v0.7.4 — Nothing Is Given

Reaching a realm used to hand you every art that realm allowed. That is over. Every technique must now be come by — found in a manual, comprehended in meditation, opened by a breakthrough, or taught by your sect. Six new arts arrive with it: three gathered arts that are not loosed the instant you call them but built up, and three fist arts that refuse to be thrown with a weapon in hand. Fighting bare-handed now trains a ladder of its own. And Spirit Sense finally answers the question it was always asked: not “is this ground rich” but “can I break through here”.

Every art must be come by

• Meeting an art's realm, Dao and bloodline now makes you able to hold it — not entitled to it. Coming by it is a separate event, and there are four ways. See Unlocking an art.
• Manuals. There is now one manual per art — twenty-eight of them — plus a Tattered Manual that names no art and teaches one at random from those you have already grown into. Manuals are the only route you can go looking for, trade, or take off a body, and they glow the color of the realm they belong to. See Manuals.
• Enlightenment (顿悟). Sit long enough on good ground and understanding sometimes simply arrives. Every second of meditation that actually draws Qi rolls for it, and richer veins comprehend faster — so nobody is ever hard-stuck behind loot that has not dropped.
• Breakthrough. Crossing into a new realm opens one art you had grown into but never met, so a new tier never arrives empty.
• Sect inscription works as it always did — borrowed, not learned, and gone the moment the sect loses the hall.
• A second copy of a manual you can already read is still studied into that art's mastery, exactly as before.
• /cultivation technique now shows what you hold, what is within reach and what is still beyond you — and the keybind menu only offers arts you actually know, so no key is ever bound to something that cannot fire.

The gathered arts — hold it, and it grows

• Three new arts are not loosed the moment you call them. Use one and you begin gathering Qi; use it again to loose it. The longer you hold, the more it carries — up to a ceiling past which it fires on its own rather than making you watch a full bar.
• Piercing Sun Qi Beam. Everything you have gathered condensed into a single lance along your line of sight. It pierces — it does not stop at the first thing it meets, only at the world itself.
• Myriad Swords Return. A storm of sword qi over the ground around you, every blade falling and cutting on its own and landing on the terrain rather than hanging in a flat disc. Five blades at a tap; twenty at a full gathering.
• Starfall Strike. Alone among them, it lands somewhere other than where you stand — on whatever you are looking at, up to thirty-eight blocks off.
• A gathering drains Qi every second and scatters if you move off your mark, so what these really cost is standing still in a fight. Run your Qi dry and the art looses at whatever it had reached rather than being lost.
• A charge meter on the HUD tracks it, and the gathering visibly tightens and rises in pitch as it deepens.

Fist arts — a third ladder, climbed with empty hands

• Fighting bare-handed now trains something. Every blow you land with a free hand banks fist-art experience, and your bare hands hit harder for it — up to +220% at the top of the ladder, plus more for every realm you have broken into.
• XP is measured by the damage that actually got through. Hitting something armored teaches less than hitting something soft, and a punch a shield ate whole teaches nothing.
• The bonus applies to your fists and to the fist arts, and never to a weapon. It also never leaks onto your other techniques — a Sword Qi Slash thrown with empty hands is still a Sword Qi Slash.
• Crashing Mountain Fist is one committed straight punch: the shortest reach and by far the hardest single blow. Hundred Rending Fists is a flurry where every strike lands on everything caught in the arc. Heaven-Shaking Fist is the summit — a gathered art thrown from a planted stance and loosed as a shockwave.
• All three scale on the fist ladder as well as your realm, so the levels you spent punching things are what make them worth throwing.

Spirit Sense — “can I break through here?”

• Fullness alone could never answer that. A breakthrough wants 750 Qi and a common vein's entire capacity is 500, so “Overflowing” on ordinary ground was a full vein that still refused the ritual — and a player could search forever while being told, truthfully, that the land was rich.
• It now reads your pending rank-up and gives a verdict: ready, wait for it to refill, or this ground will never do. Color-coded on the HUD and on the panel, with a bright jade wash on every square of the map that would carry your ritual right now.
• The sense opens in two stages — Qualitative at Body Refinement Peak tells you how the ground feels, Precise at Foundation Establishment Peak gives you the numbers. See Spirit Sense.
• It also reaches further from the start. The old formula gave the unlocking realm a radius of zero — your own chunk and nothing else — which could not answer “where should I go”, the entire point of having it.

Fixes and tuning

• Body tempering could be farmed on a brazier. Standing in a fire ticked constant chip damage that a tempered body shrugged off and a meat skewer out-healed, so the ladder climbed for free. Damage nothing is holding — a burning block, drowning, a fall — now has to be worth 8% of your maximum health and can only count every 5 seconds. Combat is untouched: a swing or a projectile has an attacker behind it and never reaches those rules. See Body Tempering.
• Add-ons can now publish which Cultivation versions they work with, so a pairing that turns out to be broken can be corrected after both have shipped instead of needing a new jar. It fails open in every direction — an offline server is never told its mods disagree. See Compatibility.
• The Info page now lists Cultivation: Sacred Bodies alongside the rest of the family. See Sacred Bodies.
• New for add-on authors: one registration can now change what a cultivator is — re-pricing Qi, damage, Dao progress, charge time, rituals and the aura at once — and contribute its own rows to the Overview. Sacred Bodies is built entirely on it. See Registries.

What this means for an existing save

• Your realm, Qi, Dao, sect, abode, beasts and treasures are untouched. Your arts are not — every cultivator begins this release knowing none of them.
• This is deliberate, and it is quick to undo: a breakthrough hands one back, meditation on good ground hands more back over time, and manuals drop from tribulation strikes, demonic cultivators and slain cultivators as they always have.
• Server owners who want the old behavior can set Requires-Unlock to false on any rule in Arts/TechniqueConfig.json — per art, or on all of them. See Arts config.
• Admins get /cultivation admin granttechnique <art> (or all) and revoketechnique, both usable on another player.