Glossary / Realms
Realms in Chinese: 56 Terms and Their English Renderings
The ladder from mortal to immortal, roughly in the order most novels use, with the exceptions flagged.
56 terms
| Chinese | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 练气 | Qi Refining | The first realm. A mortal learns to pull qi into the body and hold it. Still killable by a plain sword. |
| 筑基 | Foundation Establishment | The body is rebuilt into a proper vessel for qi. The real starting line of cultivation; below it you are a mortal. |
| 结丹 | Core Formation | Loose qi is compressed into a hard core in the dantian. Aging slows the moment this succeeds. |
| 金丹 | Golden Core | The core itself, and the proof that Core Formation worked. Usually the thing everyone is fighting over. |
| 元婴 | Nascent Soul | A second self born out of the core. It can leave the body and survive the body being destroyed. |
| 化神 | Spirit Severing | The soul is tempered until it can touch the world without a body. Very few reach this realm. |
| 炼虚 | Void Refining | The cultivator stops relying on stored qi and starts drawing on the void itself. |
| 合体 | Body Integration | Body and soul fuse into one being. Ordinary wounds stop being a serious threat. |
| 大乘 | Great Ascension | The last realm before the tribulation. Strength enough to shake a whole region. |
| 渡劫 | Tribulation Transcendence | Surviving heaven's judgement. Fail and the soul scatters on the spot, no reincarnation. |
| 飞升 | Ascension | Leaving the mortal world for a higher one. The ending most of these stories are heading toward. |
| 人仙 | Human Immortal | The lowest immortal rank. Long-lived, but still tied to the mortal world. |
| 地仙 | Earth Immortal | An immortal tied to a piece of land: near-unbeatable on it, ordinary away from it. |
| 天仙 | Heaven Immortal | An immortal of the upper realms, able to cross between worlds at will. |
| 真仙 | True Immortal | A high immortal rank in older sects' systems; above Heaven Immortal, below Golden Immortal. |
| 玄仙 | Mystic Immortal | A mid-to-high immortal rank used in the older, more mythic power systems. |
| 金仙 | Golden Immortal | A top-tier immortal. In mythic settings, one step from ruling a heaven. |
| 太乙金仙 | Primordial Immortal | An exalted rank above Golden Immortal, common in mythic and Honghuang-style settings. |
| 大罗金仙 | Great Luo Golden Immortal | The ceiling of the immortal ladder in mythic settings. Free of the cycle of rebirth. |
| 混元大罗金仙 | Primordial Great Luo Golden Immortal | The rank above Great Luo, and the point where the ladder stops describing power and starts describing cosmology. Almost nobody writes a protagonist here; it exists so the antagonists can be beyond the protagonist. |
| 散仙 | Loose Immortal | An immortal with no sect and no realm behind them. Strong, but completely alone. |
| 半步金丹 | Half-Step Core | Not yet Core Formation but close. Enough to bully everyone below it. |
| 初期 | Early Stage | Used after a realm name: early stage of Core Formation. The weakest slice of that realm. |
| 中期 | Middle Stage | The middle slice of a realm. Where most characters spend most of the story. |
| 后期 | Late Stage | The top slice before the peak. Usually enough to be a local threat. |
| 圆满 | Peak Stage | Finished the realm, one push from the next. Often a plateau that traps people for decades. |
| 修为 | Cultivation Base | How much cultivation someone has built up. Spoken of as something you can feel from them. |
| 境界 | Realm | The named level of power someone has reached. Also used loosely for 'level' in general. |
| 突破 | Breakthrough | Moving up a realm or sub-realm. Always painful, usually risky, sometimes fatal. |
| 瓶颈 | Bottleneck | Stuck. No amount of qi fixes it; something else in the character has to change. |
| 层 | Layer | Small steps inside one realm: third layer of Qi Refining. Sounds minor, decides who wins fights. |
| 破境 | Breach a Realm | Crossing into a new realm rather than a new layer inside one. The event that changes your standing overnight. |
| 假丹 | False Core | A core forced into shape without the foundation to hold it. Looks like a breakthrough, breaks like glass. |
| 伪婴 | Pseudo Nascent Soul | An infant soul built from borrowed or stolen resources. Powerful on the surface, unstable in everything that matters. |
| 法相 | Dharma Form | A giant projection of the cultivator, shown at high realms. Once it appears, the fight is settled. |
| 元婴出窍 | Soul Projection | Sending the infant soul out to fight. Enormous reach, and a body left undefended. |
| 化气期 | Qi Transformation Stage | Early, before a core exists. Most novels skip it or fold it into Qi Refining. |
| 先天 | Innate Realm | The stage where the body starts producing its own energy. Nothing dramatic happens except that everything gets easier. |
| 后天 | Acquired Realm | Before the innate threshold. Where the protagonist spends the first fifty chapters. |
| 先天境 | Innate Stage (Jing) | The named level used by systems that label stages one way rather than another. Same thing with more ceremony. |
| 虚丹 | Void Core | A core that has not solidified. Halfway between Qi Refining and Core Formation, and usually omitted. |
| 金丹期 | Golden Core Stage | The stage most novels use as their mid-game benchmark. A character at this level can fly for hours and shrug off a sword. |
| 元婴期 | Nascent Soul Stage | When the soul can leave the body and keep fighting. The classic turning point where a protagonist stops being killable by ordinary means. |
| 出窍 | Soul Departure | The act of leaving the body in the soul form. The soul is weaker than the body, which keeps it from being a free win. |
| 化神期 | Spirit Severing Stage | The soul hardened enough to act without the body for long periods. Extremely few characters in any given novel reach it. |
| 炼虚期 | Void Refining Stage | Drawing power from emptiness instead of the surroundings. The first stage that looks like cheating to other characters. |
| 合体期 | Integration Stage | Body and soul merging into one unit. Damage to either stops being separate. |
| 大乘期 | Great Vehicle Stage | The last human stage before tribulation. Characters here no longer appear in ordinary scenes. |
| 渡劫期 | Tribulation Stage | The waiting room before ascension. Every scene is a countdown. |
| 凡人境 | Mortal Realm | Level zero, named for contrast. Novels that use it are usually about the climb rather than the summit. |
| 锻体期 | Body Tempering Stage | The first stage in body-refining systems. No energy, just damage and repetition. |
| 筑基期 | Foundation Building Stage | The name for the stage after Qi Refining in most systems. The body is rebuilt; the person is not the same afterwards. |
| 结丹期 | Core Formation Stage | The stage of compressing energy into a core. Failure is common and rarely fatal. |
| 筑基失败 | Foundation Failure | The breakthrough attempted and failed. The injuries heal, the regression often does not, and the ceiling it imposes is usually permanent. |
| 天道筑基 | Heavenly Dao Foundation | The current web-novel term for a perfect foundation. A grade rather than a method, and hearing it said about a character re-prices them in every sect in the scene. |
| 碎丹 | Cracked Core | A golden core that has been damaged but not destroyed. Recoverable, usually over a long arc. |
None of these stages are canonical. Two novels can both use Golden Core and mean different things by it. Treat the list as a default, then read the book you are actually translating. The ladder here follows the free cultivation novels indexed 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.金丹, 元婴, 化神, 炼虚 Half a Step to Immortality: When They Broke the BetrothalSeven years in seclusion, a broken engagement, and a tribulation nobody expected.半步金丹, 筑基, 金丹, 渡劫 The Sect Ancestor Leaves Seclusion, Mistaken for a ServantA century behind a closed door, and the sect no longer recognises its own ancestor.筑基, 化神, 修为Source: cultivationnovel.com · Cultivation Glossary