, Origin Energy, Grandmist. Whether a world is newly created or ancient beyond words, whether it is tiny or massive, it is all the same - at its boundary will be Grandmist stretching on for eternity. It is unclear whether each world somehow creates a universe full of Grandmist or if all worlds somehow exist in a common Grandmist universe; if it is the latter, then worlds must be remarkably far from each other, for there are no recorded cases of being able to get to one World from another by moving through the Grandmist.

The important part is that when World expands, it must do so by encroaching on Grandmist. This process breaks down said substance of unreality to make room for Reality - and just like in the dissolution of any active effect, the dissolution of a chunk of Grandmist releases a quantity of Qi. Unfortunately, maintaining Reality is far more Qi-intensive than maintaining Grandmist, so the resulting Qi is not even enough to power the generated Reality, much less to produce a surplus. Throughout a cultivator's life, expanding their Inner World is always a process that results in a net loss of Qi, not a gain.

...throughout a cultivator's life. After all, an active effect releases its Qi when reduced, and this is just as true for the Laws supporting an Inner World as it is for any other effect. Upon one's death and the destruction of one's Dantian, the Laws supporting the World therein collapse, releasing Qi. The amount of Qi released will always be more than the amount drawn in by a cultivator in their lifetime; after all, that released Qi encompasses both the Qi the cultivator consumed and the Qi created by overwriting Grandmist.

In effect, the practice of energy cultivation is intrinsically tied to the process of using Qi to "digest" Grandmist - of which there is a seemingly infinite supply. All this energy and more is locked into maintaining the cultivator's inner world while they live, but once they expire their death returns all the Qi they took from the parent world back, with hefty dividends.



In this way, the life and death of cultivators is the ultimate engine, producing Qi seemingly ex nihilo. This is the reason that Godhood is emphasized as one of the steps of cultivation, despite not being a formal rank. Having an inner universe that supports cultivating life means that your Inner World can generate Qi by itself, becoming a generator and not merely a battery.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Oh shit, this is a great idea. I've seen some xianxia fic involving inner worlds and plenty of xianxia fic where the will of the heavens is intelligently designed, but I don't think I've ever seen a xianxia setting where the two are part of one single phenomenon.

Click to shrink...

I am very happy for your interest! This is actually pretty close to one of the main inspirations for this setting. It bugged me that setting have cultivators with inner worlds, possibly replete with cultivators, but none of those inner denizens actually mean anything to the story. None of them ascend to the main universe, or help/hinder the main character, or really do anything except possibly venerating the MC due to their godhood. I wanted to craft a setting where characters in an inner world are not treated as toys, but as cultivators - with the possibility to ascend and whatnot. Conversely, this would allow cultivators to act as "the will of the heavens", which seems like a rich way to "ground" a lot of xianxia tropes in human motivation instead of just saying that the world works a certain way a-priori, because that is the way the universe is.

I assume these are questions you're going to answer on your own time, but how many layers of recursion are possible-? Is there an 'uppermost' world at the top of the 'stack' or does the multiverse just go on forever?

Click to shrink...

Recursion DOWNWARDS can be arbitrarily long. Your inner world can have cultivators, whose inner world can have cultivators, whose inner world can have cultivators... and so on and so forth.

Recursion UPWARDS is bounded. The top world that people have reached is unimaginably called Top. Said world doesn't seem to have a conscious God; inhabitants of Top have never observed the Laws of that World changing, which suggests that either there is nobody to change those laws in the first place or that whoever is there doesn't interact with their inner world for some reason. Given that cultivators are cultivators, there have of course been attempts by people in Top to Ascend higher; all indications are that those attempts failed.

This isn't known in-universe, but Ascension from Top IS possible, if extraordinarily difficult. The world above Top is something I call Apex; no in-universe cultivator has even seen this realm. But that is a story for another post.

 

[PrimalShadow]

There are three types of cultivation in this setting. First, there is the cultivation of Qi. Second, there is the cultivation of Law. And third, there is the cultivation of Will. These are also refereed to as Energy, Mind, and Soul cultivation, respectively.

