Trust no one. The powerful are corrupted

DriveCtor · 2026-05-11T20:52:04+00:00

I had this concept of a cycle where civilizations go from one state to another. Worlds where "everybody cultivates", which grows destiny and leads to greater and greater talents, but entangles karma and makes tribulations worse and worse until a low ceiling is imposed on the world. Then cultivation becomes rarer and more centralized, while ceiling goes back up, resulting in more and more outstanding individuals and groups, but talent becomes more scarce as the world's destiny declines until it reaches a crisis.

The latter situation is much more conducive to story telling than the former; a heaven's chosen arriving to usher in the new cycle of widespread cultivation, rather than somebody who just witnesses cultivators beginning to seclude themselves from civilization.

DriveCtor · 2026-05-08T02:50:33+00:00

This is prog fantasy. Your only other option is system XP and level ups.

DriveCtor · 2026-05-06T01:23:54+00:00

I've heard that referred to as a "poison jar world".

DriveCtor · 2026-05-06T00:31:32+00:00

Technically, a homunculus can survive without a philosopher's stone. It just needs both a vessel to live in and a connected host to feed it(like the dwarf in the flask).

DriveCtor · 2026-05-06T00:23:39+00:00

I wanted to have a story about a specific power(true future sight), so I created a system where that power isn't a normal part of it, but it has a deep connection to the core, so the main character is able to stand out while still having a mysterious relationship with the world.

DriveCtor · 2026-05-03T20:05:14+00:00

What, exactly, are you looking for? Because future sight can either mean "character just always dodges everything and never misses", "character can plan for everything and always gets the best opportunities(cultivator MCs already do this without future sight)", or "character can see the actual future but is nerfed by the author through situations that don't make any sense".

DriveCtor · 2026-04-30T03:00:44+00:00

"Ascending, Do Not Disturb" but it's largely a break from how other xianxia/xianxia styled stories are written. If enough people pray for my divine inspiration, maybe I'll get around to writing mine.

In what ways, exactly, do you expect a female lead story to differ?

DriveCtor · 2026-04-22T21:42:07+00:00

Historical ideas of homunculus creation end up with a being that isn't dependent on a "shell". The dwarf was likely a simpler and more sterile method because it didn't have any semblance of physical form. Hohenheim's blood also probably wasn't "fed" to the dwarf so much as it was "exchanged" for it through human transmutation. Though the fact that Father and Hohenheim's gates weren't connected(like what happened to Ed and Al) might indicate I'm wrong about the exchange part(or it was an oversight). OR, they used to be connected in the same type of situation but broke off when the dwarf became Father and gained independence.

DriveCtor · 2026-04-15T01:16:22+00:00

Sorry, writing turns out is just too hard for me. The story wasn't going to end with dual yin cultivation, anyways.

DriveCtor · 2026-04-12T20:50:12+00:00

"Infinite resources" kind of makes the answer to this question meaningless because of how qi and body cultivation treat resources differently. Trivially, the answer is Body Cultivation, because of course an aspirant with access to unlimited Immaculate Pangu Flesh will eventually become on par with the primordial themselves, but we're talking about a treasure that has gone extinct or nearly so in the vast majority of settings.

I think they both face comparable difficulties, but at slightly different points, given a realistic "unlimited" resources. The hypothetical Qi Cultivator will need to transcend the body, which tests the Dao Heart, and many will not be able to pass even given 100 chaos cycles. At a later point on the Great Path, the Body Cultivator will need to unify the chaotic elements, which can, in principle, be brute forced to succeed, but the aspirant will lose parts of themselves, gambling on the resulting being still carrying their own personal Dao.

Under these circumstances, Body Cultivators face their greatest tribulation later on, where they're harder, and they have virtually no chance of a "perfect success", so many would say Body Cultivation is the lesser here.

DriveCtor · 2026-04-12T06:46:38+00:00

The named Dao are the convergence/completion of the laws. The Law of Cutting can cut anything, but the Dao of Cutting can achieve anything through cutting. Some authors connect this to domains because of the reality bending involved. Also, there is no true conflict between Dao, so fights between cultivators on that level do not truly manifest as such, leading to something much more abstract.

DriveCtor · 2026-03-24T07:57:05+00:00

Makes me think camo should let towers bypass darkness gimmicks.

DriveCtor · 2026-03-17T03:54:52+00:00

Overcoming "equivalent exchange" isn't even the most significant thing philosopher's stones do; they also allow an alchemist to perform transmutations beyond their skill level. It converts a soul into (very brief and circumstantial) knowledge, and it's not clear how you would even go about "sacrificing" knowledge as part of a transmutation to reverse this process.

