Clouded Soul Power and Early Cultivation Systems

The basic power system is based on the idea of a character picking a virtue, aspect, or concept that they believes embodies them. Usually the process is overseen by a mentor who can help guide them through it and lead them to one that works well, while pointing out the merits and downsides to each aspect. These aspects serve as essentially different flavors to the individual powers characters develop. An anger user who uses water will call storms, while a serenity water user can create elegant water streams. I don’t know. These are just super basic examples.

Rather than sects being based on powers, I believe most sects would be based on aspects. Like a bunch of anger people just congregating to be mad at each other and further cultivate their anger. These sects could still have in-house style techniques and styles, but they would generally be a place to develop any anger aspect user’s potential. Though the really weak sauce sects can be the type who force one style down on their user.

I’m thinking that after each major ascension up the tiger allows a user to add a new aspect to their soul. Let’s say an anger starts with that, adds ‘survival’ to increase their senses, reflexes and overall durability, and then when he’s level three he tacks on dominance to give his abilities a more overwhelming quality.

Some aspects are harder to go with than others, and it would take years of training to undo your choice depending on how far along you are. It’s generally advised you pick something that is clear and concise and not so broad as your first one. The more focused the aspect, the simpler it’s applications and the easier to master it is.

This will essentially lead to a power system where you can mix and match aspects with the user’s personal skills (affinities?) to create multiple flavors of attacks. A simple dominant chi strike would mentally effect the target of someone with a lesser will, but dominant on top of fire makes a flame that is stubborn and very hard to put out.

Affinities would be general powers that people are innately skilled at from birth. Some people are born good at ‘fire’, others are born to be good with ‘sword’. Might occasionally be some joke ones. They could be refined but it’s generally better to pick one that you’re suitable for. More can be picked upon advancement but starting off you typically only pick one. Except for the main character who will pull the ‘I’ve started behind everyone else and I need to catch up shit’.

The powers I’m thinking of him will be aspect Justice and his affinities power and protection. I have this whole thing in mind where he calls his style or w/e the left hand of mercy and the right hand of punishment, the two sides of Justice. Left hand will do support skills like barriers and redirection as well as non-lethal, tranquillizing strikes, while right hand will be powerful, damaging blows that are especially strong on anyone who has accrued lots of sin due to Justice aspect. Likewise his barriers will protect against more openly evil aspects, affinities and spirits.

It’s a set of powers that will specifically allow him to take on enemies who are a little stronger than he is, allowing for your typical “impossible! A rank 1 cannot defeat a rank 2!” bullshit but in actuality it’s very limited. A similar equivalent would be Kurapika tying his nen abilities to specifically killing the phantom troupe now that I think about it.

If this story goes past the first tier up he’ll probably need a second aspect that will allow him to fight against people who aren’t inherently evil/guilty but that’s not important right now.

----

Despite what the next paragraph starts with, none of these terms are set in stone and I'm really just laying down ideas. When I'm closer to actually writing the story and writing profiles for the major characters I will sit down and make a document of all the official terminology. Chi is a big one that's not actually fully determined, I'm just saying chi for simplicity sake but will probably come up with my own term for it if only because my dictation software will never learn to differentiate between 'chi' and 'she'. Also, bear with me here. This document is incredibly stream of thought and I spew shit all over the place.

---

I will be calling cultivation 'heavenly soul refinement' in my series and cultivators as heavenly refiners/refiners. Many believe that the true form of the soul is that of godhood and that every life in existence was once part of a greater collected godhead. Some cataclysmic event beginning of time fractured the Godhead, creating the moral realms and setting into cycle the wheel of reincarnation. Throughout constantly reliving their lives, souls became tainted with wicked karma which further separated everyone from their godly origins until we are at where we are today.

Soul Refinement is the act of pursuing that original state of being while keeping hold of one's individuality, slowly becoming a God without fading into a collective Godhead as things were in the beginning. Scholars believe that the last stage of soul refinement is merging with the dormant Godhead while still remaining as oneself, but this is just conjecture and there's no proof of it ever happening. Others believe if they were to advance past what is known as the highest theoretical stage, they would simply be blown out like a candle in the wind, becoming one with the Godhead, and thus many of the highest beings in the universe, the rulers of heaven and the greatest of Gods, have intentionally never gone past that stage for fear of this theory being true. They are already immortal at this stage and already a true God- why risk it?

Soul refinement is performed through a number of traditional and nontraditional methods. There is your traditional honing the body through martial arts, practicing your chosen affinities, meditation, and acting in accordance with one's chosen aspects. For instance, our main character will become stronger simply through enacting justice on his enemies and passing judgment on the wicked, whereas someone who engraved a more blatantly evil aspect into their soul will have to act such to greater their refinement. Other methods common in the genre will be included as well, such as elixirs and pills, sacred treasures that can be equipped for substantial boost in performance, and so on.