The cultivation of Qi is perhaps simplest. To start, one learns to manipulate Qi, and then uses it to cleanse Body Meridians for temporary storage of Qi. To proceed past this point, one must pass the first breakthrough of Cultivation, and what is considered the dividing mark that separates Mortals from Cultivators: the creation of the Dantian. After one has a Dantian, one must draw in Qi, using it to expand one's inner world and allow it to store increasing quantities of energy. Qi cultivation is relatively straightforward, and can easily be accelerated with energy-rich medicines and the like. It is just a matter of accumulation, after all. That said, Qi cultivation is extremely important, both in providing a foundation for growth of other kinds and for giving one the energy to utilize technique and actually do anything with the power that one gains as a cultivator.

The cultivation of Law is a matter of insight into rules of the world, both true and potential. Law is what supports the function of a World, defining how it operates. Law cultivation involves understanding those laws in one's Outer World, and implementing them in one's Inner World. It should be noted that Law cultivation comes in two forms: Inheritance and Innovation. Inheritance refers to gaining insight into the laws of one's Outer World through study and observation. Innovation refers to creating new Laws in one's Inner World different from those encountered in the Outer World via research and experimentation. Inheritance has a lower barrier to entry; you only need a preliminary understanding of a Law to use it, and it is immediately usable both externally and internally. That said, mastery is equally difficult for both paths.

The cultivation of Will is the cultivation of the Self. It is the Will through which techniques are manifested, and for those rare few who Ascend it is Will that primarily determines one's degree of success. Will can be cultivated by practice at multi-tasking and focus. At a certain level, Cultivation can also be accelerated considerably by facing Inner Demons; win or lose, one's Will is bound to grow in size, though perhaps not in sharpness.

 

[Zaealix]

Hrrm. Seems to me the death of any cultivator MUST be fraught with peril, because basically every time it happens there's the possiblity of at least one 'internal' cultivator jumping up a world-rank to escape being unmade into pure Qi, and these internal cultivators can have unknown Ways and personal Cultivation knowledge that could very well be unique in it's own right and thus a valuable resource...But yanno, if you just killed a cultivator and the people inside them had to boogie earlier then they would have liked then they might not be pleased with you.
This strikes me as something that'd be more plausible then one might think, given the potentially infinite stack chaining down and the world of Top being presumably quite large given that sooner or later, the internal Qi from collapsed inner worlds would 'echo' all the way up to the Top.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Hrrm. Seems to me the death of any cultivator MUST be fraught with peril, because basically every time it happens there's the possiblity of at least one 'internal' cultivator jumping up a world-rank to escape being unmade into pure Qi, and these internal cultivators can have unknown Ways and personal Cultivation knowledge that could very well be unique in it's own right and thus a valuable resource...But yanno, if you just killed a cultivator and the people inside them had to boogie earlier then they would have liked then they might not be pleased with you.

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That is really neat thinking; this hadn't occurred to me!

In practice, I don't think it is THAT much of a risk, because Ascending doesn't work like bursting out of a bubble. The way you Ascend is by using your Qi and your understanding of Law to open a channel into the Heavens, and the send your Will through that channel. If the world has no God (e.g. because God is dead), you can directly try to take ownership of the world, but that is still a non-trivial process, and also doesn't help you interact with the outside world. To do that, you need to basically use a technique that forms a body for you.

So in short, Ascending is not an instant process, and doesn't immediately leave you with a body. The people who killed God would have been free to attack their Dantian in the meantime, and while you can't pop one of those like a bubble there are any number of attacks that disturb the Laws inside the Dantian by attacking it. As a result, any ascending cultivator stepping into the shoes of their God ends up thrust into a world that they are unfamiliar with with what is likely a crumbling Dantian that they haven't actually established full control of.

This strikes me as something that'd be more plausible then one might think, given the potentially infinite stack chaining down and the world of Top being presumably quite large given that sooner or later, the internal Qi from collapsed inner worlds would 'echo' all the way up to the Top.