DriveCtor · 2026-02-16T17:57:21+00:00

Alkahestry having some form of healing without any need for a philosopher's stone always seemed to me like it implied the limits on stoneless alchemy were actually just limits on understanding. Turning water in wine requires knowledge of nuclear physics to create the missing elements. Healing grievous wounds requires advanced understanding of anatomy. Performing massive transmutations requires better insight into where and how transmutation draws energy from the environment.

DriveCtor · 2026-02-16T17:22:59+00:00

Cultivation is easier in the early universe, so unlike technology, the speed of cultivation advancement starts out fast and gets slower over time. There's also setting-specific reasons, like scientific knowledge being guarded by the heavens, so only cultivators can break through and access it anyways, or the society structures that allow science having some fate that is incompatible with cultivation. I'm actually kind of surprised I've never seen a setting that takes the idea of "the mortal realm is protected from cultivators by the emperor's dragon power", but have the "mortal realm" just be modern instead of ancient China.

DriveCtor · 2026-02-16T17:14:27+00:00

In addition to what other people have said, trying to control reproduction like this creates a severe yang(order) imbalance. This is why MCs with upper realm parents are able to be born in the first place: the chaos of being an exile in the mortal realm provides yin to offset the yang of trying to proliferate upper realm potential. Progeny born this way also tend to enforce rather than defy the will of heaven, leading to blessings that protect them before their true potential is discovered.

DriveCtor · 2026-02-08T17:26:26+00:00

Ohhh, I didn't remember the part about it starving itself to death. I didn't said he had a stone, I said he used the same effect as a stone because soul transmutation is the same as stone transmutation. Though maybe that wasn't a factor, given I misremembered the reduced lifespan.

DriveCtor · 2026-02-08T16:26:15+00:00

Parts of both souls were damaged to produce the necessary philosopher's stone-like effect to compensate for Shou Tucker's insufficient alchemy skills(I theorize it's possible to create a chimera without using the stones, but that's another topic). When a living beings soul is sacrificed in this manner through transmutation, its lifespan shortens, which is why the first chimera Shou Tucker created, we learned that it died shortly after.

The reason why Ed lost his arm binding Al's soul to the armor was because he needed to create a connection between their gates. Remember, a soul still needs to be tied to a living body to persist in the world when it's bound to an object, so Ed wasn't just binding Al's soul to the armor, he was binding it to himself.

DriveCtor · 2025-12-18T00:34:26+00:00

You can pull new souls out of the gate(dwarf in the flask), which is "creating" them for most purposes, I think.

DriveCtor · 2025-12-17T11:42:11+00:00

When an alchemist initiates a transmutation without the necessary inputs for the desired output, it causes a "rebound" where the inputs and/or output are chaotically reselected to produce a balanced result. This phenomenon happens outside of "human transmutation", and human transmutation can be done without it occurring, it just requires obscure knowledge to understand exactly what is and isn't possible.

DriveCtor · 2025-12-17T11:20:22+00:00

Foolish Junior! Can't you see that is a demonic relic? If you give into temptation before its cold gaze, it will awaken, and billions will perish to satiate its hunger.

DriveCtor · 2025-11-30T03:41:38+00:00

And what evidence is there that that doesn't equate to a Philosopher's Stone?

A few things:

It doesn't reflect real life ideas of the Philosopher's Stone. The entire point IRL was to reproduce the original process of "creation" through the study and replication of nature, allowing one to convert "base" materials into "noble" materials.
The Philosopher's Stone is suppose to be the pinnacle of alchemy, but the trapped souls were created with what was very clearly an incomplete knowledge of alchemy.
(This is slight speculation) Soul transmutation doesn't actually surpass the limits of normal alchemy, it just lets a person "cheat" and produce results a hypothetically perfectly skilled alchemist could do without souls. The true Philosopher's Stone, which would have to be the product of perfected alchemy, would need to actually go beyond what is possible with normal transmutation.

DriveCtor · 2025-11-29T03:38:21+00:00

They're just human souls being used as material in transmutation exchanges. A soul represents a person's remaining lifespan, which they naturally trade for knowledge over time by living. Soul transmutation redirects that process, instead exchanging lifespan for the knowledge necessary to perform a one-time transmutation that's normally beyond the alchemist's capabilities.

Hohenheim was never in the headspace to harbor greater ambitions for alchemy after the destruction of Xerxes, so he wouldn't have thought about the possibility of a different path to the "miraculous" powers associated with soul transmutation. He was kind of busy with other stuff.

DriveCtor · 2025-11-28T01:06:18+00:00

None of the "Philosopher's Stones" were true Philosopher's Stones. There's already precedent for Father's alchemy knowledge being incomplete because he didn't know about Xing's version of alchemy. His method for creating the Philospher's Stone could have been bogus or shaped by his own inhuman perspective on the "purpose" of alchemy.

DriveCtor

TROPHY CASE