Skill ranks

Looking at the skills once again he slowly started browsing.

Chen clan used to be one of the biggest hybrid sects on the continent. Most big sects only focused on a single main element since it needed less resources and the same element cultivators could help and improve eachother.

But this Chen clan easily had tens if not hundreds of thousands of skills, good thing cultivators had higher mental capacity so filtering this amount of information was not that hard, it only took Fang Qiu a couple hours to memorise the short introduction about most of the skills.

After all, only idiots only checked out their own elements, the more you know about your enemies the better!

The first thing he did before memorising all the skills a couple hours before was looking at the short introduction on the different ranks of skills within the jade slips

Skills were divided into ranks and those ranks were then again divided into beginner, intermediate, advanced and peak depending on the mastery of the skill

Yellow rank skills needed liquid qi, and awakened elemental comprehension which meant one needed foundation realm cultivation. The more liquid qi one had the more times a single skill could be used before a cultivator's qi reserves ran empty.

Of course, some skills needed more qi and could only be cast by higher tier foundation realm cultivators but those were usually trump cards only used in emergencies since after using them once or twice a cultivator would be unable to fight back after having depleted their qi.

After yellow rank skills came mortal rank skills for core formation realm cultivators which also needed an elemental seed at the very least. The reason the elemental seed is important has to do with skills containing profound information and execution of the element.

If one had only just reached elemental seed realm they would probably be stuck at beginner mastery of the mortal skill. If they almost had elemental tree comprehension of the skill's path then they should be able to reach mastery with enough time.

Yellow, mortal, earth, sky, heaven!

Fang Qiu was mainly looking at the earth and sky rank skills since he could make use of them as a point of reference to see the future fighting style of each path.

Skills didn't start out at heaven rank, they had to start from the beginning so even a heaven rank skill would start from a yellow rank skill and build up towards the heaven rank version.

The example given in the jade slip explaining the different ranks was for an earth element gravity path skill called [Up is Down].

The first level was called [up] and was a yellow rank skill. It allowed the cultivator to remove the effect of gravity on one's own body in order to become a lot lighter and faster or even levitate if wanted.

The second level is called [down], a mortal rank skill capable of increasing gravity by up to a hundred times in the area it is cast if cultivated to the peak.

This one skill alone could render one's opponents immobile and if caught off guard could even kill a cultivator outright due to the sheer force and pressure.

The third level is called [sudden down], an earth rank skill capable of discriminating between enemies and friendly cultivators making it possible to impose 100x gravity onto a single person instead of a general area they could just escape from.

The fourth level [up is down] is the sky realm version allowing the cultivator using the skill to change gravity at will which is one of the most dreadful skills to go up against.

Especially since most earth element cultivators are close combat fighters and extremely hard to kill.

The jade slip also mentioned the skill possibly having a heaven realm version but the Chen clan only owned the sky rank version.

The heaven realm version could, according to rumours change gravity at will within an entire domain! Heaven realm skills could only be used by false immortal realm cultivators who possessed an elemental domain of the skill's path!

Of course this skill was described here not only for explaining purposes but also for tempting cultivators to join the Chen clan since this [up is down] skill could only be practiced by Chen clan cultivators. It was not for sale to outsiders.

Only the lower ranked versions were for sale but if someone eventually wanted to reach he next level they would have to join the Chen clan or find a new skill to practice from scratch.

Fang Qiu found about a dozen gravity path skills, only one being sky realm. Which was the aforementioned [up is down].

The gravity path was more suited for crowd control purposes. If an earth element cultivator wanted to focus on defence they would usually pick the mud, sand, rock, gold or other similar material related paths usually in order to create armors, shields or walls. All of these paths: rock, mud, sand, gold were also rare elements so some rare element cultivators had only one of these paths to follow.

This also meant there were three thousand paths below the heavens, according to the legends the Paragon eventually cultivated every element and every path to the peak! Meaning he cultivated three thousand paths and created three thousand elemental seeds which he cultivated to the peak of their respective elements.

Most earth element cultivators picked a defensive path in order to be very hard to kill and then picked a weapon to master for their offensive powers. Most skills could also be used for different purposes and defensive skills could even turn offensive if used well.

For instance the [earthen wall] skill was mostly used for defence to block ranged attacks by pulling a slab of ground upwards, but what if a cultivator were to cast two earthen walls and push them towards eachother in order to make a cultivator pancake?

