The World of "Hummingbird Cultivator": Cutting Fire

How Cultivation Works

In order to cultivate, one must first go through an “awakening” which will allow you to then sense and interact with essence. Essence is the energy of the world and the universe. To gather essence, you can either meditate and pull it in manually, or wait until you generate it naturally.

Bottlenecks occur at random points anywhere along the way to the next realm. Many people get blocked at a bottleneck before they can reach the Immortal Realms.

Awakening

In order to awaken, it involves a long period of meditation where you take cultivation pills and other sources of essence. This fills the cultivators' dantian with essence. For people, this is usually a very expensive process (for the cultivation pills and herbal baths) and not always guaranteed. However, it is possible for those not well off financially to awaken by finding spiritual plants and herbs filled with essence or even eating meat from spirit beasts. However, to go out in search of these spirit herbs is a risky task. It can and is done though. 

In the story, Lily awakens when she drinks the nectar of the spirit flowers, found on the cliff face, for about two weeks.

Cultivation

Cultivation is all about remaking your self bit by bit. You gather Essence, also called Origin Qi or Outer Qi, into your energy center. This energy center is called the dantian. In the dantian, this Outer Qi is converted into your personal Inner Energy, or just Qi. Qi travels from the dantian throughout the body through pathways called Qi Veins. You use this Qi to then improve yourself in three ways, also called the three paths of Cultivation: Body Cultivation, literally remaking your body; Soul Cultivation, strengthening the soul and expanding the Spiritual Sea; and Mind Cultivation, strengthening the mind and connecting with the Daos. One thing in common between the three paths is opening meridians, and condensing your Qi.

Meridians are points along the Qi Veins that act as dams, obstructing flow to a small portion. These meridians can be opened by concentrating Qi at that point. Once opened, flow through that portion of the body becomes easier. They can also act as exit points in the body to perform techniques. Opening meridians become harder and harder as your Qi becomes more potent. Because you're concentrating so much Qi into that single point, once it opens, it can explode outward. It's better to open as many meridian points as you can before your Qi becomes too potent.

Condensing Qi involves forcing more Qi into your dantian than it can safely handle, compressing it into a more concentrated form. Throughout the path of ascension in the mortal realms, your Qi in the dantian will condense from gas to mist to liquid to solid. Then it'll only get denser and denser. Mishandling this can lead you to blow up your dantian.

Body Cultivation

Remaking your body involves concentrating your Qi into a specific part of the body and literally destroying that part and using your Qi to remake that portion. This is done as you go, so you don't have to destroy a whole bone before remaking it, but this is still obviously very dangerous and needs to be done right. The remade body part will be better in-tuned with Qi and will be able to support more and more power.

Instead of creating fancy spells with their Qi, they direct most, if not all, of their Qi inwards to enhance their body.

Some Body Cultivators seek to replicate a Beast's way of gaining strength, becoming known as Demonic Cultivators. In seeking to replicate Beast Qi, they created Demonic Qi, where they consume the remnant Qi from those they slay and take it directly into their bodies.

Body Cultivators are notoriously hard to kill as they can survive injuries that would kill anyone else, then their natural healing will get them back to peak health. Once a Body cultivator gets strong enough, they can survive even decapitation or their heart bursting. Their inner energy will sustain them long enough for their regeneration to heal them.

Soul Cultivation

Soul Cultivators first need to find their way into their inner self and find their Spirit Sea. This contains spiritual energy. They can pull their Qi into their soul and expand this sea, purify it, etc. Soul cultivators can draw on this sea to use the spirit energy. While Qi can be important for purifying their spirit, it's Spirit Energy that takes priority. Usually, a Soul Cultivator would only open their Heart and Crown meridians and maybe a handful of others. 

Once a Soul Cultivator reaches the Immortal Realms, they can die and be reborn with their power and sense of self completely intact. Well, their Spirit Energy and Daos, etc. remain intact. Their Meridians, dantian, and body all have to start from scratch.

Mind Cultivation

The main thing for Mind Cultivators is to seek mastery over Qi. Qi control is more important than anything, and they spend hours every day perfecting this control. They also meditate and seek to connect with the Daos, and create spells. They prioritize opening as many Meridians as they can and expanding their Qi reserves.

Mind Cultivators are the most “fragile” and easiest to kill for good, but they can dish out the most damage with their Qi spells. They can also have a spell to heal themselves as well. They're also usually the fastest to reach the Immortal Realms.