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You are absolutely right. The Top is really big. Qi regularly makes it way there from basically everywhere, and when Qi is dense enough it expands reality into Grandmist, so Top is basically always growing. And it has been around for all of known history, so it has grown for a while.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Cultivation in this setting isn't intrinsically broken down into tiers. There is no such thing as an Early Semi-Divinity Cultivator or whatnot. Mind you, such a classification system might be something that might be created by individual cultivator societies - but the separations therein wouldn't imply underlying separations in reality, the way "solid vs liquid" or "Helium vs Neon" might. It would be more akin to how a martial-arts dojo might classify its students by belt.

That said, at least in early cultivation, there is a pretty standard classification scheme that does work decently, albeit somewhat imperfectly. They are:

1. Qi Condensation: (This stage is entered when a cultivator opens their first Body Meridian). Learning to manipulate Qi, and then using it to carve out Body Meridians for Qi storage.
2. Foundation Building: (This stage is entered when a cultivator first manifests the Existence law externally). Learning to use the Existence law, starting with external manifestation and moving on to practice for internal manifestation.
3. Core Creation: (This stage is entered when a cultivator manifests the Existence law internally to form a Dantian). Learning to Manifest different laws internally, creating a thriving inner world.
4. Nascent Soul: (This stage is entered when a cultivator manages to temporarily form an Energy Body from their Dantian). Learning to create and manipulate an Energy body by Manifesting the Existence law externally and augmenting it with appropriate Laws channeled from one's Inner World.
5. Godhood: (This stage is entered when a cultivator's inner world contains a cultivator who forms their own Dantian). Allowing the inner world to bear cultivating life.
6. Ascendancy: (This stage is entered when a cultivator is first physically capable of Ascending): Cultivating enough in Law, Qi, and Will to externally create a channel to the heavens and project one's will down it.

In theory, some of these can be done concurrently, or even skipped.

• You can do Qi Condensation and Foundation Building at the same time, though both need to be complete to enter Core Creation, and having greater Qi reserves provided by Qi Condensation stages allows one to better practice Law cultivation for Foundation Building.
• It is possible to enter Godhood without entering the Nascent Soul level. This is rather rare, because the laws you practice to form a Nascent Soul (i.e. your energy body) are typically also required for allowing physical cultivators to exist in your inner world.
• The Ascendancy stage can be be reached directly from the Nascent Soul stage, though the skills required for the ability to Ascend are usually developed through working on one's inner world, and typically Godhood is achieved before Ascendancy stage.

It is also worth mentioning that reaching Ascendancy in one world does not mean you also reach it by the metric of another world. For one thing, different worlds have different Laws, so the actual power level of a cultivator is not the same in every world. For another thing, actually reaching the heavens may be harder in some worlds than others, depending on the skill and preferences of the worlds' Gods.

Finally, it should be noted that there is a difference between being able to Ascend and being able to SUCCESSFULLY Ascend. The two are as different as Heaven and Earth. Ascendancy merely measures the ability to reach the Throne of the World; not the ability to usurp it.

 

[Satisfaction]

Okay, so one thing I don't get is what happens when a cultivator dies. Does their inner world just get destroyed, leading to the cultivators in said inner world dying, leading to their inner worlds getting destroyed et cetera et cetera in a potentially near-infinite exponential chain reaction? Does their inner world get destroyed, but not the inner worlds of the cultivators in said inner world (though those cultivators themselves do die), leading to free-floating worlds that aren't connected to Top anymore? Can worlds just straight-up not be destroyed? Do worlds automatically connect to the world above the world that was destroyed to maintain the link to Top?
If the world a cultivator lives in gets destroyed, can they survive by somehow transferring themselves to their own inner world, if only in part?

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

This is really interesting but it's also predicated on even more genocide than xianxia already is and that's upsetting to me. What's especially interesting to me is what happens after ascension. Unlike in some systems you don't have to work up the scale again because your own inner world still exists. Similarly, due to how the cascade effect makes higher realms have higher amounts of Qi, that also means that a realm's god ascending is highly beneficial for the people living in it since there will be a massive influx of Qi into their world as a byproduct.

