Daily life of a cultivation judge

It was only noon, and the sun was up, but the stifling silence and gravity of the information Yang Qing had shared created a somber gloomy atmosphere.

The rustling of the grass by the warm breeze, and the gentle flowing river all seemed to combine to form a melody for a funeral dirge.

After a long overdrawn silence, King Zhou Luan finally spoke,

"Thank you Branch Chief Yang Qing for the warning. It seems we have a lot of things to consider, and those four organizations?"

"What happens next is ultimately up to them. I did advise them to vacate the area sooner rather than later whilst they still have time.

The Order will not be intervening past that. Whatever happens...is ultimately up to them. You're not planning to evacuate them are you?" asked Yang Qing.

"I did entertain the thought but it's likely to lead to a misunderstanding, especially if they get swarmed while we are evacuating them.

The spirit beasts already hate our guts, they are more likely to assume we were involved in the matter, or maybe they would not care at all.

I would rather not risk agitating them. We already have too many things on our plate and to think I thought the spirit beasts were our greatest threat.." King Zhou Luan said with a tone of dejection.

"We will also investigate on our end. Triggering a spirit beast tide isn't something we can overlook.." Yang Qing said.

After exchanging a few words with the king of the Deer Mountain Kingdom, the call ended with Yang Qing using his communication to call Xiang He, the special inquisitor in charge of the case.

"Hey, Yang Qing?" answered Xiang He after the call connected.

"Hello, senior Xiang He.."

"Let me guess, you have new information to share.." said Xiang He with a teasing tone.

"I do and things might be more complicated than we thought.." Yang Qing austerely answered.

"What is it?"

Yang Qing went on to explain his findings on the impostor and his suspicions that they may have had plans to destroy the Deer Mountain Kingdom with their ploy of using the graveyard torch of spirit beasts.

After he finished his explanation, there was a momentary silence before Xiang He finally spoke.

"This does complicate matters.." Xiang He said with a sigh.

"If your guess is true, then this opens up a lot of nefarious doors. If they had been after the throne, then it would have been easier to sniff them out, but if their target is to induce a massacre of a whole kingdom...what we are dealing with is anything but easy.

Whatever they are after, they require a lot of lives to do it, and not just any lives, but the lives of a rank 3 kingdom filled with palace realm cultivators.

But how do they intend to pull it off? Ye Xun and I scanned that place bar the royal palace where the twilight sanctuary array interfered with our senses, but even then, we could have detected if there was a sacrificial conduit.

How would they do it..."

Xiang He mumbles grew inaudible as he quickly got immersed in his thoughts for a few minutes before he finally collected himself.

"Yang Qing, sorry to cut your call short, but I need to quickly confer with a few colleagues from the Special Inquisitors, the assistant director will need to be informed too, and Ye Xun too, she should be with the elder from the spirit council, maybe she could take a look at the area once more and see if there is anything we have missed.

Yang Qing, later.."

Before Yang Qing had a chance to respond, Xiang He's communication had already disconnected.

"Glad to see I didn't overthink it.."Yang Qing muttered with a wry smile.

When the case revealed the matter of the impostor and the blood crystals, his mind immediately jumped to some sacrificial art that required the lives of an entire kingdom to run.

When those ideas jumped at him, some part of him thought it was a result of the effects of the Ice Emerald Sect still haunting him and giving him an alarmist outlook on things.

But even if that were so, he had heard and seen things in the dark underbelly of the cultivation world.

Large-scale bloodshed was not a foreign concept from village-

level massacres to kingdom-wide massacres, such things happened. An example of such an incident happening was 70 years ago when a leading figure of Scarlet Blood Ghost Hands Syndicate sacrificed a whole city filled with millions to elevate his cultivation art slaughtering two palace realm cultivators in the process.

If a rank 2 sect like the crystal palm jade sect could be schemed against and destroyed, then something similar happening to the Deer Mountain Kingdom wasn't an impossibility.

What Yang Qing found disturbing in the case of the Deer Mountain Kingdom was unlike the Crystal Jade Palm Sect where they were targeting their leader and his ties to the jade turtle, when it came to the Deer Mountain Kingdom, they didn't seem to have anything valuable that would warrant their entire destruction.

About the only thing they had of worth was their lives and if that was what the culprit was after, then whatever their plans were, it was way worse than just hunting a semi-evolved flood dragon.

"Whoever they are, they must have the confidence of pulling it off under our noses considering they have hidden themselves well even againstSenior Xiang He's and Senior Ye Xun's eyes..

What could they be after that they need so many lives. Are they only after the lives of the kingdom? or maybe they're targeting both the kingdom and the spirit beasts that would come after them.

Why this kingdom? Is there some they are targeting specifically in the Kingdom or is it some random coincidence?

Maybe it's not even about the kingdom itself and could be about the range. We did find a lot of weird things in this range, who's to say underneath the grounds of the kingdom there isn't something similar?

Or maybe it has nothing to do with the kingdom or this place but something to do with the culprit..

Things have been getting chaotic off late.."Yang Qing said as he aimlessly threw a blade of grass into the river next to him and watched it peacefully go along with the flow of the stream.

As it moved, Yang Qing could see a trail of blood forming on the blade's edges followed by screams denoting all kinds of emotions from wails of grief, to yells of anger, to screams of victory to those of indignation.

Yang Qing saw countless faces form beneath the blade of grass. The images were at first of people he had randomly met over the course of his life, then they became specific to those he had altercations with. The faces were that of those he gave harsh sentences to, the inmates he fought to the death against when he was at the Insitute, to cultivators he slaughtered when he was doing his evaluations.

The young master of the Golden Bamboo Pavilion along with the former Emperor of the Red Maple Empire appeared, then the founder of the Ice Emerald Sect along with the sect master and the elders appeared soon after, followed by the other sect members. Their group ended with the ominous blood-red abyssal thorn tree whose bark dripped with hundreds of blood drops.

When Yang Qing looked closer into those drops, he saw that they contained the faces of people he had a good relationship with. It went from casual ones like the fallen sect master of the Clear Sword River Sect to the Imperial Secretary. Then Ma Yuan, his wife, and their daughter appeared in those droplets, Zhu Yi and his sister along with the old Wang couple appeared in other droplets with the number continually increasing, and before long his instructors appeared, Ren Shu and other staff members appeared, his clan appeared, his family appeared, then Dai Chen and the rest appeared, his team appeared from Yi Jie, Feng Xin down to Bolin, Haishi, Starlight, his black dragon horses and the insufferable celestial nesting weaver.

Yang Qing's pupils trembled when he saw the last two images in the remaining droplets. One of them was a young lady with purple hair, a breathtaking beauty with big round eyes that were filled with curiosity, while the last droplet had the image of a middle-aged man with a stern expression, silver eyes, and matching hair. It looked like the world would crumble and he would remain unperturbed.

Yang Qing's gaze lingered slightly on the two before it moved back to the gently gliding blade of grass that had a trail of bodies on its backside.

Yang Qing lifted his finger and placed it at the tip of the bleeding blade of grass.

A burst of radiant light was produced from the tip of his fingers which created a crystal pure jade tree containing ethereal light with its leaves containing entire worlds.

"I have been called petty, greedy, shameless, lazy, and selfish,and it is the truth, so you can be sure no one takes anything away from me easily, not even death itself.."

Luo Meili and Su Jinjing who had been carrying baskets of food with them paused when they felt a pure aura of life suddenly burst a few hundred meters in the direction they were headed to.

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