Skill paths

"You little...if you want to become a pancake on the wall just say the word!"

______

The clerk was handling a different customer whilst the entire exchange took place since choosing a treasure isn't done instantly in most cases.

"Master, which type of space element bow should I choose? I don't know what my skills will be yet so it's hard to decide now. Should we come back after I chose my skills and just buy nature stones now?"

"Your weapon isn't too important right now since you will have to buy a new one when reaching revolving core realm, your goal now is to master skills and increase your comprehension to elemental seed realm.

Once you reach core formation you will probably not need to switch weapons anytime soon so picking a very suitable weapon at that time is more important.

I would pick a basic space element bow without any special effects so you can practice your skills without becoming reliant on the bow's effects."

______

A couple minutes later Fang Qiu and the old man walked out of the treasure tower.

"My void storage now has a brand new bow and nine peak rank eight nature stones of both the space and light element following the old man's advice."

These nature stones should be enough to get ninety percent comprehension for an elemental seed of both the space and light element. Peak rank eight nature stones meant these were the cores of peak foundation realm beasts or cultivators. It's hard to estimate how much elemental comprehension a cultivator or beast core has so cultivation is generally used as an estimate.

Peak foundation cultivators are assumed to have higher elemental comprehension than lower ranks. On average one peak foundation realm core should get you ten percent of the comprehension for an elemental seed.

The reason he bought nine of each and not ten is because the last bit of comprehension has to be gained through insight or enlightenment and cannot be gained through most elemental treasures. Only the very rare and unique treasures can help someone reach that level, hence why some people got stuck in later cultivation realms.

The majority of the cultivators only cultivate a single elemental seed but some cultivators decide to cultivate multiple from the start. Of course, it would make you stronger but it required more resources and required you to divide your time and attention.

Most people who cultivated multiple seeds were dual element cultivators like Fang Qiu since they usually focused on both elements or they could be older cultivators that hit a bottleneck on their current elemental seed and who create a second one in order to have new opportunities for breakthrough.

Most disciples of sects only gain fifty percent or less comprehension through nature stones or other elemental treasures, the rest having to come from insight or enlightenment since they were broke and had to risk their lives on missions for more. Hence why being a genius was important to sects since resources were very limited and geniuses needed less resources than regular disciples since they gained a lot of comprehension naturally due to insight or enlightenment.

Most lone cultivators and mercenaries never even got the chance to use nature stones since they needed the money more than that little bit of comprehension, so Fang Qiu could be considered to have won big with his bet against his master.

As long as he won the bet by getting a one hundred win streak in the battle arena he wouldn't even have to repay the old man!

In the end Fang Qiu parted with another two spirit stones before arriving in front of the martial skill pagoda owned by the Chen clan. The martial skill pagoda had a completely different atmosphere compared to the other buildings Fang Qiu had just been in.

The others had cultivators all over the place with their core spirits by their side looking at the different items for sale.

The martial skill pagoda on the other hand didn't have a person in sight at the entrance.

Fang Qiu expected endless rows of books with hundreds of people browsing for skills they needed, but the sight that greeted him instead was a huge luxurious room full of floating light balls.

The roof even had a huge painting of a powerful cultivator fighting a dragon, yet instead of paint the art piece was made up of coloured light and it was flowing as if the image was alive.

There were no bookshelves to be seen, only numerous luxurious tables and comfortable looking sofa's that had plenty of people sending their senses inside jade slips.

Yet the room could not be called overcrowded in the slightest and there were even servants serving the guests that were seated inside.

Fang Qiu could even sense some fearsome auras in the room probably belonging to high rank cultivators who didn't bother hiding their cultivation in the slightest, unlike the old man who appeared like a regular old man on the surface.

Next to the entrance there was just a single desk with a middle aged man seated behind it.

The middle aged man was also staring back at Fang Qiu, or rather, Fang Qiu felt the gaze was aimed at his master besides him.

The old man seemed unfazed and walked over to the desk with the middle aged man behind it.

The middle aged man started talking when Fang Qiu and the old man made their way over.

"Wine gourd old man, what brings you back here? You already entered this place twice before. What kind of weird disciple did you find this time?"

Seeing his master laugh, Fang Qiu figured these two were on good terms.

"Hahaha steward Chen, it's been a while. Meet my fourth and final disciple, Fang Qiu.

"Fang Qiu pays his respects to Steward Chen" he said whilst making a small bow out of respect towards a cultivator that was probably in the same realm as his master.

"No need, no need. All disciples of the wine gourd old man are famous in the city for being monsters in their own way, I'm sure you will be just as amazing and surpass me in the future.

"Thanks for the praises master chen, but I have only been cultivating for less than a year so I could be considered a newbie in the cultivation world." Fang Qiu replied innocently

"Less...than a year? What kind of monster did the old man find??? Peak foundation realm in less than a year? This damned old man! Where does he find all these godly geniuses.

Why can't our Chen clan give birth to one of these. And even if this one is lacking an arm, so what! Even if he was born without arms and legs he'd still be the genius of the Chen clan!"

After having a mini mental breakdown he composed himself again and guided the two of them to an empty table and assigned them a servant to bring them drinks.

After being seated the old man explained to Fang Qiu: "only revolving core cultivators and above can enter this hall. Lower rank cultivators can only enter when a revolving core cultivator or higher joins them."