Also, how does using spells affect the people inside the dantian? If you're doing something crazy and drain your juice, even if it only takes a couple days to fill up again that's still a couple days of "suddenly there's no Qi".

 

[PrimalShadow]

Okay, so one thing I don't get is what happens when a cultivator dies. Does their inner world just get destroyed, leading to the cultivators in said inner world dying, leading to their inner worlds getting destroyed et cetera et cetera in a potentially near-infinite exponential chain reaction? Does their inner world get destroyed, but not the inner worlds of the cultivators in said inner world (though those cultivators themselves do die), leading to free-floating worlds that aren't connected to Top anymore? Can worlds just straight-up not be destroyed? Do worlds automatically connect to the world above the world that was destroyed to maintain the link to Top?
If the world a cultivator lives in gets destroyed, can they survive by somehow transferring themselves to their own inner world, if only in part?

Click to shrink...

When a cultivator dies, their Inner World is typically (but not universally) destroyed, either by the cultivator who killed them or Heavenly Tribulation specifically set up to destroy ownerless worlds. Until the dantian is destroyed, the Inner World can exist perfectly well as it is; it just has no God. That is a perfectly reasonable stat for a world to be in; in fact, so far Top itself is in that state and has been forever as far as people know.

The process of destroying an Inner World is not instant. Basically, for an inner world to be destroyed, the laws within have to be disrupted, turning back into Qi and then flowing out into the broader world. Because Qi has density and whatnot, you can't instantly unravel a whole world; you need time for the surge of Qi from it to flow out. Sometimes a lot of time. In the meantime, people in the Inner World are effectively experiencing an Apocalypse; the world is slowly breaking apart. Depending on how serious the disruption is, it might be possible to stabilize the world from inside; depending on what is going on outside at the time (whether the Dantian is continuously under attack are recovering from a single strike), that may either require a process that constantly uses Qi which is drained to the outside world, or may be something that people do once and which is then done. It is also possible for people from the Inner World to try to Ascend at this time - and in fact, the absence of a God does make the process quite a bit less risky. If people manage to Ascend, they may be able to take control of the Dantian and stabilize it from the OUTSIDE, which is generally easier (since they can use the whole world's Qi and apply laws to the whole Inner World, as compared to people inside the world needing to act locally).

If a world isn't stabilized either from inside or from outside, it keeps deteriorating until the whole reality is gone, and then the Dantian pops and that universe is entirely gone. Of course, everyone inside that world will be long dead by that point; it is impossible to exist in areas without the Existence law, so by the time an area loses that law it is thoroughly lifeless.

A dantian inside a world experiencing apocalypse can be damaged by said apocalypse, in which case it will also start collapsing. Qi from that recursively nested dantian will flow upwards, temporarily reinforcing reality there... until it drains further up. You get the drill.



To put it in a different way, Qi kind of acts as the hit-points of a World, although damage might make you lose Qi in a regular stream. Do enough damage to a world and it might not be practical to repair it even if you have enough Qi, which means it will just keep losing Qi at the rate that the outer world can support forever.

(Fun fact - for a World with enough cultivation going on inside of it to offset this loss of Qi, such an event is entirely survivable. There exists universes which are irreparably leaky, acting like fountains of Qi - but they have enough Qi generation to stay stable anyways)

Spoiler: Retconned

(Second fun fact - there are Laws that can move Qi in ways other than spacial dissipation. Even if space can only tolerate a certain amount of Qi flow out from a given dantian, if you magically pipe that Qi away, you can increase the amount of drain that dantian suffers to practically infinity.)

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

Are there any benefits to letting your internal cultivators ascend?

 

[Satisfaction]

Can people have multiple inner worlds? Or kill someone and take ownership of their inner world, while still having their own? For example, for the purpose of experimenting with Laws they might not want to try on their 'main' world. If not, why not?

 

[PrimalShadow]

This is really interesting but it's also predicated on even more genocide than xianxia already is and that's upsetting to me.

