Glossary / Foundation and Depth
Foundation and Depth in Chinese: 47 Terms and Their English Renderings
How solid a cultivator actually is, as opposed to what stage they claim.
47 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 斩三尸 | Severing the Three Corpses | Cutting away the three attachments that bind a cultivator: to desire, to the body, to the world. |
| 根基 | Foundation Depth | How much has been packed into each stage, not how many stages you have reached. Never appears on any sect record, and decides every real fight. Distinct from, which is the base itself. |
| 根基不稳 | Unstable Foundation | Fast advancement that left gaps underneath. The standard diagnosis for a genius who loses to someone half his speed. |
| 底蕴 | Accumulated Depth | Everything a sect or a person has stored up over centuries: techniques, pills, hidden elders, old debts. What actually decides a war, not the current headcount. |
| 浑厚 | Deep and Dense | Description of qi that is thick rather than bright. Reads as slow on the surface, turns out to be immovable. |
| 凝实 | Compressed Solid | Qi packed so tightly it behaves like matter. The opposite of a large, loose, impressive-looking aura. |
| 稳扎稳打 | Steady and Sure | Advancing one verified step at a time and refusing shortcuts. Praised by the narrator, mocked by everyone standing around the character. |
| 循序渐进 | Advance in Order | The orthodox method: no stage skipped, no stage rushed. Boring, and the reason orthodox cultivators rarely lose their minds. |
| 水到渠成 | Comes When It Comes | The result arriving by itself once the groundwork is finished. Used to explain a breakthrough that looked effortless from outside. |
| 修炼速度 | Cultivation Speed | The only number the outside world cares about: years per stage. The entire social hierarchy of a sect is built on it. |
| 修炼资源 | Cultivation Resources | Pills, spirit stones, spirit veins, techniques. Talent plateaus without them, and most plots start with somebody taking them away. |
| 名额 | Allotted Slot | A fixed number of places in the inner sect, in a tournament, or under a master. Most sect politics is a fight over who occupies one. |
| 闭关 | Closed-Door Cultivation | Sealing yourself away for months or decades. The world is expected to continue without you, and generally does something regrettable. |
| 破关 | Break Seclusion | Coming out of closed cultivation, either because the stage is done or because a wall has been hit. The chapter where everything outside has changed. |
| 死关 | Death Seclusion | Seclusion with no exit until breakthrough or death. A vow, and a gamble the character is not expected to survive. |
| 以命燃灵 | Burn Life for Power | Burning years of lifespan to force a temporary surge in strength. A demonic shortcut: real power now, real decay afterwards. |
| 燃寿 | Burn Lifespan | The short form of the same act. Every use shortens the clock visibly, and everyone present can tell what was just done. |
| 寿元 | Lifespan | The years a cultivator has left, spent like currency. Every realm adds more; every forbidden art takes some back. |
| 反噬 | Backlash | The price arriving after the borrowed power: ruptured meridians, dropped realm, ruined foundation. Always delayed just long enough to feel safe. |
| 修为跌落 | Cultivation Regression | Losing stages, not merely strength. The cruelest punishment in the genre, because no pill can buy it back. |
| 禁术 | Forbidden Art | A technique banned for what it costs, not for what it does. Always effective, always paid for, and always used by someone who thinks they can afford it. |
| 根基之重要 | Why Foundations Matter | The stated reason weak characters lose late. Repeated in every sect lecture. |
| 扎实 | Solid | Describes a firm foundation. The highest praise an elder gives. |
| 虚浮 | Hollow | The opposite. Fast progress with nothing underneath, and a guaranteed reversal. |
| 底蕴深厚 | Deep Resources | More than the level suggests. Used for old sects and old characters. |
| 积累 | Accumulation | Slow progress. The genre's virtue, and the reason training arcs exist. |
| 急功近利 | Rushing for Results | The temptation. Always punished within ten chapters. |
| 揠苗助长 | Pulling Up Seedlings | Forcing growth. The classical idiom for the same error. |
| 根基受损 | Foundation Damaged | The injury that ends a career. Recovery takes an arc, if at all. |
| 重修 | Start Again | Rebuilding from a damaged base. Slower the second time and better. |
| 根基重塑 | Rebuild the Foundation | The full project. Requires a rare pill and a long absence from the plot. |
| 天赋异禀 | Exceptional Talent | The description applied to anyone who outpaces expectations. |
| 后发先至 | Start Late, Arrive First | The logical outcome of the above. Quoted at the moment of victory. |
| 厚土之力 | Strength of Thick Earth | The earth-attribute version of a deep foundation. Slow, immovable, and hard to kill. |
| 打磨 | Polish | Repeated practice. The unglamorous work that the prose usually skips. |
| 冲不破 | Cannot Break Through | The state of being stuck. Used to attach a character to a new plot. |
| 顺其自然 | Let It Come Naturally | The advice given to someone stuck. Occasionally works. |
| 水道渠成 | The Channel Fills | The idiom for a natural completion. Deployed right before it happens. |
| 一步登天 | One Step to Heaven | The shortcut. Always available and always with a hidden price. |
| 修为基础 | Foundation Level | The actual level of practice, as distinct from reputation. |
| 战力 | Combat Power | The practical measure. Usually given as a number in litRPG-adjacent works. |
| 越级 | Cross Levels | Fighting above your stage. Requires a reason that the text supplies in the same paragraph. |
| 状态 | Condition | Whether the body is at full strength. The variable that explains every upset. |
| 巅峰状态 | Peak Condition | Full strength, fully rested. Rare, and always announced. |
| 伤未痊愈 | Wounds Not Healed | The handicap that makes a fight fair. |
| 油尽灯枯 | The Lamp Is Dry | Exhausted at the last moment. The line used before a final stand. |
| 强弩之末 | The End of a Crossbow's Flight | Something powerful that has spent itself. Used to explain why the charge failed. |
This vocabulary exists to let a weaker character win without contradicting the power scale. Terms follow the free cultivation novels at cultivationnovel.com.
Where these words turn up
Stories on this site that use them the way the notes describe.
A Century in Seclusion, the Last Cultivator AliveA hundred years of practice end with everyone else gone.闭关, 寿元 Three Centuries of Cultivation, Yet the Sect Thought I Had PerishedThree hundred years of practice, and the sect filed the protagonist under dead.闭关, 寿元 The Sect Ancestor Leaves Seclusion, Mistaken for a ServantA century behind a closed door, and the sect no longer recognises its own ancestor.闭关Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary