What Is a Lower Seed?

Looking at the exchange section, which had been cleaned out almost the moment it went live, Wei Yuan finally understood: the outcome of a battle mattered, but the form of the battle mattered just as much. The exchange section offered not only magic treasures, armor, and single-use Dao arts to boost combat power, but also little novelties Wei Yuan had whipped up on a whim. They offered no increase in combat strength whatsoever, merely adding personal flair and distinctiveness. Yet to his surprise, those cosmetic trinkets were the very first things snapped up. What left Wei Yuan particularly speechless was an item he had created purely out of boredom to fill out the catalog—a tool that applied a few unique patterns onto a dharma vessel. They were just simple decorative markings with no practical function at all, yet that very item had the highest demand. A steady stream of cultivators kept inquiring of the Creation Immortal Venerable whether more could be made, and whether a wider variety of styles could be offered. Despite the unexpected quirks, the launch of the exchange section delivered an immediate, undeniable boost to morale. Sensing that their fighting spirit was ripe for harvest, Wei Yuan promptly initiated a string of engagements, launching roughly one every month. In total, they slaughtered tens of thousands of abominations, causing the Leaf of the Great Dao to sprout a third leaf while adding more than five hundred light-grey dharma body puppets to his ranks. The Glazed Heavenly Phoenix dharma body ultimately fell into the hands of Jun Weizhi. In his first battle after acquiring the vessel, Jun Weizhi's kill count skyrocketed from thirty-seven to ninety-one. If transplanted to their home world, that was equivalent to a single man slaying more than ninety dharma idol monsters. Wei Yuan had known the Glazed Heavenly Phoenix dharma body was potent, but he had never imagined it would be this devastating. Upon deeper reflection, however, while the vessel was indeed formidable, Jun Weizhi himself was likely the deciding factor. When a formidable cultivator was handed an equally formidable blade, the result was far greater than the sum of its parts. Following that battle, everyone from Wei Yuan at the top down to the lowliest bottom-tier cultivator gained a completely fresh appreciation for what an overpowering dharma body could do. But in the second battle, Jun Weizhi showed everyone that their understanding still had not gone deep enough. Wielding the mountain of military merit amassed from his first outing, Jun Weizhi immediately exchanged for several treasures and a handful of single-use Dao arts. In the very next battle, he pushed his tally up to one hundred and fifty. By comparison, Han Li in second place recorded only fifty-one kills—a glaring disparity. After several major engagements, the cultivators within the Splendor of the Many Realms had grown thoroughly familiar with the abominations. They developed targeted tactics to counter them, allowing even the average tally of ordinary bottom-tier cultivators to tick upward by one kill per person. Considering that bottom-tier cultivators normally managed only two or three kills at most, an increase of even one represented an enormous leap. Just as Wei Yuan was steadily bleeding the abomination hordes, his heart gave a sudden lurch one day. Out from the void stepped a man with silver hair and jade-green eyes. His attire and armor bore a style radically distinct from anything in their home world: metal and woven fabric intertwined seamlessly, while ribbons behind him drifted without the aid of any breeze, their ends weighted with pearl-inlaid silver pendants. Pale traces of light rippled across the ground wherever he passed, exuding an indescribable aura of luxury and nobility. For some reason, the moment Wei Yuan laid eyes on this figure, an instinctive sense of unworthiness surged within him, accompanied by an urge to bow his head and worship. Although Wei Yuan suppressed the impulse the instant it arose, it left him incandescent with rage: What was this thing, trying to force him to kowtow the second it showed its face? Seeing that Wei Yuan did not fall to his knees, the man appeared mildly surprised. Without making any visible gesture, a voice resonated directly within Wei Yuan's mind. Though spoken in an alien tongue rather than human speech, its meaning conveyed itself effortlessly: "Lower seed, why do you not kneel?" *A lower seed?!* Even without that condescending moniker, Wei Yuan had taken an immediate, inexplicable dislike to the fellow. It was bad enough that this guy was several times his height and possessed striking, haughty looks, but the moment he made his entrance, he had brazenly flaunted the authority of the Great Dao. Furthermore, this authority held an extraordinarily elevated status, remaining potent even within this void-like, dead world. Wei Yuan had to rely on the karmic status granted by restarting the world just to resist it. The authority demonstrated by this newcomer possessed only a single function: to notify all surrounding beings that he was of peerless, innate nobility, and that they must hasten to prostrate themselves before him. Much as Wei Yuan considered himself to hold a rich grasp of worldly authority, he had to admit his vision had been