Can someone explain or link a site describing cultivation

Well ive been reading a chinese novel that has the same like set up (i guess u could call it) as this manhua and I believe that there are different cultivation levels and the higher level you are, the stronger you are. So for example there is a 1st rank, 2nd rank, a 3rd rank, and so on but i think they stop calling it by numbers once you go past 10th rank. So the levels beyond 10th rank would be like commander rank, saint rank, and a few more. And it takes alot of time to cultivate to the next level, so thats why its called “cultuvation”. Anyways im not sure if its the same with this manhua but thats what i think it is

I am not good with technical terms and all but since i have read a lot i can give you a piece or two and it may be useful for you.

Cultivation is about accumulation and improvement. People(Mortals) are but 'containers' that may or may not be able to hold energy/power within, and on this is born the term talent. One's talent are manly focused on how fast or how easy one have on 'leveling up' (and if they can or not) and most twist in the stories talk about the talent on how far (a mc) can go. Most cultivations stories do take a enlightenment approach, so 'leveling up' not only is based on absorbing some kind of energy (be that from nature, special crystals, medicine, etc) but also is based on ones understanding towards their 'path' (some are really 'religious' kind of way, as they are trying to understand life meaningfulness, creation and destruction, beginning and end). Most cultivations one can't change ones path so easily, since you are building something, you need a good foundation to 'level up' and get stronger, with each level the raise in strength is abnormal, mostly can't fight someone with a higher level (the exceptions will occur, but they are based on a person having something to balance the difference in the inner power). So when you look into a world of cultivation, stronger people will have really big egos, since so few are stronger than them. You can see that in the way elders generally act. But don't be fooled, they are the fools, since cultivation is something one improve bit by bit, most 'normies' get stuck and can't achieve anything higher and those are the ones that act like gods against students on those stories. Remember i said one needs a good foundation? a good foundation impacts how far one can grow, so one need to talk not only about inner power, but also how non-polluted it is and how the 'body/container' is holding it. Pure energy means better energy, more force in ones body, more ability to fight, etc. Some can't walk down the path because either their body or energy is 'too bad'. You can also see sometimes the term of breaking down their cultivation, so one start over from the start, one would basically go back into being a normal mortal, maybe even die in the process if done incorrectly.

Cultivation is also focused a lot on self improvement. You will see most good at cultivation also embracing solitude. Be that due to them staying alone meditating/absorbing energy or having higher lifetime and ending up alone. With higher inner energy people generally live longer, since their body gets better and purer, being immortal is not out of question is some stories. Also, being aloof seeing as cool is pretty common on those kind of stories, they are seem as superior.

So one is only a human, but have a link with nature. One can gain understanding about this link. They may be able, if their bodies/soul allow, to absorb some kind of energy, this triggers some kind of evolving. They increase their inner power, they learn magic tricks aka fireworks that hurt others, they make their body stronger, they live longer, their strengthen their soul, make new bodies, reincarnate, change dimensions... they learn things that may help their path (medicine, taming, magic writing, weapon forging, etc). And every single thing they learn, with every 'level up' they achieve, they are close to 'the gods'. 'Gods' that hold the power of nature, capable of destroy everything that may seem immovable. Those 'Gods' may leave in another dimension/realm, so that is the reason things seems normal at first, but the worlds of cultivation are mostly big, being made of many 'world' with different level of power. So MC's move on to another place where stronger people live. Stories of cultivation is mostly based on self improvement while walking around the world and 'up a ladder'. There is a lot of revenge, politics, making money and spending it, tournaments (lol), harem, saving the world or destroying 'it'. Cultivations stories are really long and sometimes gets really boring, but if you find the gold ones, the ones that catch you attention you will fall into a black hole. There are quite a few 'mangas' here and there, but they are mostly based on novels that may have also have fan-translation out there and they generally are more far ahead, so if you get interested on that, reading novels may be your next level up.

idk, if this was much of help, but i tried to help as i could. you will get to understand naturally once you ready a couple of those. i do recommend you keep reading and try a few others in this genre. they are quite good and vast. if you want to know more details about cultivation level and such it depends on the story, this one you may not find much about it but if you start reading a few others have wikia with details, mostly those that are based on long novels that are already out there being translated, you can read details there, but be careful if you are anti-spoiler kind of person.

https://immortalmountain.wordpress.com/glossary/wuxia-xianxia-xuanhuan-terms/#cultivation
This should be perfect for you (⌒▽⌒)

Thank you! I am guessing outter underling and inner underling come under a 1st rank officer?

Thank you so much for taking the time to write and explain it in such depth! I will definitely love to read some novels cause such genres always pique my interest. Haha I dont like spoilers xD so I'll try to avoid spoilers if I can. If you know any novels please do recommend me some!

Thank you again and sorry to ask you one more question. In this story they mentioned the MC having a 5 elemental spiritual base. How is that bad? considering isn't it better to have more affinity to all the elements? Or are one elementals preferred for some reason? Also can a cultivator bond with a god inorder to achieve more power? Like I remember in a story I read (it wasnt cultivation) but humans made contracts with gods and other spiritual creatures in order to be able to use their powers and become stronger. Oh and whats the deal with kid abduction?? is that normal for cultivators? Sorry again for spamming you with more questions >.<

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I searched so many websites but couldnt find anything with explanations on the terms. This is so helpful. I'll give it a thorough reading. Thanks again!

