According to the information he was given, all five of them are in increasing order of difficulty. That means acquiring level 12 energy density is the easiest while creating an energy nexus in his head.
He can understand why this is the case. After all, he has already met the requirement of level 12 energy density even without trying.
As he thought of this, he curled his lips and said, "As easy as they said it is, more than 90% of rank 3 cultivators won’t be able to achieve it, though."
From what he knows, more than 90% of the 10,000 rank 3 cultivators in the city won’t reach the peak of rank 3 before they die, and about 50% of the 10,000 rank 3 cultivators will never advance beyond the early stage of rank 3.
This means that only 1,000 of all the rank 3 in the city will have any chance of advancing to rank 4. But when he considered that there were fewer than 100 rank 4 cultivators in the city, he got a fuller understanding of how difficult it is to advance to rank 4.
He shook his head and said, "So only 10% of that 1,000 get to advance to rank 4. I bet that energy nexus requirement is the main reason so many people fail."
After the requirement to have level 12 energy density, the second most difficult requirement to meet is rank 4 Dao Heart. Since anyone can get rank 4 Dao Heart if they live long enough,
As for why rank 3 cultivators find it more difficult to acquire rank 4 Dao Heart than to acquire peak rank 3 cultivation, the guess that came to his mind was that they find it very difficult to live long enough.
This made him curse and say, "What a dog-eat-dog world."
He cursed the world for being too dangerous to live in, but if he had to buy rank 3 Cloudy Date Metacs, which require the energy wells of rank 3 cultivators to refine, he would still buy them.
So he is one of the reasons why rank 3 cultivators don’t get to live long enough to acquire rank 4 Dao Heart. As for feeling shame for his hypocrisy, that possibility didn’t even cross his mind.
What crossed his mind was how 300% skill level is difficult because it requires a minimum talent of 50 units and even a powerful Dao Heart to achieve.
Then he thought of how difficult it would be to get the secret recipe to advance their Core Metac from rank 3 to rank 4. This isn’t something that talent or hard work can overcome. If they don’t get the secret recipe, they will never be able to advance.
Fortunately, there are ways to get the recipe. Rank 3 cultivators can receive the secret recipe from people such as family members, friends, societies, or buy it from information brokers, or buy the secret recipe from the sect with merit points.
As he thought of this, he whistled and said, "I’m sure the secret recipe will be expensive on its own. Then they will need to buy the materials they need to upgrade, and then they will still need to forge an energy nexus. No wonder rank 4 cultivators are valued at least 1 million energy stones."
Every requirement is troublesome, expensive, and or requires talent. But the energy nexus requirement is still the most difficult and troublesome one among the five. This is because it requires both talent, a lot of hard work, and a lot of money. So it is both troublesome, expensive, and requires talent.
In order to create an energy nexus, a rank 3 cultivator has to fuse the energy threads from the energy well into a single spot in the brain.
When he advanced to rank 3, all of his energy threads had already entered his brain, and two of them had even fused with his brain stem. But this is just the start. He will need to fuse at least 50 energy threads together before the energy nexus can be created.
Of course, the more energy threads are fused, the better the potential and power of the Mind Palace will be. So someone with 430 energy threads like him will gain more benefits when the Mind Palace is formed.
From the information he bought, he learned that the size of the Mind Palace would also affect the potential for advancing to rank 5. He was already hell-bent on increasing his talent despite it being so high, but this has given him another reason to do it.
But even the most talentless person will still need 50 energy threads to advance to rank 4, so talentless people can forget about advancing to rank 4.
What’s more, rank 3 cultivators will have to increase the power of their minds to rank 3 before the energy nexus can transform into the Mind Palace.
The money they will need to spend to achieve this, and the money they will need to spend to raise their talents, make this requirement expensive, while the time and energy it will take to create the energy nexus make the requirement troublesome.
After thinking of this, he said to himself with mixed feelings, "My situation is neither good nor bad."
Then he smiled and said, "But the main problem is caused by me, so that’s good. A good problem is a good problem anytime."
His situation is quite special because he doesn’t need to meet some requirements, some requirements are easy for him to meet, and some requirements are very difficult for him to meet.
The easy requirements, which are level 12 energy density, rank 4 Dao Heart, and 300% energy manipulation skill, are very easy for him to meet. He has even met two of them and is on his way to meet the third one.
As for the requirement of advancing his Core Metac from rank 3 to rank 4, he doesn’t need the secret recipe to refine the rank 4 Core Metac. All he needs is a rank 4 cultivator willing to lend him their Core Metac.