Click to shrink...

Sorry to upset you.

In a sense, part of the design motivation for this system was to make it possible for the type of works you see in xianxia to exist based on an orderly system. Typical xianxia already have enormous populations which regularly experience genocide at the hands of cultivators, and I wanted a setting where that is at least statistically possible without leading to an inevitable collapse of everything. That does mean a bunch of genocide can happen and is even in some people interest.

Still, uh, I'm sorry? For what it is worth if I was actually a God designing a world for real people this isn't remotely the system I would go with...


If it makes you feel better, this system also absolutely supports cultivation in a genocide free manner. For example, there is a cultivation style where you set up the Law of Karma in you inner world. And it is actually good karma to protect young cultivators and mortals. It is also extremely good Karma to dissipate your cultivation after the Core Formation stage. So there are cultivators who form their core, cultivate a Qi a bunch, then dissipate their own Energy cultivation. As long as they haven't discarded their physical body, they can keep doing this - and they can then reform the Core almost immediately since they keep their Law comprehension and much of their Will cultivation. In return, they and their sect have reliably great luck. This scheme doesn't require even individual death at all.

 

[PrimalShadow]

What's especially interesting to me is what happens after ascension. Unlike in some systems you don't have to work up the scale again because your own inner world still exists.

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Ah. It doesn't quite work that; when you ascend the "you" that is ascending is your Will; don't take your Dantian with you. That said, you 100% don't have to work up the scale again for a reason I have hinted at and will cover in a post soon but won't spoil for now.

Also, how does using spells affect the people inside the dantian? If you're doing something crazy and drain your juice, even if it only takes a couple days to fill up again that's still a couple days of "suddenly there's no Qi".

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Yup, this is a thing that happens. If you use up all of your Qi, that means your inner world has no Qi, with all the associated consequences. That is one of the downsides for your Inner World and Qi Storage Organ being one and the same.

I should note that it is difficult but possible to craft a "pseudo-Dantian", which is a structure that can be used to store Qi and anchor your Will. Unfortunately, such a thing can hold orders of magnitude less Qi than an actual Inner World. Which is to say, compared to the alternative, I think most cultivators in this setting would agree that the upsides outweigh the downsides, everything considered.

Are there any benefits to letting your internal cultivators ascend?

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Yep. Significant ones; it is a decent way to progress in one of the three types of cultivation and basically the best way to progress in a second type. I'll cover this in a segment on Ascension this weekend.

Can people have multiple inner worlds? Or kill someone and take ownership of their inner world, while still having their own? For example, for the purpose of experimenting with Laws they might not want to try on their 'main' world. If not, why not?

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: Previous Answer

One Inner World per person, mostly. I can think of a couple of unorthodox ways of getting around it, but they are kind of "hacks"; it is not something you can do normally.

Basically, at any point in time, your Will (which reflects your underlying Self) requires a singular anchor. At the beginning of cultivation, it is your body - but founding an Inner World anchors your Will to it. It is possible to tear yourself away from your anchor and choose a new anchor, but that is somewhat damaging to your Will cultivation - and also, when you separate yourself from your Inner World it ceases being your inner world.

A cultivator could in theory separate from one Dantian join with another, experiment, separate again, and then move back to the original Dantian. But that is not something most people do; it is the soul equivalent of cutting your head off and gluing it to a new body, then cutting it off again and putting it back.

Alternatively, a cultivator might be able to split their Will in half, and if each half survives they can independently take over a Dantian. I guess you can call that having two Inner World? Though I think perhaps it is more accurate to say that there are two of you, each with their own Inner World. As you might guess, that sort of Mitosis isn't common either; cutting one's will in half is pretty grievous harm; even if it doesn't kill you or cause personality deviation of some form, you are also cutting your Soul cultivation by a whole lot more than 2x (soul cultivation isn't linear; if you take 2x as much time and effort you end up with a lot less than 2x as much Will.)

