From this alone, one could glimpse how difficult Foundation Establishment was.
For this very reason, every major sect and cultivation Lineage regarded spiritual root aptitude as the foremost criterion for selecting disciples.
Disciples with high-grade spiritual roots only needed to cultivate diligently, step by step, until they reached peak Qi Refining. With the aid of a Foundation Establishment Pill, they would then have an excellent chance of achieving Foundation Establishment in one attempt.
Even without medicinal assistance, relying solely on their own spiritual roots to push through the [Mana Gate] gave them somewhat better prospects than disciples with low-grade spiritual roots who had taken a Foundation Establishment Pill.
With only a single Foundation Establishment Pill, however, disciples with middle-grade spiritual roots had merely a twenty to thirty percent chance of achieving Foundation Establishment.
Those with low-grade or miscellaneous-grade spiritual roots hardly bore mentioning.
Heaven and earth spiritual roots fell outside this discussion. These favored children of heaven only needed to reach peak Qi Refining; their spiritual roots would operate spontaneously, easily breaking through the [Three Foundation Establishment Gates]. Achieving Foundation Establishment was as natural as drinking water.
Of course, aside from Foundation Establishment Pills, other medicinal pills, wondrous cultivation arts, and mystic arts that aided Foundation Establishment also circulated in the world.
Unfortunately, such things were either elusive, offering only the faintest hope of finding them, or involved unpredictable backlash during cultivation. They were not to be dabbled in lightly.
The cultivation world currently recognized Foundation Establishment Pills, or the more effective high-grade Foundation Establishment Pills, as the safest and gentlest means of achieving Foundation Establishment.
The Blood Cliff Scripture and Boundless Blood Sea Body that Chu Feikong cultivated represented another sinister, uncanny path, one that could produce a body of "Blood Demon Foundation Establishment."
But this method required the