Essences

Essence of Ideal Growth

Power by cliffc999

By consuming the Essence of Ideal Growth, the crystallized essence of possibility and capability, you gain the following boons:

* Any limits you have are broken. You may improve any aspect of yourself, including those aspects that normally could not be improved at all, to an infinite extent. While you may not be unstoppable now, time is all you will need before you surpass everyone.

* The passage of time lends you strength and even when doing absolutely nothing you may passively grow as if you were doing all-out training at a modest rate of improvement. If you were to put any actual effort into improving then this growth would gain an astronomical boost. You have total control over where any growth is allocated, will never advance further or faster than you are comfortable with, and have an exact awareness of your amassed capabilities and how they measure up.

* So long as a particular skill, trait, or power exists within your local context, and you have a basic understanding of what it is and entails, you have the potential to develop it. This does not require educational resources or external aids and disregards entirely the limitations of your physiology and metaphysiology. You may even develop traits that one is normally only born with.

* Development in any area will never preclude or hamper development in any other area, and as such you may safely acquire mutually-incompatible traits. This is to such an extent that in a Xianxia world you could simultaneously cultivate dozens of distinct foundations without any issue.

* As they improve, your skills, qualities, powers, techniques, and perks may develop a degree of potency, applicability, and versatility that defies their normal limits. With sufficiently good balance you could walk on intangible holograms.

* Since improvement necessitates the removal of flaws, you may use training to remove vulnerabilities, crippling effects, and requirements. As an otherwise ordinary human you could eventually erode away your hunger completely, allowing you to not only go without eating but deny conservation of mass as your body generates replacement tissues without absorbing any external material.

* Your powers and internal power supplies cannot be removed, drained, suppressed, weakened, copied, altered, controlled, or otherwise manipulated against your wishes, even if you were somehow mind-controlled. You may toggle any of your powers from fully off to fully on, or anywhere in between. You may even permanently shed powers or abilities if you find that you truly do not enjoy them, only to retrain them later if you change your mind. You cannot ever be forced to use this metaphorical dimmer-switch against yourself.

* Time is your ally and you will never be lessened by the passage of time, even in the subtlest of ways. No maintenance is required to retain the fullness of your powers, and no eternity is long enough to diminish your ability to enjoy life.

* At the time you first drink this Essence you will be cured of any and all physical ailments, psychological trauma, and other unwanted mental conditions, ailments, disabilities, etc.

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Essence of the Cultivator

Power by cliffc999

By consuming this essence you become as ridiculously overpowered and blessed with potential and luck as the greatest of xianxia main characters. Which, if you know xianxia, is pretty damn ridiculous.

You gain the ability to 'cultivate' your 'internal energy', allowing you access to increasing tiers of effects and powers in-theme for wuxia and/or xianxia, the exact nature and power level of these effects depending on what degree have cultivated it to. You may use an existing cultivation system from any xianxia novel or create your own.

You may grant this ability to cultivate to others and teach them your system, but they are limited to their own willpower, comprehensive abilities, and talents when it comes to success. You may still use external means, such as alchemy or creating and sharing secret techniques, to help them.

Cultivating your internal energy slows down your aging, eventually making you truly unaging. Likewise, you may eventually transcend mortal needs such as sustenance, normal rest, or needing to breathe. Your mind and soul will be adjusted so as to be able to endure immortality.

Your talent for cultivation and speed and ease of learning at all things related to cultivation (including martial arts, alchemy, and creating artifacts) is beyond ludicrous. Your aptitude is raised to the maximum possible allowable in existence and perhaps slightly beyond even that. You can choose to slow this down when you need to or when you wish to avoid attracting attention.

This includes your ability to make use of external cultivation aids, such as parts from mystical beasts and exotic plants and treasures. You may easily consume and gain maximum benefit from such things even without preparation, and gain even greater benefits from them with sufficient preparation and alchemical knowledge.

Even if your cultivation system does not normally provide you with one you will still be gifted with perfect memory, including infinite storage and perfect indexing.

As one specially blessed by this Essence and the heavens, you may ignore the usual limits of your cultivation system whenever you find it convenient. You may mix incompatible elements, cultivate female-only arts as a male or vice versa, ignore dietary or behavioral restrictions normally required of cultivators, etc.

Your cultivation cannot be 'crippled'. Injuries that would normally destroy your cultivation instead merely temporarily wound it, but you can heal in time. Likewise, any cultivation techniques that carry a risk of death if performed incorrectly are entirely safe for you; you may or may not succeed at them but failure will never kill or permanently injure you, and you may try again.

Your cultivation never dead-ends or gets trapped in a bottleneck. Regardless of what choices you make or what system you are in, there are no 'traps' that leave you stuck at a given stage of cultivation forever. All setbacks are clearable with enough hard work and your 'foundation' is always ideally solid.

Your willpower is truly unlimited, unbreakable, and unsurpassed, and you have a perfect sense of 'self'. No amount of pain or hardship can deter you, no illusion can trap you or bind your heart or soul, and you can focus on a task for eternity if need be. Any cultivation challenges that depend on strength of will or clarity of mind are auto-win for you.

You have the luck of a top-tier xianxia protagonist. Coincidence and fate favor you greatly, mentors and training materials seem to be available whenever most needed, discovering treasures and rarities seem to be much more common for you than for other people whenever you go exploring and adventuring, and you have plot armor sufficient to survive almost anything.

Cultivation is not for the idle, but instead for those who struggle and overcome challenges. Regardless of how powerful you grow you may always find things that challenge you if you make a sufficient effort to seek them out, until you finally stand among the highest of beings.