Nascent Soul元婴
yuányīng
A miniature soul-body formed from a dissolved golden core; cultivators at this stage can survive bodily death and project their spirit.
Yuanying, literally "origin infant", is usually rendered nascent soul in English. The classical image is exactly what the characters say: a tiny second self, seated in the dantian, matured from the energy of a shattered golden core. At this realm a cultivator stops being merely strong and starts being hard to kill; if the body is destroyed, the nascent soul can flee and seek a new one, which powers countless revenge plots and possession arcs.
The stage name is one of the most stable landmarks across otherwise incompatible power systems, and donghua adaptations like A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality treat the Core Formation to Nascent Soul climb as the spine of decades of story.