too narrow. He had never imagined the cosmos could foster an authority of this nature; he had nearly suffered a quiet humiliation and ended up on his knees. Seeing that Wei Yuan offered no reply, the man grew impatient. "I am Xing Linye." The moment the words were uttered, Wei Yuan felt his knees buckle once more, a crushing heaviness falling over his body as the urge to throw himself flat on the ground pressed down hard. This was Wei Yuan resisting; had it been anyone else, they would have long collapsed prostrate, unable to rise. What kind of overbearing divine ability was this? And besides, Xing Linye? What kind of name was that? Observing that Wei Yuan remained standing without reacting, Xing Linye finally looked at him squarely. "To think a lower seed like you actually possesses a shred of strength. You must be a once-in-tens-of-thousands-of-years genius of your tribe. Since you are stealthily rebooting a world here, have you seen my younger sister, Xing Luyue? She received intelligence and came to this sector to hunt down remnants of lower seed rebels." *So that woman was named Xing Luyue,* Wei Yuan thought. Then, he spoke his first words: "I sent the message, but she never arrived." "Never arrived? How could that be? Where did she go—" Caught off guard, the man finally let slip a flicker of emotional fluctuation. Wei Yuan seized upon it instantly. Clarity washed over his mind: the newcomer's voice had been able to materialize directly inside his consciousness not because of an insurmountable status, but because his divine sense possessed a peculiar nature that Wei Yuan had struggled to detect. Yet the moment Wei Yuan caught even the faintest thread of a trace, the man would have nowhere left to hide! Such was the bedrock confidence of the Splendor of the Many Realms! Before Xing Linye could finish his sentence, his expression shifted abruptly into fury. "Damned lower seed! As expected, you rely only on deceit and despicable tricks!" By then, gossamer-thin, invisible threads had already crept quietly over Xing Linye's form. These threads were woven entirely from the power of heaven and earth manipulated by Wei Yuan, veiled under the shroud of karmic luck. The ruse had worked perfectly; Xing Linye had noticed the anomaly only after the threads had already settled upon him! Without a single wasted word, Wei Yuan bound Xing Linye with the power of heaven and earth, then instantly unleashed the entirety of his merit to suppress him with crushing force. This strike was an exact replica of the method he had used to crush the woman that day. The man's face twisted in alarm. Mobilizing every shred of his strength, he hurled a fist upward. An entire miniature world abruptly materialized around his knuckles and ignited whole, shattering Wei Yuan's merit-based suppression in one blow with the terrifying power born from burning an entire realm. In truth, Wei Yuan had expended the bulk of his merit suppressing that prior woman, and because so little time had elapsed, the newly accumulated merit was relatively modest. That it failed to pin down Xing Linye was well within expectations. Yet Xing Linye's countermeasure caught Wei Yuan entirely by surprise—he had outright burned away a minor world! Living creatures had resided within that minor world, including a substantial number of sentient beings. The immense karmic debt and malice generated by their incinerated demise had turned into fuel for the blaze, stoking the flames into an even fiercer inferno. In an instant, the entire realm had dissolved into raw fire, coalescing into that one berserk strike. As the minor world burned, faint signs of temporal distortion rippled outward. To Wei Yuan's eyes, it was a mere split second, but within that world, it was an agonizingly drawn-out epoch. The sentient beings could only watch in despair as fire rained from the sky and magma churned through the earth, the very wind hot enough to ignite everything in its path, witnessing their entire existence reduced to ashes. Fiery rain brought down city towers, flying eaves melting into molten iron that streamed like liquid slag. Crowds of people collapsed in the alleyways, trampling over each other in sheer terror before dying gruesome deaths. Beasts of the field and birds of the air burst into galloping flames in an instant, collapsing into ash only moments later. Rivers boiled dry, mountains caved in, and countless settlements and woodlands were swept clean by licking tongues of flame that seemed as though they would never end. One could only guess how long that agony had lasted inside that world—was it days, years, or decades? "To commit such an atrocity—do you not fear heavenly retribution?" Wei Yuan roared in rebuke. "Heavenly retribution? Heaven and earth are fundamentally insensate and unfeeling. Whence would come heavenly tribulations or divine retribution? A lower seed is a lower seed after all, lacking even this basic common sense." Wei Yuan found his patience thoroughly exhausted. "Let me ask one more thing: What is a lower seed?" "A vile breed from the neck down." "And what does 'from the neck down' mean?" Wei Yuan still did not understand. Xing Linye tapped his head. "Only noble races are worthy of being engaged and regarded with the head. Vile breeds like you are only fit to be dealt with using the parts beneath it."