He explained his reasoning to her by saying, "The main problem is that your talent for cultivation lies in mana manipulation and energy refining, not body forging. By cultivating the path of body forging, you have cut down on your potential."
"Even if you get enough resources to push your foundation to the peak of the third mortal coil quickly, you're likely to fail in breaking through to the fourth mortal coil because you will be advancing in a field that you're ill-equipped to handle."
She sighed and said, "It seems the third mortal coil is going to be my limit."
He said, "Not necessarily. If you can successfully advance to the peak of the third mortal coil and make sure that every city, town, and village in the Five Vein region has a Red Dojo, I can help you overcome the lack of talent needed to advance to the fourth mortal coil."
He is referring to using an external golden core to help her break through to the fourth mortal coil. It will be a golden core formed with her flesh.
Since she will be at the third mortal coil when the golden core is created, it will cost a lot to create it. After all, it will cost a lot to elevate a piece of flesh to the golden core when it didn't come from a golden core cultivator.
So it will cost a lot more to create an external golden core with her flesh than it did to create one with his own flesh. Even then, the success of advancing is uncertain and she might still die.
The cost is the main reason why he can't just give it to her for free. She has to work for it and prove that she will be of use to him before he can expend that much resources to help her.
Even so, his promise to help her was like a ray of light piercing the dark clouds of a storm. Her eyes lit up when she heard it.
Then her face morphed into that of determination as she said to him, "I will do my best."
He smiled faintly and said, "I can trust you to do that."
Then he said, "I think it is time to meet our visitors."
She nodded and went together with him. Their destination was the walkway in front of her house. There were a lot of people standing there waiting for them.
People have been coming to visit since Arthur arrived. But they were all blocked by the array and had to wait patiently.
Some of them left to do other things. But when they heard that the array had come down, they all came over again.
Most of the people who came were the elders of the family. Even the patriarch of the family.
Augustus also came. He came with his wife, Lady Delia, and his second child, a girl named Tylia.
Lady Delia composed herself, but she couldn't hide her jealousy. Arthur could see how she glared at Vena when no one was looking. He had his divine sense, so he could see all around him and witness the petty behaviors that Lady Delia tried to hide.
Lady Delia is still in the second mortal coil. To be specific, she is at the sixth transformation of the second mortal coil. This speed of cultivation is even slower than that of Vena. This is because of the lack of resources.
The Dyson family wasn't going to help Delia advance to the third mortal coil just because she is Augustus's wife. Since she was unlikely to advance to the third mortal coil, they didn't bother to give her many resources to cultivate.
At least she got something while Lady Vena didn't get any resources from the Dyson family. Lady Vena had to work hard, either hunting in the green forest or contributing to the family, before she received anything from them.
But Lady Delia wasn't willing to do any hard work. She thought it was beneath her. This is why her cultivation speed was slow despite having a better talent for body forging than Lady Vena.
Her situation is pretty normal, actually. Cultivation families have a limited quota of the number of people that they can help advance, which is based on their performance in the intersect competition. In a bad round of harvesting, they might not even earn enough to help one person advance to the third mortal coil.
So they can't just give the resources that some people died for to some people just because they are wives. There has to be a better reason than having the identity of a wife.
A better reason is to have a son who has successfully advanced to the fourth mortal coil. This is the reason why the Dyson family decided to help Lady Vena advance to the third mortal coil.
Lady Delia didn't mind that Vena was working herself to the bone like a servant in order to get the resources to cultivate. She became jealous when Arthur advanced to the fourth mortal coil, but she dealt with her jealousy by saying that she wasn't as lucky as Vena.
But when she heard that the Dyson family was willing to help a harlot advance instead of her, she became angry. Her anger became worse when Vena turned down their help and said that she didn't need it.
Vena's rejection of the assistant of the family, while she didn't get any offer of help from the family, made Delia furious. She became angry and bitter enough to try disrupting Vena's advancement to the third mortal coil.
This was why Vena called Arthur over. And from the looks of things, Arthur didn't blame Vena for not trusting anyone in the family.
He could tell that he wasn't the only one who was aware of Delia's bitterness, but no one bothered to address it or punish her. They just pushed her into the background and made her distance herself from Vena.