897 Understanding the Basics

The walls of the Endless Tunnel that were made up of the StarForged Tungsten ores were without a doubt one of the best places to train his attacks in.

They were tough and durable, and Alex didn't have to worry about holding back his powers at all. In fact, it was advised that he didn't hold back at all, or he wouldn't be able to dislodge or break open any of the ores at all.

And that was what Alex wanted in the end after all.

His attacks began with his punches and palms. The Iron Fist punch and the Palm of the Sun were techniques that he had learned from the very beginning when he was in the Tiger Sect.

They weren't the strongest skills he had, but because their elements were Metal and Yang, they did end up being one of the strongest skills for sure.

Next was the Flame Mastery Scripture. Alex created a fiery bird using his will and sent it to strike the wall in front of him.

The wall resounded with a massive boom, but aside from a little dirt, nothing came off the wall.

Alex practiced the three techniques for a few minutes before moving on to his next skill which didn't use a sword.

The Infinite Heavenly Ice Spears.

Alex created an icicle out of thin air and attacked the wall in front of him. The icicles, although weak because of his Water Spiritual root, ended up being quite strong when Alex used his Yin Qi for it.

Although, it could never end up being as strong as his Metal or Yang attacks.

Once he was done practicing that, He switched to the next set of techniques by taking out a single sword. Then, he started training on his sword skills.

Alex had various sword skills, but at this point, only 2 were usable given how weak the others he had learned were. The Penta-Sword technique and the Elusive Heavenly Sword were what he considered the two best Sword techniques that he learned in the Tiger sect, not counting Sword Intent itself.

Alex attacked the wall as well as he could using both techniques, and clearly one was superior to the other. Being a person with a very weak Wood Spiritual root, Alex simply could never bring out the full strength of the Elusive Heavenly Sword.

After he finished training with the two techniques, Alex moved on to the next sword technique as he brought out 20 different swords out of his storage ring.

The swords flew in the air and immediately got into their place as they hovered with 3 swords at the front, 6 in the middle, and 12 at the back.

Then, the 21 swords started spinning altogether as Alex used the 21 Sword Array skill.

Alex had come to learn a bit about the technique after having used it for quite a while now. First of all, the technique used up quite a lot of Qi to use it. However, similarly, it was also very strong.

Alex didn't have an opponent to check the strength of the attack, but he could guarantee that the attacks were always stronger than his strongest Metal technique.

And that was without infusing any Sword Qi or Intent into it.

The technique's strength seemed to also rely on the swords that were in the array. The better the sword, the better the strength would be.

However, just because he got a chance to use Celestial-grade swords didn't mean he could suddenly kill Divine realm cultivators. The swords only provided so much power.

Still, he couldn't imagine that they wouldn't do a lot of damage if each of the 21 swords weighed above 2 tons and were made of one of the most durable metals in the whole world.

Alex had another thought about the technique as he practiced it on the wall. Each time the swords struck the wall, and he heard the reverberation, he wondered… what would happen if he were to add more swords to the technique.

Given the pattern of 3, 6, and 12. The next set of swords to be added had to either be 21 or 24. However, even when he tried both the amount, for some reason he simply couldn't use the technique at all.

Because he added the swords, he had to make alterations to the technique. However, for that, he needed the Dao of Techniques.

There were other techniques he had, that he needed to improve and needed Dao of techniques for that too.

His hands could be covered in Metal Qi, turning into golden fists or claws at his demand, but they were rather bad techniques as their efficiency wasn't something he had managed to improve.

Even his own skill to create a sun that he had created by simply adding Yang Qi to a ball of fire was quite bad.

Shen Jing had told him long ago that they were bad, however, it wasn't until now that he was starting to give thought to his words.

He was starting to think of how he could change a technique to improve them.

To use a technique, one needed 3 things. Qi, a route through the meridians for the Qi, which was also known as the Path, and Intent.

With a combination of these three, one would be able to use any techniques. Most people failed, however, because they weren't always able to fulfill the 3 conditions.

A man without a Fire Spiritual Root could never use Fire techniques as they didn't have a way to produce Fire Qi.

Similarly, if one's meridians were hurt or blocked, they couldn't use a technique at all.

Finally, without the proper intent to use a technique, the technique wouldn't ever come out.

For the techniques that were Heaven Grade or even lower, Alex had both the Qi and Intent for them. His Five Elemental Yin-Yang spiritual roots made sure that he would have access to every natural element out there, albeit they started off as rather weak set of Spiritual roots

Since he also had proper intentions for each of the techniques as he was already capable of using them, the only way to improve on a technique was to improve the pathways.

He needed to find a different path for the Qi to flow out through his meridians. If he could figure that out, he could improve every technique he had.

However, he didn't know where he could begin with altering a technique. As such, Alex decided to start with not altering but creating a technique.

He closed off his senses to nothing but himself and let a tongue of fire burn in the air in front of him. As the fire burned, Alex used his authority to call upon the Dao of Explosion to explode the fire in front of him.

The world acted on his will and the Qi moved into his fire. However, at the same time, Qi also moved from within him to go into the fire.

Alex was waiting for exactly that. He sensed the many meridians that existed in his body and then searched for the ones through which the Qi moved out.

The fire exploded in front of him, but Alex didn't give a single thought to that. He continued thinking about the movement of Qi within him and then decided to copy it.

Qi streamed out of his navel area and Alex forced it to flow into the exact same meridians instead of the thousands that he could choose from.

The pathway was perfect, so as they came out and reached his hands, they streamed out into the open air where a tongue of fire was waiting for it.

Finally, Alex needed to add the third part of the technique, the Intent.

The intent on what he wanted to do didn't seem as important as the other two, but there was no doubt that it was equally important.

So, from the start to the end of the technique, he had been continuously adding it. The intent to explode the fire in front of him.

He didn't use his authority over the explosion at all, simply just intent.

The moment the Qi touched the fire, the fire suddenly turned violent and exploded in a massive boom.

The explosion was weak, much weaker than when he used his Dao, and there was an upper limit to the strength of the explosion based on the strength of his own Qi.

However, Alex cared for none of that. A smile appeared on his face as he successfully created a technique that wasn't in his arsenal before this.

This meant that his understanding of the basics behind every technique was correct. And what was better was that this gave him the confidence to be sure that if he tried, he could definitely improve his techniques.

The Saint realms in the area were too weak to sense this, but worldly laws had stirred just now when Alex had understood the basic concept of the Dao of Techniques.

However, they were only basic, so the worldly Daos wouldn't descend with just that. He needed to understand a lot more in-depth about techniques in general before he actually acquired the Dao itself.

Alex did plan on improving with it, and he began trying. He began testing by bringing the Qi out through the various different paths, but there were too many for him to simply learn about it.

This needed more time than what he had in the cave, so Alex stopped improving that for now and started training on something that needed a lot of training on his end.

Blood Manipulation.