World-level status and forming a Dao Seed with oneself as its driving force-that was taking the body as a seed.
Taking the body as a seed only required fulfilling the conditions above. The reason it meant ten deaths and no chance of survival was that no one had found a way to avoid the world's instinctive backlash when a world-level Dao Seed took shape.
Once a method was found, the severed path no longer existed, and ten deaths with no chance of survival became history.
Shi Hao had laid his foundation by bathing himself in myriad Dao fire, then exploited a loophole with the Earth Womb Disk to complete the final step. That was one method.
Bathing oneself in myriad Dao fire had never been a dead end. A prodigy in Immortal Ancient had succeeded, only to be led away by the uncanny.
Borrowing the Earth Womb Disk forcibly opened a loophole, turning ten deaths with no chance of survival into nine deaths and one chance at life.
After Meng Zheng failed at taking the body as a seed, he exhausted every means to survive and eventually lived a second life to continue on. That was another method.
Chen Yao's use of the Myriad Dao Imprint and Daluo to fraudulently obtain a household registration was a method he had devised by drawing on his own path and Shi Hao's successful experience. He used a false household registration to borrow the power of heaven and earth to nurture himself.
Relying on heaven and earth was nothing shameful. Even taking the body as a seed depended on the universe to take shape. Whichever heaven and earth one took the body as a seed in, the Dao Seed formed from oneself would possess that realm's status and level of laws. Otherwise, why would