Da Tang is the grow up story of the two boys, career and girl are what they talk about from the beginning of the book.
They as everybody else like pretty girls, but they don't love them solely because they are beautiful.
Kou fall for Li girl, she is just ordinary good looking, and then he found out he love Sung girl, who is also ordinary good looking, these two are not top beauties in the book but they get the love of Kou, beautiful is not the most important thing in love, I have explain why Kou love Song and Li before, so I do not want to repeat here.
Xu is a spiritual person longing to be a hermit, he is looking for a soul mate, I have repeat this phrase a few times, Shen have a crush on him, but she is an executive type, not a hermit or spiritual person, and Xu do not love her, so beautiful or not is not the determinate factor in the love relationship of the two boys. and therefore whether they marry the most beautiful woman is not important.
Are these not similar to our grow up story, did we not dwell on career or girls when we were young, and when we get marry we don't necessary marry the most beautiful girl we know but the one we think suitable.
My ranking of the beauty is to answer the argument of whether Wanwan is the most beautiful girl, I do not think there is one girl that is most beautiful here and at the same time I do not think this is an important issue.
Same thing about Martial art, there are many factors in a fight that affect who is the winner , and better martial art skill is only one of them, therefore don't attached to who is the best martial artist, but objective grading does exist.
Time and time again I said HY did not mention who is the best martial artist in Da Tang. And best martial artist is not the focus of HY's yuen wan wuxia, his focus point in yuen wan wuxia is taking martial art as spiritual path and breaking the void space 破碎虚空(taoist version of nirvana ) is the goal of these path seeker/chum tao ren. A step to the past/ Searching for Qin is not one of his yuen wan, but Da Tang is.
I come here to rejoice the translation, and trying to put in my 2 cent to some of the question or explain concept and structure of the book because I think Da Tang is classic , huge in structure tight in logic and full of tropics that I like but some readers may not familiar.