I CAN GIVE TALENTS

After Vitali left, the tense atmosphere dissipated. The surrounding people collectively exhaled an air of relief. Having two Nascent Soul experts bickering nearby was really nerve-wracking, even if they restrained their aura.

"Son-in-law, you should have just rejected the old flower. Let him go back angrily until he tore that stupid-looking hat."

Magnus was usually dignified in front of others, but whenever the three patriarchs met, they would bicker like children and sometimes it might escalate to a fight.

Leyvi was stunned. Father-in-law, what happened to your imposing manner?

Leyvi responded, "Father-in-law, look at us. We are just a small family here. Do you think we can afford to offend one of the South Region Alchemy Giants?"

"Hmph, I'm here. What are you afraid of?"

"Well, if you can guard us all the time, I won't be afraid."

"Ugh...I can't do that. Fine, but the Mystic Realm spots are extremely precious. You must do all you can to squeeze out as many wealth and advantages as possible from them." Magnus started using sound transmissions and advised Leyvi.

"Oh? Father-in-law, you want the spots too, right? What offers do you have?" Leyvi smiled mischievously.

"Hahaha! We are already in-laws. We don't need to create such distance between us."

"Father-in-law, are you trying to scam me?" Leyvi raised his eyebrow. "Anyway, it won't be me who will be discussing it later. My wife, Anda, will be in charge."

Magnus was surprised. "Are you really letting your wife be the negotiator? Aren't you the family head?"

"Who said the family head has to do everything?"

"So, what do you do?" Magnus was curious.

Leyvi was stunned. He didn't know how to reply to that question. He was aware that he was like a freeloader in the house, but he couldn't tell that to his father-in-law, right?

Leyvi pondered for a bit and replied, "I make the ladies happy. That should count, right?"

Magnus was about to say 'bullshit' but he stopped. After all, he had seen the girls with him get along with each other very well.

Compared to his family, most of the problems came from the ladies competing to be favored. Some men in the family preferred to be with only a spouse, but as a cultivation family, they must produce offspring to continue the bloodline and family legacy.

The problem was, being a cultivator, it was extremely difficult to be blessed with a child. If the offspring between mortals are sometimes born with spirit roots, the offspring between cultivators are also sometimes born without spirit roots, increasing the hurdle to continue the legacy. So, even the men who prefer monogamous relationships had no choice but to take in more wives and concubines.

Furthermore, the number of male cultivators was far less than the female cultivators in the first place because they die at much higher rates outside in the open world.

Although the male to female ratio of people who became cultivators was roughly the same, male cultivators took more risks, went to more dangerous places, and fought bloody battles more often than female cultivators, causing the number imbalance.

It was estimated that the number of female cultivators triple the number of male cultivators. Therefore, polygamy was extremely common among cultivators, especially for big families.

However, this was where the next problem came. Most of the time, these wives and concubines would never get along. Even he went through the same problem. The larger a family was, the less freedom a man had to select a woman of his own choice as the spouse.

Take him, for example. He had to marry a woman from a family similar to his family status because the previous patriarch arranged it. The two families had good relationships, so intermarriage was normal.

And later, when he took in more women as his concubines, the war started. They could never get along with each other and it only got worse when children were born.

Magnus nodded, agreeing with Leyvi's answer. If he had the ability, he wanted them to support each other, too. That would solve a lot of his problems. Unfortunately, it has been going on for a long time. They would never like each other even if he tried to.

"Good! Leyvi, you are doing a good job. As the family head, maintaining harmony in the household is probably the most important thing you can do. All other things are trivial. I wish I realized this when I was younger." Magnus sighed and patted Leyvi's shoulder.

Huh? Did he agree with me? Didn't expect that. From his tone, making sure the ladies are happy must be really important. Did he have an unpleasant experience or something?

When Magnus was about to leave, Leyvi reminded him, "Father-in-law, later if my wife managed to get the spots and you wanted to negotiate a few spots from her, don't ever think about taking advantage of her because of her young age, it would make things harder for your side."

"If you are sincere with her, you will get more advantage." Leyvi felt that Magnus was a likeable man, so he gave him a tip. Whether Magnus decided to listen to his advice or not, it didn't matter to him.

"Hahaha! I know, kid." To be honest, Leyvi didn't have to remind him. He could see that Anda was exceptional. He secretly hoped that the old flower, Vitali, would underestimate her and suffer the consequences.

After the secret conversation, Magnus returned to his seat.

Selene felt somewhat surprised. She didn't expect her father to act like a good buddy with Leyvi. She wondered what they talked about.

At the same time, Vitali arrived back at his family's seating area.

"Yo, Vitali. Looks like you have to put in extra work trying to get a spot for the Mystic Realm, eh? It must be hard being you." Tordin taunted Vitali as usual, already forgotten about the warning from the city lord.

"Hmph! Mind your own business. It's not like your daughter is guaranteed to get the spots, anyway. There are still two rounds left. Maybe she'll get diarrhea and miss the rounds." Vitali retorted.

"What did you say? Are you trying to sabotage my daughter?"

"Dammit, you idiot! I'm just making up a fake scenario!"

"Are you two going to cause trouble again?" A familiar feminine voice sounded in their mind again.

The both of them immediately shut up and sat properly, not wanting to attract the wrath of the city lord.

Soon, the excitement from the third round ranking dissipated.

Elder Godari stood up and approached the podium again.

"Everyone, soon, the fourth round is about to start. We have seen them make an easy product, now, we will test them with a harder product. This is where you will see the line between a normal genius and a great genius!"

"For the next round, we will provide you with ingredients for a tier-2 alchemy formula, 7 ingredients in total. This alchemy formula was not available to the public because I created it just for this round. The product didn't have any amazing effect, it only increased the flying speed of a Foundation Building cultivator by 10%. That's it."

"It won't work for the Core Formation realm and above. Actually, it increased the flying speed of Core Formation cultivations by 1% but that's basically nothing, right?"

"I won't provide you with the alchemy formula, only the ingredients. This round, you have to figure out yourself how to make this product based on the ingredients given to you within a certain time limit."

The contestants were quite surprised when they heard the content of the fourth round.

Isn't this too hard? They had never done this before. All this time they had only done alchemy using the alchemy formulas given. Are they supposed to trial and error until successful? There are seven ingredients. It's going to be hard to find the ratio between them.

"Hahaha, from your expressions, this is very hard, right? Indeed, it will be very hard if all you ever did was blindly follow all the alchemy formulas without trying to understand the logic and reasonings behind the interactions between the essences."

Elder Godari smiled. "However, it wouldn't be that difficult for the alchemists who paid attention to this."

"Don't worry! Even if you failed to create the product that I wanted, you still have a way to gain points. That is, to make any alchemy product using any of the seven ingredients! It doesn't matter if you left out one or two of the ingredients. As long as what you created is usable, I will give you the points!"

"All I want from you is to be creative! Without creativity, there will be no innovation! No innovation led to stagnation! We don't want our alchemy world to stagnate here! Be creative and create new products so we can advance further!"

BOOM!

As soon as Elder Godari finished his sentence, the aura of a few dozen people in the audience skyrocketed. His words resonated with some cultivators again, resolving their bottlenecks and allowing them to advance in their cultivation.

Elder Godari's eyebrow twitched. Is the heavens playing tricks on me? How about you resolve my bottleneck and let me break through first? I've been stuck in this realm for a long time too, you know. Are you hinting that I'm not creative enough, so that's why I stagnated here?

Elder Godari felt like crying from being trolled by the heavens.