What i think cause such prejudice here is the correlation on how fast one grows: while with 1 they 'level up' really fast and it is easy to sense/absorb/use the energy, with 5 it must be slower/harder. Most people in world like that don't really look into the quality of cultivation, they only look at numbers/results, and while competing like that they only look at the grades one can achieve fast. So in this case getting to a higher level faster must be interpreted as having good innate talent. There is always a twist on those points tho, so there will probably be a twist here too, since they have it easier in the start, they must really suffer in higher levels, but most common people don't get to experience such difficulties since they get stuck before being able to notice. I have seen something similar in another story, i think it is similar here. In the other novel it had a girl with a really 'big container', so she couldn't fill it with energy easy and advance the initial first levels, getting way older than her peers without being able to follow them, she was bullied and such because people thought she was trash, but in her case the first levels were hard to get, but once she got it passing between levels was really easy, there wasn't much challenge on that, while most people in most stories have really hard bottlenecks between levels naming the process breakthroughs, most can't achieve it and get stuck. Such talent was really rare and in the story and it was stated that in bigger organizations they really value such talent, but on the girl country they couldn't identify it. Being able to go higher is way better than being easily stuck, even if it takes more time, but those mortal and low level elders are too blind to understand it and only focus on immediate results missing a bigger picture.

This would be my best shot on the talent/base relationship. However, there can be other possibilities, imagine that her natural strength, however cause it (something else about her body/soul) may affect the 5 things and make it super duper good, so having 5 may not really be good but in her case she has something that fits together so well that it is many times better than having only 1. Since her strength is so weird and talked a lot, it must have a effect in the way she cultivates. There must be something else they didn't test that will make her 'talent' extraordinary.

It is not common having cultivators bond with 'gods', it is pretty common seeing some receiving their inheritance from gods, more like getting a really good techniques for cultivations, their weapon/tools or receiving some mark that gives than some power that will grow into godhood as their level increases. This is because in most stories gods are only mortal/humans/alien/non-human that cultivated to higher realms, so bonding between 'them' is weird. You do see a lot of souls being inside MC's or in some tool (ring, necklace, bead, etc) tho, they could be considered 'gods' and get to be the MC master, imparting their ability and showing MC the way up the ladder. Also, it is also pretty common cultivators absorbing monster souls/power and getting something (soul armor, a 'attack magic', an influence on their inner energy, being able to transform into them, etc) out of it, some cultivations worlds are purely based on that and if not that they get companions monster contracted (that is even more common). It varies tho, but if you ask me the most common outcome, the answer would be no, no god bonding, more like the MC's turning into a god themselves (by advancing their cultivation to really high level, some even gets to live 'forever' and kill other 'gods').

About the kids, it is some dark/devils ways of doing stuff, this is common, immortals killing for their own benefits isn't rare at all, like being stated some cultivator killed a whole mortal city for their cultivation. They transform life/blood into their inner energy or something similar, so some treat mortal like tonics or batteries for them to use. Having a darker path is normal, but stories mostly don't focus on that. In those paths people can get some more power easily since they don't have access to good techniques or medicine/special crystals to help them train, so bad people turn to the easier way that is using other weak people lives :(, those path generally have limitations tho, but they can get some bump on their power without much work (and then get stuck), i don't really get it must being a kid tho, other stories they need lives/soul/blood to improve their weird technique, so they get anything that is weak enough to be easily killed, in this one it needing to be kids... maybe they need something purer with more lifetime? idk. I think that event was more to show how forceful cultivators are and how they look at mortals like ants, even a bandit thinks they are some god because he has some almost negligible power.

Now i will post my recommendations. first this site https://www.novelupdates.com/series-ranking/ you get to find novels from everywhere. they don't keep the novels themselves, only a database where you can find the translations.
Now let talk about my personal recommendations, those are the ones i particularly like, find worth recommending and kept reading so far (didn't drop):

Novels:
- Emperor’s Domination (WuxiaWorld)
- Sovereign of the Three Realms (WuxiaWorld)
- A will eternal (WuxiaWorld)
- Ghost Emperor Wild Wife: Dandy Eldest Miss (webnovel.com)
- Divine Doctor: Daughter of the First Wife (springraintranslations)
- Invincible (WuxiaWorld)
- The Legendary Master’s Wife (exiledrebelsscanlations) (notice: yaoi)
- Revolution of the 8th Class Mage ( https://www.novelupdates.com/series/revolution-of-the-8th-class-mage/)
- Quickly Wear the Face of the Devil (keztranslations) (multiple lives mc, with multiple worlds, some worlds are cultivations based other not, still recommend it tho).
- Carefree Path of Dreams (webnovel.com)
- Law of the Devil ( https://www.novelupdates.com/series/law-of-the-devil/)

Manga (you can find them all here at mangago):
- The Scholar’s Reincarnation
- Volcanic Age
- Violent Path Martial Arts School
- Spirit Blade Mountain
- Douluo Dalu (it is a trilogy, there are novels too, each is mostly independent (same universe, different time, only a few links between them) so you can read without much spoilers).
- Tales of Demons and Gods (i have read the novel up to date and is being criticized quite a lot, so idk if i should recommend, the manga so far is quite good tho and i love the art, but unfortunately the novel is suffering from slow pace publishing and the author kind of lost a bit the plot now that is closer to the end, nothing really bad happened but you can feel it is being rushed a bit, it did had a lot of potential to being my favorite :( ).
- Jiang Ye
- Fenglin Tianxia - Wangfei Shisansui
- Xian Ni

What i have seen people recommend a lot, but i am not particularly a fan, but you may like it:
- Panlong / Coiling Dragon (manga/novel) (novel: WuxiaWorld).
- The Great Ruler (manga/novel) (novel: WuxiaWorld)
- Desolate Era (WuxiaWorld)
- A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality (WuxiaWorld)
- I shall seal the heavens (WuxiaWorld)
- Heavenly Jewel Change (webnovel.com)