I changed my mind about this. My answer is still "no", but for a different reason. I think it should be impossible to take possession of a Dantian that is just sitting there. You can only take possession of a Dantian that you form (because, in effect, your Will in inside the Dantian when it is formed), or one that you Ascended from. In effect, the Will holding a Dantian is inside the Dantian, and there is no way to move Will downward; merely upwards.

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

If it makes you feel better, this system also absolutely supports cultivation in a genocide free manner. For example, there is a cultivation style where you set up the Law of Karma in you inner world. And it is actually good karma to protect young cultivators and mortals. It is also extremely good Karma to dissipate your cultivation after the Core Formation stage. So there are cultivators who form their core, cultivate a Qi a bunch, then dissipate their own Energy cultivation. As long as they haven't discarded their physical body, they can keep doing this - and they can then reform the Core almost immediately since they keep their Law comprehension and much of their Will cultivation. In return, they and their sect have reliably great luck. This scheme doesn't require even individual death at all.

Click to shrink...

That's real clever.

Ah. It doesn't quite work that; when you ascend the "you" that is ascending is your Will; don't take your Dantian with you. That said, you 100% don't have to work up the scale again for a reason I have hinted at and will cover in a post soon but won't spoil for now.

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So what happens to their dantian? Like, do they just leave behind an empty shell?
EDIT: If I had to guess I'd say that Will cultivation obviously carrying over, combined with the facts that you can custom build your new body to be well suited to cultivation and that most profound laws are copy-pasted from the higher realm so you'll retain at least some proficiency and can probably use your old laws in your own world to get access to them is what makes it easier to rebuild.
How much more energy than a cultivator has access to does their Dantian usually release? Since energy is bound up both in supporting reality and also in the cultivators powerful enough to pretty much never die otherwise, plus all the cultivators another level down and so on and so forth. Also, how viable is cultivating a universe that doesn't sustain life? Like, all the normal profound laws except for Life. And is it at all possible to physically move between worlds?

 

[Zaealix]

Alright Matroyka cultivator nonsense was too tempting to ignore, I feel the need to pre-emptively Omake wherever it is you're going with this.
If nothing else, I suspect we can tuck this tale into Brother-not-in-the-main-cast, hopefully...
...But on further thought I will need more time to meditate on this.

 

[PrimalShadow]

So what happens to their dantian? Like, do they just leave behind an empty shell?

Click to shrink...

They leave behind an ownerless world. Same way as if a cultivator dies (but without the attacker intentionally trying to destroy the Dantian). Though depending on the Laws of the world the scenarios might be treated differently for the purposes of Heavenly Tribulation and the like.

How much more energy than a cultivator has access to does their Dantian usually release? Since energy is bound up both in supporting reality and also in the cultivators powerful enough to pretty much never die otherwise, plus all the cultivators another level down and so on and so forth.

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It depends on how many levels down things go.

If your Dantian has no cultivators inside, then it is just a ratio of how much Qi can be stored in a unit of space vs how much Qi the laws describing that space take up. The numbers might vary somewhat, and I don't have the firmest idea of what the numbers would be, but to give a sense of scope something on the order of between 100:1 and 1:100. So available Qi is never less than 1% of Law Qi, nor is it ever more than 100x Law Qi.

If your Dantian DOES have cultivators (but not Gods), it is that plus the ratio of Qi that your cultivators have locked up compared to the amount you have available. I would say it that it is also probably capped by 100x available Qi; it seems unlikely that things would be sustainable past that point.

And if your Dantian contains Gods, then all bets are off. The thing is, Gods themselves generate Qi without needing to draw on the outer world, so the amount of energy a God could have doesn't need to be tied at all to the World that they live in. So there is no cap; an Inner World that contains a God (or an abandoned Dantian, or a gushing Qi Fountain which resulted from a massively energetic Dantian being in a continuous state of spewing out Qi) can have an arbitrarily large amount of total energy, even with the available energy directly in the world itself being fixed.

Also, how viable is cultivating a universe that doesn't sustain life? Like, all the normal profound laws except for Life.

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If your Inner World doesn't sustain life, it can't sustain cultivators (which are a form of life), so you can't be a God.

