It's spelled out why Tang Ruo can do stuff above his level though - he trained under the most powerful martial artists walking the planet, and has access to all kinds of treasures, artifacts, elixirs, etc all his life. Plus whatever's going on with the lizard thing. You had an uncle who doesn't speak to you, and a father who's drunk all the time (who also doesn't speak to you!). Obviously he'll be ahead
No. It is literally stated that there is no pill that should be able to do that.
I can agree with his lizard power and his sword dao but to say elixirs or training under anyone allowed him to do that makes absolutely no sense.
Each stage is only allowed to let you train to the peak of that stage,if someone were to train themselves that much or consumed elixirs, they wouldn't be meant to get stronger past the limit of that strength but they would unlock the next stage which the author seems to follow perfectly in regards to the mc but somehow turns the other eye when it comes to ruo.
There is literally a limit placed on stats increasing because of this, you are literally forced to either enter the next stage or be adamant on staying in the same stage while not getting stronger.
Using the sword dao and entering his lizard form would allow fighting a stage higher to be understandable but beating someone a stage higher without uses of skills and basic pummeling is just straight up idiocy from the author.
And to clarify myself,I am not saying fighting a stage higher wouldn't be understandable but I am saying that limiting that to tang ruo without giving sufficient explanation except from him swallowing pills and doing training is no reason to limit that sort of power to tang ruo.
Actual cultivation novels don't retract the ability for the mc to fight stages higher but just make it for those who train hard and don't restrict to some reason that makes no sense.
All I'm basically saying is that it would be preferable for the author to rewrite most of the battle scenes with tang ruo and make him implement his sword dao or use his lizard form or remove the ability of the mc getting locked out of increasing their stats while in a particular stage cause the whole barehanded winning against a stage higher makes no sense.