The MC might want to try to dissuade potential new harem members whose admirers are multiple realms higher than him.
How would that be a fair deal? There's no way that Nascent Soul cultivators are slower than Golden Core. If after breaking it, the soul were revealed to all, Kaiyang might as well ignore it because there's no chance they'd get to it first. "Tianling-er had her red silk " I thought that was super damaged and she couldn't use it to fly until she'd put a significant amount of time and effort into fixing it? She should probably have kept quiet. Nothing good can come out of drawing attention to herself in that situation and the only one there that would be truly upset if she died is the MC, and his power is far too low for that arrogant teenager to care. Even if the other girl stood up for her, she's also too weak for him to care, and her father isn't likely to be willing to start a war over a mortal.
What kind of moron volunteers to have his soul chopped up and turned into magical items? Exactly how insanely stupid do you need to be for that to sound like a good idea? I wonder if he'll use the soul himself or give it to the battle general standing right next to him. I'm betting on the former, but it would be nice to see the latter. If there are nine nascent soul cultivators, and only two gates need to be taken down, then why would they wait? If its something that a small group of golden cores can handle then it shouldn't even require effort for a single nascent soul, so seven (or five, if they were feeling paranoid) of them could just stand around the formation and kill anyone that thought about coming close while the other two (or four) went in and grabbed all the treasure of note. There's no reason at all for them to not do so.
That formation is like a big bad boss level monster that can do a complete party wipe if not struck while it's busy wiping it's a**. It's debatable. If he did mention it earlier, you'd say that he just got it the moment he mentioned it, it's also a foreshadowing, besides, it's not that important. My main concern is whether there will be a fight between the two dynasties that are attacking the gates later on. I don't see him getting the treasure any other way, unless they all start fighting and lose their focus...but even so, it's very hard to see Zhong Shan getting away with it unnoticed this time around.
It would depend on how it's handled. I've seen it done properly tons of times, and I always appreciate it. I think you're probably right that he'll grab it during the chaos. I don't think anyone will know it was him though. He's far too weak to guard treasures like that, so anyone that knows about it will either die without telling anyone, or will already be one of his subordinates/allies. Personally, I'm more curious about how he's going to raise his dynasty without being crushed by the others. No one really wants another competitor entering the field after all, and he's far from strong enough to defend it.
I understand keeping back the Golden Core, but why hold back the Houtian? She’s a capable warrior with years of experience who was personally trained by him. She wouldn’t have preformed any worse than he did. Or is he afraid someone will try to snatch her for that reason?
Because MC has to show off and attract the princess. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. I'd rather have Yinglan engage the enemies and then have Zhong Shan and Tianling'er swoop in for the kill. But how'd the MC get that princess's attention then? First world problems.
He should have grabbed the liquid spiritual energy too while he was at it. It wouldn't have been any harder to grab it at the same time, and I'm sure it would have been extremely useful for him. I wonder if he'll try to mine those spirit stones later.
That invitation seems far more like "Hey you idiots, go trigger those traps for me so that I can find the safe path!" than anything else.
Originally, I assumed that he'd take the formation soul himself and then use his doppelganger to cover for him and have it leave with everyone else. I guess the shadow clone will cover for her instead now, but I'm not sure how it'll fake her image, nor how he'll explain the clone to the girls. It's not like she was hiding her face after all. Unless her robe is one of those magical robes that covers a person's face entirely just by pulling the hood forward in spite of not being enchanted in any way.
Why would many people going into a gate, and one coming out be enough to eliminate the gate? Obviously, there’s only one formation soul and no need for more than one person to stick around and absorb it. So long as even one person stays behind, much less all but one person, it would still be suspicious. Heck, the fact that he came out alone should make it several hundred times more suspicious.
Why wouldn't that woman send one of her subordinates to investigate? That gate should be ultra suspicious right now.
safety keep everyone together maybe? and he did come back out to be fair. they might have split up for more loot.