In essence, the quality of one's aptitude for cultivation had no relation to their parents; it was more akin to a random selection.
Consequently, children of commoners could become cultivation prodigies, while the offspring of nobles, even with their potent bloodline power, might prove to be cultivation failures.
It was precisely this uncertainty that ensured the longevity of the cultivation system.
The higher echelons of the cultivation conglomerates once hypothesized that as time passed, the inherited bloodline abilities passed down through generations would inevitably weaken rather than strengthen.
However, cultivators maintained an element of uncertainty in their aptitude, with the possibility of surpassing their parents' abilities.
This dynamic suggested that, over time, victory would inevitably lie with the cultivators.
Cultivators would undoubtedly replace the bloodline humans and rule this world, establishing a new order.
The higher-ups in the cultivation conglomerates believed this to be true.
Yet, this was of no concern to Quan.
Quan was not contemplating these matters.
His focus was on his own aptitude.
After testing, Quan's aptitude was not particularly high.
He possessed only a slight aptitude for cultivation.
If cultivation aptitudes were categorized into five grades: low, medium, high, supreme, and transcendent, then Quan could only be at the peak of the low grade, slightly approaching the medium grade, but never quite reaching it.
With such an aptitude, his cultivation speed would be twice as slow as someone with a true medium-grade aptitude, three times slower than a high-grade cultivator, and ten times slower than a supreme-grade cultivator.
Cultivators with transcendent aptitude began at more than twenty times his cultivation speed.
This disparity in cultivation speed was enough to make ordinary commoners realize that while the immortal path could enhance innate, unchangeable strength, it was also an arduous journey.
Not all commoners could reach the end of the cultivation path and achieve the Core Formation realm. A transcendent-grade cultivator might condense their primordial core in thirty years, achieving the union of yin and yang and the harmony of dragon and tiger.
However, an ordinary person with a low-grade cultivation aptitude might not achieve Core Formation even after six hundred years.
The results of the aptitude test left Quan disheartened. He had not expected that abandoning everything in Qingyang Tribe and coming to Taihang Mountain to cultivate would yield such an outcome.
Mortals rarely lived for six hundred years. During the Yin Sha realm of cultivation, prolonged accumulation of Yin Sha, despite active efforts to harmonize various types of malevolent energies, would ultimately damage the body and cause various hidden injuries.
Cultivators in the Yin Sha realm did not increase their lifespan; instead, they shortened it.
Upon reaching the Yang Gang realm, by harmonizing various Yang Gang energies, the lifespan lost in the Yin Sha realm could be recouped. However, because Yang Gang realm cultivators possessed more Yin Sha than Yin Sha realm cultivators, their lifespan did not increase significantly, at most remaining similar to that of ordinary commoners.
Only by harmonizing dragon and tiger energies and stepping into the Core Formation realm could a cultivator's lifespan extend to over five hundred years, a substantial increase.
However, this implied that achieving Core Formation must be accomplished within a hundred years; otherwise, one would not succeed in extending their life and would instead die of old age.
With Quan's low-grade cultivation aptitude, it was entirely impossible for him to reach the Core Formation realm and condense his primordial core before a hundred years had passed. This seemed to indirectly indicate that he was destined to be without the Core Formation realm.
But this was merely Quan's own thought. It was not until a cultivator from the cultivation conglomerate directly distributed staffs—oh, no, a type of magical artifact shaped like a staff—to Quan and many other commoners that Quan understood that the higher-ups in the cultivation world had long been aware of the issue of aptitude.
Bloodline power had its drawbacks, the most significant being that it was entirely dependent on one's parents and was innate, with no possibility of being cultivated.
Cultivators were far more advanced than bloodline power, but they also had their drawbacks, as exemplified by the issue of aptitude.
Indeed, cultivators could achieve their abilities through post-natal cultivation, not determined by innate factors. The quality of one's aptitude was merely random, not inherited from parents.
This also dictated that cultivation organizations were not composed of bloodline families but of masters and disciples.
The Taihang Mountain Cultivation Conglomerate selected commoners with suitable aptitudes from the vast populace to become their disciples.
Undoubtedly, on the path of cultivation, while the formation of cultivation families was possible, in terms of efficiency and talent selection, the cultivation sects' ability to gather talented cultivators far surpassed that of family structures.
In a cultivation family, even if a child was born with poor aptitude, they were still recognized as part of the family. Since parents' cultivation aptitude could not be passed down to their sons and daughters, over time, cultivation families would find their resources occupied by those with high status but poor cultivation aptitude, while those with excellent cultivation aptitude lacked adequate cultivation resources.
Consequently, cultivation families would gradually decline. This was because those with poor cultivation aptitude but high parental status were indispensable. This was far inferior to sects that, without relying on bloodline connections, directly recruited disciples from the general populace.
Unlike bloodline noble families, cultivation families were far inferior to sects.
However, this was a matter from the early stages of the cultivation path's development.
Quan knew that although the history of the immortal path was far shorter than the history of bloodline power, it still spanned several hundred years and had undergone several generations of cultivation inheritance changes to reach its current state.
The opening of the cultivation path was far from simple. The initial pioneers and subsequent generations of cultivators had long since died, having paved the way for the three cultivation realms.
Over these hundreds of years, during the early period, there were internal disagreements among the first batch of pioneers. Some, influenced by the ingrained thinking of bloodline families, chose to establish cultivation noble families, even though they knew they had opened a different path from bloodline power. However, these individuals quickly discovered that cultivation noble families were not well-suited for the development of the immortal path, and cultivation sects were more appropriate.
Thus, cultivation sects grew and prospered, prioritizing cultivation aptitude. They specifically selected commoners with at least high-grade aptitude from the vast populace and some low-level bloodline humans to join the Taihang Mountain Cultivation Conglomerate.
At that time, the Taihang Mountain Cultivation Conglomerate, aware of the importance of cultivation aptitude, generally did not accept individuals with medium-grade cultivation aptitude as disciples.
This was because the cultivation speed of high-grade cultivators surpassed that of medium-grade cultivators by three times, and the cultivation speed of supreme-grade cultivators surpassed that of medium-grade cultivators by nine times.
One could achieve cultivation in ten years, while the other required ninety years.