Or just straight up cast an [earthen wall] between someone's legs, they wouldn't get up for a while.

Of course, only shameless people would come up with this type of method. But this goes to show that even a defensive skill could be used for dozens of offensive purposes.

Cultivators only using skills for their intended basic purposes would never stop being average.

Many cultivators even created their own skills, but this was generally done by cultivators that were older who took many years to improve a small tier.

Younger people generally focused on cultivating and comprehension since creating skills took years of their time, and the skill would turn obsolete when they reached the next realm.

Fang Qiu intended to find some suitable skills and maybe slightly modify them to better fit his style eventually, but he didn't plan on creating his own skills for the moment even though cultivation went instantly for him.

Elemental comprehension still took ages and he didn't want to lose years on a single skill when he might reach the next realm and have to create a new one at any moment.

Modifying was not insanely difficult and most cultivators slightly modified their skills to better suit their style, so Fang Qiu would be able to do the same in the future

Finally after a while of looking at the list of different skill paths for every element:

Space element skills...

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As a future archer Fang Qiu had several paths to pick from.

The space warp path mainly made use of warping space in order to fight. The most famous example of warping space was the skill [teleportation] which increased in distance and amount of people or objects that could be teleported the higher in rank the skill went, but the basic principle remained the same.

Then there was the void path which mainly focused on shattering space instead of warping it. The most famous examples of this are storage rings and the secret realms and inheritances situated in separate spaces.

these were usually result of shattering the space connecting the main world with these small separate spaces.

Of course to access them one couldn't just shatter space anywhere since the amount of space that connected both places was usually very small.

For an archer an example skill allows them to make their arrows disappear and reappear in a different place and even flying in a different direction, thus making them very unpredictable.

The main difference between the space warp path and the void path is the space warp path usually focuses on the mobility of the cultivator and the void path focuses more on the mobility of the shot projectile or skill.

Most space element cultivators both close aswell as long range preferred the space warp path since it had many skills suitable for surviving and being harder to kill, whilst the void path usually focused purely on offensive power and attacks being very difficult to avoid or block.

Of course space element had many other paths but for ranged space element cultivators these two were the best ones.

Before Fang Qiu decided on a path he first looked at the light element paths aswell.

These were generally support related but they could influence his decision on which space path to choose since both elements could interact to a certain degree.

[light orb], [decoy], [healing glow], [blinding light], [cure wound], [antidote], [holy shield], [light wings]...

Fang Qiu looked at hundreds of light element skills but only a very scant few were offensive skills, mainly being trump cards for light users in order to survive during battles.

Of course, every light* element user could innately heal others but using healing skills would amplify the healing effect by many times or even allow a single cultivator to heal an entire group at once.

The healing path was definitely the most useful light element path in Fang Qiu's opinion. But to Fang Qiu himself the healing path wasn't all that tempting.

He had his innate healing ability like every light element user which should be enough in most cases.

And if he were to be heavily injured he could always use some of the pills he bought for emergencies combined with his healing to pull through.

Lastly there was also [dig in] for emergencies which could not only restore his qi and increase cultivation, but could also heal him instantly.

Ever since living in the forest Fang Qiu realised he could not only cultivate by eating meat but also heal from it which had to be due to his second element being light element.

Fang Qiu guessed it was done by stealing the vitality from the meat and making it his own whilst converting the foreign qi into his own increased his cultivation and refilled his qi reserves.

Ever since that day on the eagle Fang Qiu also managed to guess that his ability being number one on the calamity list was due to both dig in and stealing vitality from meat and flesh combined. So he definitely didn't lack any healing in the short run and should perhaps try focus more on offense.

So maybe he should go for the illusion path which was one of the more offensive of the various light paths. This path could create mirages and decoys by bending the light around him and many other similar things.

of course they had no substance so any attack would easily reveal whether they were real or fake, but as an archer it could increase his survivability by a lot!

Whilst considering his options Fang Qiu decided to look at some more skills and paths.

This made Fang Qiu realise something odd, there were no metal element skills or paths to be found!

"Isn't metal element one of the main elements? Old man! Why is there no metal element skills in my jade slip, is it broken?

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1. Light and life element is one and the same thing for people who see the light element as literally white light that's not exactly it.