I wrote the post before the clarification that this would actually continue growing with us was edited into the post after Discord questions. Without that clarification what I had to go on was Renxiang saying it would "remain with us" whilst also talking about the loss of what she'd put in there and the effects on her personality. Complete with Ling Qi worrying about what Renxiang had given up.
Without the clarification it looked a lot more potentially disturbing. Even now it feels narratively tacked on. "Oh the next step involves performing open heart spiritual surgery on yourself". "'kay"
You're literally contradicting what you said in the update, where our ancestors were able to ascend in a different manner.
Besides which, I think the problem is the abruptness. It's very "questy" for lack of a better term. If I was just reading this as a story, and mostly these days I am, it's jarring. If Ling Qi had read those books and come to her conclusion of "this is for the best" it would be fine, but as it is her reaction to being blindsided by the information that the next orthodox step is major surgery on herself with "Ok, great!" instantly when told about it, despite expressing doubts about the fact that Renxiang did weird things to her own personality make up.
It doesn't fit narratively.
You've not been paying attention to what cultivation is then
But regardless I think you misunderstand what's happening here
The Domain Weapon is training wheels for the understanding that a cultivator is more than their physical form, they are their Domain
It starts by learning to manipulate the weapon as an extension of themselves through their Domain, and now it evolves to putting a piece of themselves into the weapon, separate from their body and yet still connected to them and growing
They're learning to grow past limitations
That's the whole point of cultivation, it has always been happening, we and LQ just learned the specific details of the next step is all
And previously their Ancestors did the same thing, just less cleanly and with more trial and error
I mean LQ
could technically go ahead and ignore the safe and established path where all the kinks are worked out and try preforming back alley surgery on her own soul because she for some reason felt the method used by literally everyone in the Empire to progress past her current point wouldn't be safe enough
... But why? Why would she do that?
Yrs didn't really need to give an option that read "stop cultivating" or "try doing absurdly dangerous and inefficient domain experimentation rather than just progressing"