"Then how do foundation realm cultivators get skills?" Fang Qiu asked the old man.

"They can buy a jade slip like the ones we have here from one of the Chen clan stalls in the plaza, then order the skills they want at those stalls.

The jade slips, just like at the treasure tower contain info on all the skills the Chen Clan has for sale, of course they have plenty of better skills that they do not sell. Cultivators can obtain those skills but only if they join the Chen clan which is how the Chen clan keeps its power within the city.

Feel free to look at the jade slips, it's best if you look first before I explain since you will quickly notice the issue."

After a couple minutes of browsing through the skills...[ice spike],[gravity lift],[illusion maze]...master, these are all rare element skills? None of them have the word water or fire or any of the main elements in them. How am I supposed to find space or light element skills this way?"

"This is why I wanted you to look first before I told you about it so you can see for yourself. I told you about the Paragon who created the three thousand rare elements by fusing his own, right?" The old man smilingly asked his disciple

"Yes, you told me back on the silver eagle."

"Then, do you know the link between the rare elements and elemental comprehension?"

Fang Qiu showed a baffled expression hearing this. The link between them? Was there even a link?

"I will explain it for you, all rare elements are made up of components of the ten main elements. In this world it is only nine main elements since the time element is not that common, but in higher worlds time is considered one of the main elements.

Every rare element has components of the main ones and most are single element components. For instance the ice element which is purely related to water.

Rare elements have their own advantages and disadvantages. On of them being that a water element cultivator can use ice path skills but an ice element cultivator cannot use water path skills. Water element cultivators can use skills of all of the sub components of their element. So a water user can make use of ice and many other paths since it falls within the scope of their element, but ice element users can only use ice path skills since their rare element only had said path.

This is one of the major disadvantages of the rare elements. Their other disadvantage mainly being that nature stones of the rare elements are pretty uncommon and they can only create a single elemental seed.

The advantages on the other hand are also very strong since everything in this world is balanced to a certain degree.

Rare element users have an easier time grasping their skills since their skill path is their element.

The other main advantage being that rare element users usually have very strong spirit abilities compared to main element users.

Now, the reason I am telling you this is because elemental comprehension works the same way as the rare elements. Main element users choose a specific skill path in their element to focus on.

For instance a water element user wanting to be an offensive type cultivator will choose ice skills and gain ice path comprehension, he will eventually create an ice path elemental seed, tree, soul and eventually an ice domain.

A defensive water user might want to cultivate rain element skills and create a rain elemental seed.

A rare ice element user doesn't have that freedom of choice and can't cultivate rain element skills, they can only choose to create an ice elemental seed.

"So, basically I have to choose which skill path I want to walk within the space and light elements and create elemental seeds of those paths?

But, doesn't that mean main element users are way stronger than rare element users since they can choose any skill path they want and even combine offensive and defensive elemental seeds to remove their weaknesses?" Fang Qiu asked the old man with some confusion.

"Why would it make main element users more powerful? The only advantage main element users have is that they can create multiple elemental seeds but it takes up considerably more time to gain comprehension and learn skills of two types.

Let me put it this way, some people only have the choice to learn the sword all their lives, and a different group of people can choose any weapon to train in.

Does that make then more powerful than the others that could only train the sword? No! Both can reach the peak with their respective weapons. The only difference is that the second type can choose any weapon they like and can even choose to train multiple weapons.

But this is compensated by rare element users generally having a more powerful spirit ability compared to main element users, do you understand now?"

Seeing Fang Qiu give a nod of understanding he continued:

"The last thing that needs to be considered is that a rare ice element cultivator will have an ice element ability which is usually suited for their fighting style unless it is a support type ability.

Water element cultivators on the other hand might not have an ability that is well suited for offensive power, thus choosing ice path skills might not be the smartest thing since ice path is generally a more offensive fighting style."

So, take your time to look through the skills to find a path fits your archery style. Space element has many paths suited for archery, but the one you choose now will be your skill path for a very long time until you cultivate a second space element seed. I will explain you the diffirence in ranks of skills once you have chosen a path."

The old man explained everything to Fang Qiu in a calm manner whilst sipping his wine.

"Master, I have one final question. Why can't we cultivate main element seeds and skills? Why can't people create a water element skill and gain a water element seed?"

Because the main elements encompass way too much. I will explain it with an example that is easy for you to understand.

Let's say a main element is like cooking. The recipe being a skill and the dish being the "path" you gain comprehension of.

Would you choose to learn every recipe at the same time, or one at a time?"

"Of course I would learn them one at a time, learning every recipe at the same time is way too much information at once!" Fang Qiu instantly replied without thinking

"Then you should understand why we have skills of a specific path instead of water as a whole.

The elemental seeds function in the same way. One seed is like comprehending a part of the element since comprehending the entire element at once would be way too much at once. If you reach a bottleneck or a certain realm you can always start learning another part and create a new seed.

Eventually you might even be able to combine skills of both paths to create an even stronger skill since they are both paths of the same element.

Rare element cultivators on the other hand strive to reach the extreme in one specific path since their element only encompasses a single element. Yet both paths have the potential to reach the peak, remember this!

And don't try to eat more than you can chew, only pick a single path of each! Your hands will already be full since you have two elements and thus have to create two or more elemental seeds!"