Another common method of soul refinement is to bind one's soul with a spirit of some sort, allowing the refiner to draw chi and utilize powers of their partner in some way. This is beneficial to the refinement of the spirit as well, as the stronger their contracted refiner becomes, they essentially pump power into the spirit that they can use for their own refinement. It's a two-way street. Contracted entities are not limited solely to spirits, there will presumably be demons as well. Bringing this up because getting a contracted spirit is one of the earliest plot points on considering for the protagonist, likely a catgirl. A step above contract could be marrying a spirit, which would grant access to even more of their power and would also be a nice plot point since I haven't really done a married couple in a story yet. The other girls might follow suit, who knows.

As I am a writer of filth, sex will be a part of the refinement experience. I believe in more traditional genre entries it's called dual cultivation. For this doc I'll just be calling it sex refinement. There are two basic methods, the first is drawing sex out as long as possible by managing one's energy and delaying orgasm. This drastically helps improve chi control, especially when resisting very high volumes of pleasure. The other method is the distinct opposite, where the two or more partners are going at it as fast as possible to have many successive orgasms in a row. This improves the usage and power of their techniques, by expending energy as fast as they can and letting it all out in burst after burst. The way it strengthens them is by a continual push and pull of each other's souls by their partner. It's a battle just as much as it is an act of pleasure. There is no yin/yang element at play here, the act of sex is equally beneficial even if it's homosexual contact. Some lore reasons for why sex refinement is a big thing might have to do with reunification between souls, becoming one with the original Godhead in a metaphorical sense by merging with another for some time.

Furthermore, some aspects might see improvement through sex refinement if the refiner acts in accordance with their aspect. Someone on a selfless path would benefit from pleasing their partner while someone on a crueler path would benefit from not giving gratification. Not sure if that will actually come into play, it's just a random idea. The protagonist having justice aspect as well as his technique literally being the right hand of punishment has some very obvious sexual joke potential, though. Furthermore, the outcome of sex refinement is heightened by fierce emotions. You will have an effect with anyone you do it with, but it's better if it's your lover or your worst enemy. Additionally, I feel there's a lot of potential for fun training devices which would be an excuse for sex toys.

Moving on to the official tiers.

As I am writing this story to have a soft ending with room for more if the sales demand it, I'm not going to waste time thinking about all the detailed tier things right now and instead will have a loose structure in place and will only detail the first method of advancement. The tier system is based off of the purity of the soul. I'm going to spout some ideas on the first four steps of advancement for the lowest here, as this will presumably be the plot of this first series.

Mortal Realm

Tier 1- Clouded (Clouded Soul might be a good title for the story, with sequels taking on the name of the other tiers)

Clouded is wholly focused on creating a strong foundation for the future advancement path. It sees the user learning to control chi, engraving an aspect into their soul, picking an affinity and integrating it into their soul, learning how to mix their aspect with their affinity, before culminating in the first soul purification process.

Advancement Path

1: Initiate. Initiate is learning how to sense and control the flow of chi in one's own body, controlling it, deepening the refiners pool of chi, and ultimately culminating with engraving in aspect on the soul. Training begins at a young age if a child is deemed to have the potential for it, though with the right resources anyone can have this potential, typically the rich. This stage lasts several years for your average refiner as you want to build a very strong foundation for your further advancement and add as much to your chi reserves as possible. By the end of it, a refiner should be able to sense chi, strengthen their physical abilities through the usage of their own chi, and potentially be able to make use of some very rudimentary special techniques that will be the foundation for their later fighting styles. Things like firing off chi blasts, big chi punches that can break rocks, simple sword projectiles, and so on. The actual advancement part can be done at any point once the refiner has these basic principles in place but as I said it's better to generally hold off. Random comparison here, but it's kind of like how you might stop Pokémon from evolving so that it learns a level up move faster than its evolution would.

To formally advance, there is a two-stage process. The first stage is that the refiner has to learn to focus all of their chi into a singular part of their body- their heart- for a lengthy period of time. Maybe a week straight or something, I'm not sure. The heart is the vessel for the soul and by focusing chi there, it will refine it to a higher level. This is very taxing to do at this stage, as you can't let an ounce of your soul slip out of your heart or else all the progress will be undone and the process must be repeated from the beginning. Once the soul has been purified, the refiner has to keep it like that while starting the second stage of the process- the engraving of an aspect. The aspect is typically determined before hand through meditation on the subject and a master's guidance, and is done by quite literally chiseling the word/character onto their soul. It is very painful and as you might've guessed if you slip up, you have to begin the engravement all over again. Once both of these stages are complete, the refiner will officially have advanced and they will feel a massive improvement over their chi control, have heightened senses, and generally just feel much stronger than they did after improving the quality of their soul.

