Isn't this just cheating?

By midday Alex was standing in the mission hall, he hadn't been around most of the sect during his stay. He had gone to the scripture pavilion once for his spells, and to the outside field to breakthrough to qi absorbing and bone refining. But other then that he had stayed on the mountain.

Walking up to the mission bord there were several pieces of jade, each one with a small introduction under them.

[Hunt spirit beast's in the west forest.

Outer deciple grade.]

[Assist junior alchemists.

Outer deciple grade.]

[Tutor outer deciples.

Inner deciple grade.]

[Investigate destroyed plain and forest in the north.

Inner deciple to elder grade.]

For each mission the details would be stored in the jade. A deciple or elder would grab a piece of jade and then go to the front desk to apply. Looking around he found a good mission for him.

[Collect fire seed from Central continent.

Core deciple to elder grade.]

Grabbing the jade he placed it to his head and was given the details. A flying ship would be provided to send the deciple or elder to the central continent along with the other mission takers heading to the central continent. Once there the mission taker would be tasked with finding a verdant flame fire seed and collecting it. Once back at the sect they would hand it to the mission hall staff and be rewarded with 250 contribution points or 2 alchemy techniques of their choosing below sky 1 grade.

Going to the front desk he handed the deciple at the deck the jade while pulling out his core deciple token which he got from the sect leader when he first joined. Seeing the token the deciple working at the desk was suprised but maintained a professional attitude, applying Alex as the applicant of the mission before handing him a token. This token would act as his verification for the mission untill he retuned. So if someome else tried to steal the mission rewards by completing it in his stead, they would know.

As he turned around to leave another deciple bumped into him. As alex was about to say sorry the desiple he bumped into spoke up. "You better hand that token to me, I reserved that mission earlier."

Looking at the deciple he was a large man with two hammers straped to his back, he was radiating the aura of a mid stage marrow refining body cultivator amd had a inner deciple token tied to his hip. Looking up at the man Alex said "sorry, but you were to late. I just applied. Maybe be faster next time?"

As he went to walk away the man yelled "how dare you disrespect an inner deciple like that! You will pay!" As he threw a punch at Alex, he didn't even respond just letting the fist hit him in the stomach. The inner deciple assumed it was due to shock or not being able to react, and when their fist landed and a crunch sounded out. He assumed he had Alex broken alexs bones, that was untill he felt his hand a moment later.

Screaming as he looked down, the inner deciple saw that all of their fingers had been broken, while Alex haden't even moved an inch. Looking up he saw both Alex and nuwa looking directly at him disapprovingly. The other deciples inside the mission hall saw the inner decipel break out into a cold sweat for seemingly no reason, not knowing that both Alex and nuwa were applying their pressure to him.

With Alex as someone at both 43% bone refining and beyond the peak of qi cultivation, and nuwa as a beast at body forging stage 6 and a flood dragon, along with the fact both of them had several traits, statuses, or other abilities that increased their 'life level', compared to the the early marrow refining inner deciple. Their combined pressure felt like the monkey kings mountain was pressed against his back with a bed of swords under him.

As alex and nuwa walked away the man collapsed onto the ground, gasping for air as he coulden't even breath under the pressure from before and was near passing out even though he had only held his breath for less then a minute.

'Why do so many people seem to lack common sence? He wasen't even the right rank to take the mission. Was he just trying to start a fight to look tough? Idiot.'

Meanwhile one of the bystanders said "Wait, wasen't that the guy that broke the heaven connecting stone a few months ago? The guy who the sect leader took as a deciple?" Another bystander spoke up "I think it was. Apparently he alwase has a red snake next to him." A third responded "Yea, it was. I was part of the latest batch of deciples and saw him then, I don't rember the snake having horns though."

...

Meanwhile alex was headed to the ship bay to see when the next ship to the central continent would depart. One of the deciples told him the next ship would be leaving at mid day in three days. Returning to his room Alex contemplated his next goal. He planned to reach 10,000x qi purity before advancing to foundation building, which would take another two months at his current pace. Bone forging and soul cultivation he just had to wait for. And he needed contribution points to collect any alchemy recipes. For the first time in a while he didn't have anything to do, at least for the next three days.

"Might as well get to practising those spells." Raising his hand alex focused on the pathways for calamity lightning. Each spell would guide qi through the body in a certain pattern in order to trigger various phenomena in the world around the user. Think of it like programing. For [man], [earth] and [sky] level spells it was simply the complexity, power and efficiency of the 'program'. Once a spell reached the very peak of sky rank and throughout heaven rank they would begin to touch on 'rules'.

Rules where the natural powers that flowed through the world. Take for example a sword technique based off a flowing river. At the [man rank] the technique would be 'mortal' having very little if any qi involved in its process. Just a more complex fighting style. At earth rank it would begin to integrate qi pathways, adding more 'flow' to the technique, maybe allowing it to mimic the flow of a river. At sky rank that 'flow' would become a core part of the technique, eventually alowign it to reach the peak a technique with only spell pathways could reach.

At the very peak of sky rank the technique would contain a tiny, minute piece of a 'flowing river', each movement and strike seeming like a river was behind them empowering the user. These were rules. The power of the world around the user. Through heven rank the 'rules' would become a deeper and deeper part of the technique, each move having more of 'the rule of a flowing river'. Untill the peak of heven rank at which the 'rule' would evolve.

The technique would no longer strive to copy and embody the power of a flowing river, but would harness the 'concept' of 'flowing water'. This 'concept' would replace the 'rule' and bring more the just power. Each strike was a river, each slash a torrent of water, each thrust a drop of water carving throug rocks, each block a raging wave stoping whatever came. At this point spell pathways were obsolete as the technique itself evoked power. There was no need to harness the power of the surounding world when the technique itself was that power. The Peak of heaven grade touched on 'domains', which were far beyond alexs current reach.

The only reason he was able to use [heaven] rank cultivation techniques was beceause they were artificialy rased to that level. To make them real heaven rank cultivation techniques he would need to have a incredibly deep understanding of the needed 'rules' for each cultivation technique.

The problem with the spells [calamity lightning control] and [calamity water contro]l was the fact that they where at the peak of heaven grade. The second highest grade spell he had was earth three, not even close to rules, let alone touching on a domain. Alex curent experiance with spells was like a car mechanic with 10 years of experience. For spells of man grade it was like asking that mechanics how a toy car worked. For a earth grade technique it would be like showing that same mechanic a basic car engine and asking them how it worked. For sky grade it was like asking them how to build a car from start to finish. All of these thing thr mechanic should be able to do with relative ease. But heaven grade was a level of it's own.

With alexs current level of mastery, asking him to master a heaven grade spell was like asking that mechanic how a rocket ship worked in depth, and then asking them to build one from scratch. It was just above their understanding. So Alex just had to start from the very bottom, and work on what he could understand. That being how the spell pathways worked and then building up from there.

And yes, the spells had pathways despite being [heaven] rank. Most did as training wheels for the user to understand the skill, he was just staring from much further behind then normal. Only once he reached greater mastery of the spell would he lose the need for them as by then he would be able to use the spells 'concepts'.

They also had spell pathways becuase they had evolved from the lower rank spells [lightning control] and [water control], and as such retained fragments of them.