I'm looking for a CN novel with non dumb characters and by that I mean one where the characters aren't blindly arrogant and actually use more than 1 brain cell to think. Such as if the mc is chosen by someone with a high position or power the side characters will think that the mc must have some sort of qualifications or that they just don't wanna offend said person in power just for the mc, or they won't watch the mc do something no one else can do but then proceed to think its a fluke and that they can handle him, or young masters actually take their role seriously and understand they shouldn't just randomly offend people.
Reverend Insanity/Daoist Gu Transcendental Mechanic/The Legendary Mechanic Great Dao Commander Maybe there's a few more but they're not coming to mind... p.s. Transcendental Mechanic has cultivation but it's more like scifi cultivation with game elements and MC is a mechanic rather than cultivator... Great Dao Commander is standard xianxia in terms of cultivation but not a lot of translated chapters unfortunately Edit: I'll throw in Little Tyrant Doesn’t Want to Meet with a Bad End as well. Kind of light on the cultivation aspects as well & MC gets a bit of help from a system, but you know with CN novels there's really just way too few. And actually a really good Manhua I can recommend is I'm an Evil God. Unfortunately it does not have any novel afaik. If you end up reading it then make sure to read the Lusario version because the other translations are trashy
You can try 'Tales of Herding Gods'. It fits your criteria. There are no arrogant young masters and the world is not programmed to fight MC to the death for no reason. People are intelligent and behave like normal human beings. There is one downside according to me which is dense MC. It is slightly different from other novels because MC is very sharing and open-minded so if say he found some superb cultivation skill he will distribute it.
martial world is a good one almost all of the villains are super smart especially tian mingzi that dude was a great man so underrated