A friendly reminder after the premium launch: during the new-book period, the male lead was rather weak and mostly lived off women, which led to mediocre first-subscription results. But after the Heavenly Dao Grand Gift Bag was drawn upon launch, the male lead stuck to his righteous path and, with a wildly overbearing, cool, and insanely badass bearing, pulled the results back up quite a bit. Readers who disliked how weak he was, don't rush to drop the book... It launched in chapter fifty-one—he'll toughen up soon!
I saw quite a few readers raising objections about Lan Daozi's combat power, so I'll explain it all here.
First of all, the True Origin Continent was not a traditional cultivation world. It was a postwar era that had suffered devastation from the Outer Realm Heavenly Demons, then saw the Dao Alliance defeat those demons through methods akin to black technology and establish a new order.
In this book, many factors affected an individual's combat power—
Cultivation: Embryonic Respiration, Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Severing, Body Integration, Mahayana, and Immortal.
Skills included sword arts, spells, body arts, and all manner of forbidden techniques.
Spirit artifact support included swords, as well as all sorts of talisman artifacts.
Beast-taming support.
Pill support.
Combat experience.
Race: generally speaking, Demons, Monsters, Ghosts, and Goblins were somewhat stronger than cultivators of the same level.
Condition: whether one was injured, at full health, absentminded, or pumped full of adrenaline.
Environment: for example, when fighting in the desert, fire-element cultivators could definitely fight better than water-element cultivators.
(Among these, skills, spirit artifacts, and pills could be divided into five grades: Heaven, Earth, Mystic, Yellow, and low-tier. Note that these were grades, not realms; there was still a subtle difference.)
And so on.
In any case, it had nothing to do with seniority...
Among the factors above that affected combat power, cultivation accounted for half, while all the other factors combined accounted for the other half.
Even so, those capable of fighting above their level—especially across a major realm—were still as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns.
That was why even the Dao Alliance Headquarters had once gone to great lengths to recruit Lan Daozi!
Not only did Lan Daozi possess exceptional talent in the Sword Dao, he also knew some supreme Heaven-tier Sword Technique, allowing him to fight above his level. He was merely low-key by nature.
To put it bluntly, those readers questioning Lan Daozi simply did not want to see anyone other than the protagonist capable of fighting above their level.
Just imagine it: if the protagonist were the only person in the entire world who could fight above his level, wouldn't that seem fake? Wouldn't it make the protagonist look like some freak that everyone wanted to dissect?
Making supporting characters badass was meant to make the protagonist seem even more badass, and to make the world feel more real.
A world where only the protagonist was badass would be far too empty, lonely, and cold...
Would you believe such a world truly existed?
A good novel drew people in through its details and characters, rather than making them question its authenticity.
Though this author's writing skill was limited, at the very least, he was striving in that direction.
As for creating Lan Daozi's character, the first purpose was to highlight how great the protagonist's swordsmanship was; the second was to highlight another key character in this book, One Sword Fox.
There was nothing particularly mysterious about One Sword Fox either. Her prototype was Ling Zhouyue, the master from "Filial Piety"—the author was deeply pained that "Filial Piety" had been banned. Everyone should have known from the new book's protagonist being named "Xiao Bai" that he intended to continue their old romance with the master.
Only their relationship had changed. They were no longer master and disciple, but had a relationship more like senior sister and junior brother, to avoid the clutches of censorship.
Now, let's talk about the seniority issue within the Snow Flame Sect.
The Tian Yuan Era was not a dark cultivation world, but an orderly cultivation world.
In this era, a sect's elders undertook a great many teaching duties. Their seats were not ranked according to cultivation level, but according to specialization.
For example, Master Yuhu, the Pill Elder, was at the Golden Core Peak.
Her cultivation was the same as Lan Daozi's, the Core Disciple of Sword-Wielding Peak.
As for combat power, she was utterly crushed by Lan Daozi, the Sword Dao Great Demon King.
But every profession had its specialty. So long as she refined pills until the furnace fire burned pure blue and she attained the realm of transformation, countless powerful experts would protect her, and her status in the Cultivation World would far surpass Lan Daozi's.
As long as you brought a specialty to first place in the sect, you became the elder of that specialty.
It had little to do with cultivation.
However, most skills were also strongly tied to cultivation.
For example, pill refinement required refining abilities. Only upon reaching the Golden Core Realm did one have enough power to complete high-level refinement.
Other specialties were similar.
That was also why elders generally needed at least Golden Core cultivation.
Finally, ahem ahem...
Everything in this book that seemed unreasonable was definitely foreshadowing!
(Voice raised)
Before you continue