After boarding the flying ship, which had space expansion formations so everyone could fit, Alex was guided to his room before the ship flew up to the mountain peak. Inside his room Alex realised something.
'Am I the only contestsant from the purple dawn sect?'
Something the sect leader had forgotten to mention was that alex was indeed the only member participating in the tournament. This was due to three reasons, firstly, the purple dawn sect was to weak, and only had one spot for participants, and even that was a courtesy. Secondly, the tournament had rules around who could participate. Each participant needed to be under 100 and below the golden core/organ refining stage. And thirdly alex was the strongest person who fell under those rules.
As such he was the only member of his sect who was sent, and in the eyes of others was an easy target.
Back on topic, the ship had just landed at the mountain peak, walking out he saw a two other ships identical to the one he was in and various other modes of transport. Looking at this alex realised that he was just of the tournaments equivalent to public transport. 'Damn, is my sect that poor? I'm gonna have to find a better one soon.'
Unlike every other person who reincarnated, alex didn't have some deep attachment to the sect he had been living in for a few months. To be honest, he didn't have much of an attachment to anything, considering he had only been here for 4 years give or take. Probably the only exception to this would be nuwa, and that was because she had technically been with him almost that entire time.
Back to the tournament, alex was expecting a huge arena that he would be fighting in for who knows how long. But was suprised to see thousands of meditation mats layed out across the mountain top.
Up above their were sevral cultivators floating in the sky or standing on summoned clouds. Even from this distance he could feel that if any of them wanted to, he would be dead. 'Definitely not nacent soul, probably even above soul condensation. Scary.'
Flying above the contestants but below the watchers, a cultivator at nascent soul began to speak. "Welcome. Seeing as there are sevral thousand of you, many from weaker sects, we have decided to seperate the wheat from the chaf early. The tournament will consist of 7 parts across 8 days. Today will be a test of your compression. Find a mediation mat and sit down, on each mat has 8 different spells. 1 of each main element, 1 of yin, 1 of yang, and one of yin and yang.
Reaching entery rank on each spell will give a certain amount of points. The first five are worth 1 point each, seprate yin and yang are worth 3 each, and combined yin and yang is worth 9 points. For a total of 20 available points, but more points may be gained depending of various conditions. To pass you need atleast 4 points. You will have 12 hours starting in ten minutes. Go."
'Seems like it's pretty simaler to the sect entry exam. Oh well, I'm not one to refuse free stuff.' Walking over to a random mat alex say down and randomly grabed a book. [Earth circulation technique] reading through it, the spell was a jack-of-all-trades earth spell. Make barriers, throw rocks, move earth, what ever. And was [sky 3] rank, bigining to touch on the rules of earth. Reading the other four elemental book they were the same for wood, fire, metal, and water.
As for the sepreate yin and yang books [yin/yang circulation record], they were more contemplation methods. As yin and yang were 'high rank' energy's, they were naturally more complex. Instead of being focused on how to control each energy, the books explaind how to understand the energy and better use them.
The last book, [yin yang circulation method], was about balancing yin and yang to harness them. Explaing how without one the other would be more volatile and effectively useless. Looking at it, then at the two celestial bodies in his mind palace, then back at the book. Alex sighed as he realised their was nothing to learn. 'Oh well, might as well go for a perfect score.'
It took alex about 30 minutes to reach entry level in all five elemental books, 6 minutes each. Another 30 for seprate yin and yang, 15 minutes each. And an hour for combined yin and yang. It was surprisingly tricky to balance them perfectly. He had already taken notes from all 8 books and planed to use them to enhance his cultivation. The five elements would be useful for his [elemental circuit creation method], while the yin yang books would be useful for his [black and white tiger circulation method]. And both would be useful for his [twin phoenix soul scripture].
Now with 10 hours left alex was already bored. 'Maybe I could try and fuse the five elemental books? And aren't they supposed to be able to create yin and yang? Maybe I could add that in as well.'
With a new goal in mind alex got to work. For the books he started with combining the water and wood elemental ones, as he had more experience with water and it nurtured wood.
30 minutes later he had combined them, next was to add fire which was fuled by wood, another 30 minutes. Then fire nurtured earth, which gave metal, which carried water. He didn't know why they were set up like that, all he knew was that's how they went. With 7 and a half hours left alex got to adding yin and yang.
When all five elemental cycle with each other they both enhance and contradict each other. Wood helps fire, fire helps earth, earth helps metal, metal helps water, water helps wood and wood helps fire again as the cycle continues. But simalerly metal weakens wood, wood weakens earth, earth weakens water, water weakness fire, fire weakness metal and metal weakens wood again.
Those cycles create yin and yang, which balance the five elements in turn. These cycles continue forever, each part feeding into the next. In practice it took alex about 4 hours just for this, then came the dreaded trouble shooting, balancing each part perfectly, making sure they both strengthens and weakend each other in equal parts, making sure it wouldn't fall apart at the slightest touch. All this took another 2 hours. During which his mastery of all the sepreate spells jumped up by two ranks, to adept.
Turns out connecting 8 diffrent spells together to create a fusion of them all helps you understand them real fast. The finished result, [five elements yin yang cycle], was the embodiment of its parts. Using each element to strengthen and weaken its respective counterpart in a eternal balance. It was a pretty decent jack-of-all-trades. Defence, offence, support, etc. It worked for all, and was curently [sky 1] rank.
He spent the remaining hour and a half of test time on better understanding the spell and upgrading it, pushing it to the peak of sky 1 by the end, and his mastery was just short of great success.
Up above in the sky, the test fiver spoke again. "All practice shall stop now. A leader board shown the top ten contestants shall be shown. With their point count and the reason for each.
Looking above his head Alex saw a large screen show up, looking at the list his name was at number 1 with 2240 points next to it.
[20 points: entry in all spells.]
[40 points: small success in all spells.]
[80 points: adept in all spells.]
[100 points: fusion of two elements.]
[200 points: fusion of three elements.]
[300 points: fusion of four elements.]
[500 points: fusion of all elements.]
[1000 points: fusion of all elements, yin and yang.]
The next highest was 246 by Xue Baichi
[20 points: entry in all spells.]
[40 points: small success in all spells.]
[12 points: adept in yin.]
[24: great success in yin.]
[48: Mastery in yin.]
[100: fusion of two elements.]