
Zack:
so unlike the drama (as of this post) Rank 9-1 are not the highest levels in the novel?
Correct. None of the "rank 0" (the novel calls them "beyond rank") beings would have been introduced at this point in the novel either, so they still might pop up later. Each of the cultivation paths either currently have or have had a rank 0 in the past. Most of them are either dead, vanished, sealed away, or otherwise occupied.
The two cultivation paths that don't have and have never had a rank 0 are the fighters/pugilists (which is what XQA and Wei Yuan are) and the Sorcerers (which is what the Supervisor is). The Sorcerers are the youngest cultivation path by a lot (only 500 years old) so this may be why they've never had a rank 0. They also have very odd level up requirements, so there's usually not that many high level Sorcerers. The fighters are one of the oldest (and most numerous) paths so it's strange that they've never had one.
The other paths include the Daoists, (like most of the heaven/earth society, there are 3 subclasses, which are the Heaven, Earth, and Human sects), the scholars (like Yunlu academy), the Witchers (mostly bad guys), the Bhuddists, and there's one more that may have been entirely cut from the drama (they use Gu, which are like little magical parasites/bugs that grant powers, in the novel there's a heaven/earth society member who is part of this path, but she seems to have been cut from the drama). Each of these have had or currently have a rank 0.
I think that's all the paths. Some characters are multi-classes, like Chu Yuanzhen is a Daoist/fighter multiclass.