Beasts

Beasts are animals that are awakened, usually from eating something rich in Qi like a spiritual herb or another Beast, and can grow in the path of ascension. They don't cultivate or gather Qi as a normal cultivator would. They instead kill things. This gathers  a unique energy called Beast Qi that resides in the body itself, not in the dantian or Qi veins. As the beast lives and kills, it naturally gathers more and more Beast Qi. This saturates the body causes changes. It makes them stronger, more perceptive, quicker reactions, and so on. When it reaches a critical point, this Beast Qi causes the beast to evolve into a stronger form. Sometimes they can be in an area rich in a certain type of Qi, like fire qi or wood qi, and they evolve into special elemental variants.

Sometimes a beast has a unique innate sense of how to perform a specific technique, or their Beast Qi naturally saturates their Qi veins or dantian. These beasts are able to spend their Beast Qi to perform a Qi technique, or spell, even at the first Mortal Realm. At the cost of this, they're much weaker physically than other beasts, since they're using the Beast Qi in a way. They often take longer to reach the next realms. However, these are the beasts that gain sapience and speech first and they usually have a much larger reserve of Inner Qi.

Realms of Cultivation

There are the Mortal, Immortal, and Divine Realms. Four realms each. Each Realm has 3 stages to them(low/mid/high) just to show relative progress/power in comparison with others within the same realm.

Mortal realms: 

1: The Foundational Realm. Also called the Flesh Tempering Realm for Body Cultivators, The Spirit Root Realm, for Soul Cultivators, or the Opening Realm by Mind Cultivators. Your essence is gas. This is the time to set the groundwork for all of your future skills and cultivation. You want to take your time here to really master the basics, open as many Meridians as you can. One can still open meridians later down the line, but they will have to deal with a lot more backlash. This is the time to do it.

2: The Inner Mist Realm. Your essence is kind of misty. This is mostly the time when cultivators truly begin learning their techniques of their chosen path. 

3: The Inner Sea Realm. Your essence is liquid.

4: The Core Formation Realm. Note: this is the “core forming” realm as your essence is solid.

Immortal realms: Cultivators can and will spend millions of years working their way through the immortal realms. Through this time, they seek to truly embody their Daos.

1: The Nascent Realm. Note: this is typically when you see beasts can become humanoid and start speaking. This is also when one is considered truly a part of the greater universe, and they leave their home world for higher tiered planets and opportunities.

Upon reaching this realm, one's Qi is so potent that they can shape and manipulate the world around them with a thought. (Telekinesis) They use this to fly around on their own without some sort of treasure to help them.

2: The True Body/Spirit/Mind Realm. 

3: The Golden Pill Realm.

4: The Emperor Realm Also called the Core Ignition Realm. Because at the end, you need to figure out how to ignite your core with divine fire to advance/ascend.

Divine realms: Cultivators, or rather the Gods, have come to understand and embody their Daos to the point where they can now dictate what those Daos are exactly. However, if there exists multiple gods with the same dao (ex. Two fire gods) if they're the same Realm, then they must both agree to the change.

1: The Ascended Realm.

2: The Earthly God Realm.

3: The Heavenly God Realm.

4: The Divine Emperor Realm. 

Elemental Theory

There are many different types of elements, for any base element there are three ways it can be expressed, yin-aligned, neutral, or yang-aligned. The effect of the technique depends on what element is used, and how it is expressed. There are some arguments for how they should be categorized though. For example, some will argue that lightning is the yang-aligned version of the base fire element, and others that it is an element unto its own, with its own yin-yang expressions. The two main theories for how they should be categorized are called the Lotus Element Theory, and the Box Gradient Theory.

The Lotus Element Theory

This is the traditional representation of the elements. It postulates that there are certain basic elements, and that the rest are combinations of these basic elements or even simply a yang or yin-aligned expression of the basic elements.  The basic elements are: Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Wood. Lightning would be considered a Yang aligned expression of Fire. Lava would be a combination of Fire and Earth. Ice would be a Yin aligned expression of Water. Etc. Etc.

The Box Gradient Theory

This is the more modern representation of the elements, where there are many different stand alone elements each with their own yin/yang aligned expressions. Lightning would be its own element, with its own Yin and Yang expressions. 

Examples of some elements:

Water, Ice, Mist, Lightning, Fire, Lava, Light, Dark, Acid, Ash, Earth, Metal (and specific types of metal), Radiant, Gravity, Space, Air, Blood, Poison, Wood, Crystal (gems, glass, salt, etc.), Dust, Sand, Time, Sound, Life, Death, Astral (Moon, Stars, Sun), Storm, Shadow.

NOTE: Yin is the black side, the “dark/receptive/passive/negative/female” side of things. Yang is the white side, the “light/active/positive/male” side of things.