Discussion Cultivation skills

This came to mind when i was reading a thread about pioneers in cultivation. In xianxia or xianhuan novels everyone relies on passed down manuels and skills. I wondered.

Why don't protagonist create their own skills? What's stopping them?
Their whole skill progression is weird as well. Usually they pick a skill from the library, practice it to mastery and then throw it away for a new one the next time they level up.
Why dont they try to improve that skill more? In fact, why do skills have ranks in the first place? Usually the stories just say its better and don't explain why. In story the new skill is described as more powerful or faster or whatever, couldnt you make your basic skill better by using more qi or increasing the cast speed.

I went off topic. Anyway, back to my first question. In the novels if you want to start cultivating you must have a manuel to follow. This contains knowledge on how to cultivate and the first few stages. You can get a better one later on that teaches you to absorb more or a special type of qi. These are perfectly fine with me as a basic one will only have the most basic essentials.
But skills. Skills. You can think these up yourself. Such as pushing it out of your hands to propel someone away. Or condensing it on your skin to protect yourself. Shaping it into a claw to attack someone. It's like they have no imagination. So why do they need skill manuels? Am i missing something?

 

IET excel in this one, usually his protagonist just ponder about the elemental or nature course before applying it into his own cultivation

That aside, it is more convenient for the author to make MC technique or skill derivated from others people work, as it is already tested and usually the skill MC got is the best in its era. Also, logic dictate that you need trial and error process before you can create just 'one' skill and as we know, the story setting usually set that the MC needs to cultivate as fast as he can (revenge or anykind of backstory) and MC didn't have the leisure to ponder over what he will learn.

 

Usually the skills are created by mighty figures who understand the laws/rules/dao of the universe, and the higher-tier skills can bring out more of the power of those rules. So the protagonist is best off using the best ones he finds that fit his own body type and weapon preference, since his understanding is too low to make his own.

Later on, when the protagonist's power approaches that of the entire universe, I do often see them create their own unique skills.

 

Read Divine Throne of Primordial Blood. Su Chen, the protag, gets skills the usual, but he always likes to experiment and actually changes the skill for his own use. It is weird how there can ever be a skill that is perfectly suited towards someone other than the creator. Su Chen changes skills to his advantage, and he is a bonafide scientist, so its a pretty good read.

 

So your saying the skill itself contains a type of power rather than just being a manipulation of qi

 

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look into it.

 

It's all relative I say, in the beginning the MCs do not have much knowledge or understanding of cultivation enough to create their own because it will take a lot of time and trials to make one that works well
I will agree with u that most of cultivation manuals don'take sense , I mean we get it new realm new possiblities but fundamentally Qi remains the same and they go on and on about understanding laws/dao being unique and here's someone who doesn't have anything original , it's all plagerised.
Making a skill from scratch is time consuming so just gets ready made ones until they reach a certain layer where they have enough understanding to make their own ones

 

Not exactly. I'm saying that, for example, a move that more closely aligns with the way fire moves in that universe (the dao) will have more power than one that isn't as closely aligned, with the same input of qi. That's what makes it a higher-tier skill.

 

Mainly because it takes time, I guess. Developing a skill that is different from others (not just a variation) takes time, that most MCs do not have.
After all, how do you justify being the youngest whatever when you've spent 10 years developing a skill?
Why should you waste that amount of time, when you'll unlock a new form of energy after the next breakthrough, that'll make all the skills you know useless, because there are stronger skills you can learn?

Most of the people who develop NEW skills either do so for the younger generation or because they are stuck and can no longer advance without experimenting. Basically those that either want to have a legacy or really need it to advance. The others just take the path others laid out for them to advance as far as possible in the least amount of time.

 

You might want to check Dominating Sword Immortal

 

Oh yeah, never really answer your question did I?

I would say that most powers are just upgraded forms of each other. The powers just branch out into more profound Dao's as the creators have reached a higher extent of the giant skill tree. Lots characters use these techniques since they have both been proven to work as well as have a solid and exact product. From what I have seen, characters may not create their own skills, but they learn how to use said skills in different ways then the creator. One more thing is the existence of dual cultivation. A lot of main characters end up dual cultivating two techniques then learn to merge them. Since both skills came from different creators the product is up the main character to somehow merge the two techniques into one. Take both Yun Che (ATG) and Lin Ming (MW).

Yun Che got so many types of abilities from different bloodlines but found ways to merge the abilities of some of them. One is the skill of the Heavenly Wolf Strike (that might be what its called?) and his phoenix skill. He merged them into a pretty powerful skill that he was able to use for a very long time.

Lin Ming did the fusion thing two noticeable times. One was when he mad his fire thunder skills. By using both of them he destroyed people way above his level, but it also showed that the fusion wasn't perfect at the start as it used way more energy than it should have. The other time is in the current, so im gonna put spoilers on it

Spoiler: Spoiler

Lin Ming fused two of the most powerful skills in the entire 33 Heavens. He fused a skill that created a universe within himself with a skill that can make his body undying which need the fusion of two more skills of life and death. By doing this he will probably achieve true immortality by the end of the novel.

 

Well in most novels if the mc is not reincarnated from some old monster or second chance character, they have little to no clue about cultivatin. So making a skill is out of the question. Only exception of this is library heaven path since he has a skill to compile the perfect way to cultivate but he still needs other manuals to reference.
Ideally ancient manuals are the best fpr them since they apparently stood the test of time and had been made by those who lived when chaos/dao and whatnot ran rampant and they had to use those manuals to survive. However this brings to question why there are a lot of garbage manuals even inside big sects since there are already peerless old ones but they still make those inferior thrash. I u derstand if its some small sect trying to widen their library but even those old sects has those and even though they know it is bad they still leave it inside libraries.

 

I wish more authors took the creative initiative to have the MCs develop their own way of training, for me reading about how a technique works is interesting. The nascent soul portion of ISSTH is probably the most creative I've seen of any. Heck, if the mc is a reincarnated person who has highly advanced knowledge then there's the perfect opportunity. From a realistic standpoint, there's a strong likelihood one can't simply swap these techniques and have them work as well or possibly harm the mc in the process.

 

This came to mind when i was reading a thread about pioneers in modern education. In real life everyone relies on the selected subjects in school. I wondered.

Why don't we create our own subject? What's stopping us?
Their whole academic progression is weird as well. Usually we pick a set of subjects that provided by our schools, practice it to mastery and then throw it away after we go to uni.


Why don't we try to improve that set of subjects more? In fact, why do subjects have levels in the first place? Usually teacher just say its better and don't explain why. In school, the new year is described as more powerful...

Oh no.... What did I write...