The reality was that the Soul Gathering Pellets were only secondary, after all, this was something that the rich could buy with money. But there were also resources given that not even the very wealthy could purchase, for instance, legacy skill manuals. If one placed in the top 200, then they could choose the most preliminary and basic of skill manuals. If one placed within the top ten, they could freely enter certain secret rooms of the Seven Profound Martial House and choose a skill manual they wanted to learn.
But if one placed in first placed, they could even have a chance to learn the most guarded core skill manuals of the Seven Profound Martial House. These were top quality skill manuals that only core disciples could hope to learn. Even juniors of the Royal Family and the highest ranking families would have no opportunity to ever study these.
Certainly, Lin Ming had not much interest at all in skill manuals, but instead the resources.
The Seven Profound Valleys was a sect that was proficient in creating magic arrays. At the beginning of the establishment of the Seven Profound Martial Houses, the Seven Profound Valley had once sent out Xiantian experts to place these magic arrays in many of the Martial Houses so that the disciples could use them for practice. Using these, one could practice their skills with twice the result and half the effort. But the number of these arrays was limited, and moreover they needed a massive number of true essence stones to activate and maintain. Therefore not everyone could enter these magic killing arrays, the qualifications one needed were similar to the ranking they had.
So in the Seven Profound Martial House, ranking was supreme. With a higher ranking, one would enjoy more resources. The strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. The disciples there were all talents; only by stepping on the corpses of others would they have a chance to bloom.