Time passed in the Violet Sky City. Soon, five months flew by.

People continued with their daily lives. The spark of desire etched on the hearts of many in the audience during the tournament didn’t go extinct. Every day people became bit by bit stronger, people also indulged in the perfection of their craft.

The contestants of the tournament that had earned their flame tokens had gone to the Flame Tower on a near-daily basis to strengthen themselves. Results varied from person to person, but each of them become stronger. The ranks of the four battalions of the Azure Guard grew. In the end, the bountiful benefits offered by the battalions enticed the Cultivators, making them join.

Damian was no exception to this. He continued to train with diligence, both his cultivation and his martial arts. He had worked diligently to stabilize and strengthen his cultivation at the tenth layer of the Golden Core realm. Damian had benefited in no small amount thanks to the sparring matches he did with James, Jack, Celia, and Cedric. This helped him to get more used to battling different cultivators. Even if a hundred people practiced the same martial art, each would have distinct patterns and rhythms unique to each person created by their own life experiences and personalities, creating slight variations of the same martial art.

All four sparring partners of Damian had also improved by leaps and bounds during the last five months. They all had reached the ninth layer of the Golden Core realm, which, in turn, helped Damian to benefit even more from the sparring.

Politics and clan duty also took a portion of Damian’s time in the past months. After all, he was a strong Cultivator, therefore; it was expected of him to have offspring to continue the prosperity of the clan. Elena took care of finding suitable suitors for Damian, as well as other promising single members of the clan. She also engaged in negotiating the dowries to be given or received with the involved clan.

By law, in this city, both males and females could have more than one spouse, be they of the same or different sex. However, anyone with a high spirit root or above was required to bear offspring before reaching the Nascent Soul realm or the age of fifty, whichever happened first.

The reason cultivators were required to bear offspring before reaching the Nascent Soul realm is because of the growing difficulty of conception as they progress through the realms of cultivation.

The Nascent Soul realm marked a crucial turning point where cultivators’ fertility periods changed significantly. Rather than being fertile every day in the case of males or a few days each month for females, cultivators experienced varying periods of fertility. They were limited to short spans of time. Cultivators also referred to this fertility period as the “lethal span” as it also is the Cultivator’s weakest state.

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This situation created several complications, from the need to seek a partner within the same realm of cultivation to ensure the survival of both individuals during intercourse. Additionally, it entailed the requirement of synchronizing fertility periods, and the challenge of placing trust in someone not to betray you when in a vulnerable state.

Nascent Soul Cultivators’ average fertility was somewhere around one week every five or ten years. There were records of strong cultivators in the Heaven Phase who were fertile only a few hours every ten or fifteen thousand years, thus making conception incredibly difficult.

There were two strong suitors for Damian, he liked both of them, but each of them came with different political ramifications. One of them was Tania Markov, which stated that the firstborn would belong to the Violet Sky Clan, while the following two would belong to the Markov clan. She would only have three children. Damian thought Tania was beautiful, arousal clear in the exchanges they had in the previous months. However, he did not like to give two of his children to another clan.

The other was a single returned one. She had brought back no family whatsoever. She would marry into the Violet Sky Clan. She would bear up to five children in exchange for top cultivation resources. Her name was Elara Frostborne. This, of course, was the name she had taken for herself after returning to Earth.

Elara had a Holy spirit root, better than even Tania. She was at the fourth layer of the Golden Core realm. Damian had met Elara a few times. She was incredibly beautiful, her skin white as porcelain, her hair of a pitch-black color that cascaded to her hips. Her eyes were of a clear blue that resembled more the frostiness of the ice than the clearness of the sky.

During those exchanges, Damian and Elara had hit it off quite well. The only risk factor Elena saw was that she had no family. Therefore, aside from the bearing of offspring, the clan would gain no other benefit.

Damian had told Elena that he preferred Elara, but let him decide, even if she was not the first wife, he could propose to her to be the third spouse. He had been thinking for a long time. Damian wanted Cedric to be his second spouse. In the last few months, their relationship developed quite a bit, turning from flirtatious to straight romantic.

Tania, while beautiful, would merely be a political marriage. However, he enjoyed his time with both Cedric and Elara, he cared not for their family or background. He wanted to pursue greater heights alongside them. Of course, they could also marry other people, but the first spouse has more say than the second one, in tow, the second one has more say that the third spouse.

In the end, Elena decided Elara was the better candidate to become Damian’s first wife. Elena had decided this, as Elara had agreed to be more involved in the rising of the children. Tania made it clear she would take care of the Markov clan’s two children, not the first one belonging to the Violet Sky Clan. That was the deciding factor for Elena. She was a psychologist before the Great Metamorphosis. She knew that the first child would virtually grow up with an absent mother creating trauma for the child, and the Violet Sky clan, to deal with the consequences.

Elena also knew of Damian’s bisexual orientation and of his relationship with Cedric. That’s why she had also negotiated with the Lambert clan. Someone had also betrothed Cedric to a woman to take as his first wife. So they could be each other second spouse. This was acceptable to both clans. It would bind their fates.