2: Apprentice. At the apprentice stage, a refiner begins to develop their first affinity. As stated before, affinities are something you are born with but nothing in this world is set in stone and for instance someone who was born with a low affinity for 'sword' can overcome this by training throughout their childhood and consuming resources meant for that purpose. Still, it's encouraged to pick one that you are naturally born gifted at. There are spiritual tests to determine what affinity an apprentice is most suited for. I just had an idea right now as I'm writing this. Maybe the most common method is done with a big bag of marbles that have an essence of the most common affinities stored within. You dump them out inside of a spirit circle or something like that and the apprentice fuels the spirit circle with their chi, powering all the marbles. The marbles would then float and show off an effect representing the affinity the marble stands for if the refiner has enough potential in that affinity to activate the essence in each marble. All the others would remain stationary inside of the circle. Apprentices are told to pick a single affinity to begin with, as it will help them have a more straightforward advancement path. Easier to accrue power when you're only focused on one direction and further on in the refinement process you have chances to choose additional affinities.

Once an affinity is chosen, the first goal of the apprentice stage is to begin cultivating enough aptitude toward their chosen affinity to begin manifesting it and flavoring their rudimentary techniques. This is done through many, many different methods depending on the affinity but the general thing shared by all of them is that you have to immerse yourself in your affinity. Someone whose affinity is poison must begin consuming low-level poisons and developing antibodies within themselves, meditating as poisonous gas fills the air, or doing so inside a pool of poison, all while slowly ramping up the intensity of their training. It's recommended to seek out environments rich in the chosen affinity, though for some more abstract affinities such as power it might be difficult on my part to come up with ways they might cultivate this. Bringing power up because it specifically is planned for the protagonist. Another way of progressing during this stage might be absorbing power from sacred treasures, which might be how I get out of that potential pitfall.

Once the affinity is at a high enough level, the refiner fully applies it to their soul by temporarily breaking off a chunk of their soul, dying it in the affinity to create what is known as an affinity crux (though it is specifically referred to in actually speaking as the 'sword crux' or 'poison crux' or what have you), and then grafting that crux to the center of their soul. Similar to how it was in the initiate phase, losing concentration and slipping up will cause the progress to be undone. This is a much more dangerous step than anything in the initiate phase as if it is attempted too soon, the user has a very real chance of damaging their soul since they are quite literally ripping it to create their affinity crux. That segmented part of the soul could result in a chunk of soul floating around inside the refiner's body that they can't reattach, or in the worst case scenario, evaporating completely and causing a huge portion of the refiner's chi to wither away. This could result in years of progress being undone and may hinder future advancement.

By successfully merging their soul with an affinity crux, the refiner creates a wellspring of power to draw from which is where the second stage of the advancement process begins. The refiner must learn how to start using their affinity and combining it with their chi. Once the user has mastered this basic ability and begun applying it to their techniques, having mastered or created a low level technique of their own. At that point the soul purification technique is repeated, which is just how every step ends.

3: Adept. The adept stage is where things begin to get more complicated for the young refiner. They must learn how to mix their aspect with their affinity, which requires a good deal of mental creativity. It's like trying to write with a pen in each hand, very difficult and highly theoretical on top of that. Because aspects can be very vague, it is left to the refiner on how they interpret their own aspect. Two people with the same aspect might have drastically different interpretations of it, which will flavor their techniques accordingly. This stage is less convoluted than the first two, but no less difficult. They must continue creating or learning pre-existing techniques, preferably creating them as this will deepen the refiner's understanding of their own aspect. The refiner is ready for advancement once mixing their aspect with their affinity becomes as easy and automatic as breathing, requiring no extra thought to do so. When the refiner is at this step, they must engrave their affinity crux with their aspect similar to the way that they did their soul. This reinforces one's aspect by doubling down on their principles. Afterward, the soul purification is performed and the advancement is triggered. Also, the main character will totally master his during the climactic battle at the end of this first series. I feel like that’s almost obligatory.

4: Master. The master stage is where a refiner takes everything they have learned about themselves in the first three stages and begins to become in tune with the rest of the world. They must undergo more spiritual training, specifically deep and long meditation sessions to realize deeper truths of who they are in the hopes of unlocking an altered state of being related to their aspect - typically some sort of power up form which will be the main goal of this stage. (Side note. A later stage advancement could be creating different forms by mixing the aspect and the affinity, but for now, it's just the aspect.) This form starts as a trance state that can be refined into something that is toggleable, with the goal being to remain completely aware during this transformation. This power up form won't be anything drastic or godly, just your very simple first basic power up form in any shounen series. Once the refiner fully masters their personal transformation, the soul purification technique must be performed while in this transformed state to trigger the ascendance to the 2nd tier, Clear Soul.

I should mention that one's stage of advancement is a character's official title. You would address them as Clouded Master, and so on.

Tier 2- Clear
Tier 3- Bright

Immortal Realm

Tier 4- Sublime (A Lesser Sage)
Tier 5- Immaculate (A Greater Sage)
Tier 6- Resplendent (A Demigod)

God Realm

Tier 7- Divine (A Lesser God)
Tier 8- Celestial (A Greater God)
Tier 9- Heavenly (Purely theoretical)

someone in the immortal realm will have a different name for their four steps because I don't think sages would appreciate being called anything less than master, but I don't have ideas for the other three right this moment