Now, it is not actually necessary to be a God to advance in cultivation. But without being a God, you have no passive Energy generation, and no boosts to your Mind or Soul cultivation from people ascending. You can still do things the slow way, and you can still use techniques and then recover your spend Qi manually, and you can still grow arbitrarily high in terms of the degree of power that you can apply - but you'd be handicapping yourself quite severely.

And is it at all possible to physically move between worlds?

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Nope! Every universe is physically a separate space; the only things that can move between them are Qi and Will. Law can't move between Worlds (though in a sense there is a way for Laws on one side to influence Law on the other via a sort of resonance), and one of the Fundamental Laws is Existence; physical matter requires Existence as a medium and since Law can't move between worlds, nether can physical matter.

 

[Subrosian_Smithy]

Oh my god.

Is Cultivation in this universe just a pyramid scheme that actually works?

 

[zinay]

So what happens if someone tries to ascend after the world above theirs is destroyed. Do they just automatically connect to the next world up instead? does it become impossible?

 

[Satisfaction]

So what happens if someone tries to ascend after the world above theirs is destroyed. Do they just automatically connect to the next world up instead? does it become impossible?

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As I understand it, the world above yours can't be destroyed, because the process of the world's destruction damages the worlds contained within, which causes them to leak qi, which stabilizes the world. So until all contained worlds are also destroyed, the world can't be truly destroyed even if it can be irreparably damaged.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Oh my god.

Is Cultivation in this universe just a pyramid scheme that actually works?

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Yeah, I think you can say that.

The nature of a pyramid scheme is to parasitically extract value from the bottom levels, funneling that value to support higher levels. Basically, it is zero-sum game, and at best it looks like it is creating value because higher levels end up with gains and lower levels THINK that they will get there as well. In practice however, it is mathematically guaranteed that most people involved are going to get screwed.

For a pyramid scheme to "actually work", it would have to keep its promise of making everyone involved rich - and that is impossible for a zero-sum game. But indeed, cultivation in this setting isn't a zero sum game! There is actually net value produced at all levels. Lower ranks get to freely use Qi from higher ranks for their lifetime, and then return that plus dividends upwards. The nature is symbiotic instead of parasitic, and at any given time EVERYONE has benefited (in terms of Qi possession, anyways), rather than higher levels having gotten rich while lower levels being "temporarily" in the red.

So what happens if someone tries to ascend after the world above theirs is destroyed. Do they just automatically connect to the next world up instead? does it become impossible?

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Basically, a world can't be destroyed while it has things in it. So if the world above is in the process of being destroyed, the destruction would be draining Qi from the current world (potentially doing damage to it), and using that Qi to support space in that region.

One way to think of it is that all the Qi inside of a a World represents its "hit points"; if you wound a World it will constantly lose HP, but it won't die until all of it's HP is drained. This includes free-floating Qi, Qi that is being used to support Laws, and the Qi of nested worlds as well.

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

I'm really confused about how grandmist works. Like, you dispel it but then when your inner world is destroyed what happens to that hollowed out space? Or is it impossible to know because no one has successfully make inner worlds close enough to interact with each other?

 

[Zaealix]

I'm really confused about how grandmist works. Like, you dispel it but then when your inner world is destroyed what happens to that hollowed out space? Or is it impossible to know because no one has successfully make inner worlds close enough to interact with each other?

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As I understand it it's like in Exalted, how the Realm was made from taking a section of Chaos and applying LAW to it until it wasn't Chaos anymore. Or like Empty Space between Planets, it is Void, or the equivilant of such. Any world that collapses is doing so because it can't hold back the Chaos and it gets wiped out/returned to Chaos-space again.

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

As I understand it it's like in Exalted, how the Realm was made from taking a section of Chaos and applying LAW to it until it wasn't Chaos anymore. Or like Empty Space between Planets, it is Void, or the equivilant of such. Any world that collapses is doing so because it can't hold back the Chaos and it gets wiped out/returned to Chaos-space again.

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Except that patch of chaos is converted to energy which is then released.