mlbki

It starts mattering when talent cap your progress. Now FY knowledge and experience make that cap higher than for most people, but ordinarily, within the few years the C rank would be far below in cultivation while the other (say a B-rank) would have shrunk the gap in battle skills. And after a decade the C rank would be stuck while the B rank still is progressing. Even Fang Yuan in the long run, would need to find some way to increase his talent if he wants a chance to get to the higher ranks.

It's a very rare gu and where would he have found it? Since simply being born that strong is known to be a thing that's a simpler default explanation.

It's better than average but not exceptional. Potentially a good valuable member of the clan that could become an elder if allowed to live long enough, but not an A rank genius that can singlehandedly shift the balance of power in the cman's favor.

Well there's a point where extorting might not be possible anymore, so while not an actually urgent problem, it is not sustainable long term. Also don't bother too hard nitpicking the author's maths, it turns into a joke that he isn't good at it (to the point where the author himself make fun of it in a later scene).

Because it's just the early stage. His talent will slow him down more and more without extreme methods and the spending of significant more resources to compensate. Even more significant, his lack of talent cap his potential. A C grade would be lucky to eventually get to rank 3, but what the clan leader need is a rank 4 potential successor, and that's basically not happening without a way to increase talent, which the clan does not have.

They are a way to stabilize the aperture by imitating the outside world. The details should be in a chapter before the crazed demon cave arc.

I imagine him being like those animals that kill and eat their partner. It does seems to be his solution to everything after all.

Spectral soul did use him as a pawn secretely, but did not directly control him, so there's nothing weird about longevity heaven also making use of him.

It was originally the monk's vital gu, which can't easily be replaced and he had it presumably to rank 5 or at least 4. Lacking sufficient food but presumably not to the extend of starving to death, it went down to rank 1 over the 2-300 years.

A chapter later talk about a "power inheritance". This seems to be a changing vocabulary/translation issue rather of a retcon.