On reaching this point, it was the purple-haired gentle looking Xu Biya who stepped in to answer.
"Because of the unique state of the area and what happened, we decided to go with a roaming inquisitor by the name of Fang Wen.
She has been a roaming inquisitor for the past 300 years and is at the peak stage of the palace realm and not far away from realizing her path to the domain realm. She is already at the quasi-domain stage. This factored as one of the reasons we thought the post would be good for her despite never having been in a similar post before.
With how volatile things are, we can't risk the life of a potential domain expert, we need all the domain experts we can get, to cover more ground.."
Yang Qing nodded in understanding. A single domain expert was worth over a hundred palace realm experts. As humbling as it may be, no matter how talented he was, his cultivation base as a third-stage palace realm expert though could be considered decent, it was not enough to shoulder the true weight of the Order, but a domain expert even a quasi-domain expert was a different case.
Just because of her cultivation base and the critical juncture she was at, Fang Wen taking the role as the next branch chief made complete sense. Being a roaming inquisitor was one of the most volatile jobs out there on a normal day, let alone now that massive undercurrents were floating around the continent.
Being a branch chief was relatively safer, especially in the Deer Mountain Range. Barring the return of the fire adler bear's master, Fang Wen and the fire adler bear would essentially be the two known figures with the highest cultivation base in the range, and biases aside, Yang Qing didn't think someone who has been a roaming inquisitor for 300 years, seen and survived it all in that role, would lose out to someone of the same level.
Those from the Order were required to be a cut above the rest. It was a requirement for the inquisitors and even the judges that they needed to be able to fight above their cultivation base, losing to someone who had the same cultivation base as you was intolerable. It was only palatable if the person you lost to was someone from the Order.
It was why during their institute days, even as qi refinement cultivators, their death duels with the inmates from the requiem usually involved those who had at the very least reached the middle stages of the foundation realm, and even then, they needed to have firm foundations and fighting capabilities that made them stand out from the rest.
Such a training regimen was given to students after they graduated, specialized combat groups such as the different types of inquisitors, the gold eagle guards, and the shadow hawks, those who joined these organizations underwent specialized training when they joined to increase their odds of survival as much as possible.
The Order's role was like going against the heavens. When it was established, it was out of dire circumstances that threatened the continent's survival, especially with outside forces dipping their toes into the chaos.
When the Order was established, it was essentially created as a stop-gap measure. Their role essentially was to be some tree that would provide shade and nutrients to the seedlings below who were struggling to survive against the elements. Even though it wasn't mentioned, most organizations in the southern continent did not think the Order would last or become what it became, nor did they want it to.
What they needed was for it to buy them enough time by acting as the binding line to the different organizations around the continent. It was the binder that acted as a show of a unified force to the outside world. To give the continent enough time to recover and once the recovery was done, those seedlings would grow and steal away the tree's nutrients and dry it out.
But that tree that they saw as nothing more than a fertilizer for their growth, that tree they had written off as an object created solely for their use, whose existence was to be based on their whims, had grown vastly beyond their expectations to the point it could now dictate their existence.
It had grown so vastly out of their control that they could not see its top, as it seemed to cover even the radiance of the sun. That tree now decided what nutrients would get to which seedling, and if one acted out of line, it would be pulled out.
The Order was valued at the beginning when the continent could barely hang on, but as time went by, and the Order grew beyond their expectations, that sentiment turned to fear and dissidence. The Order was now no longer seen as a protector of the continent but as a thief who was stealing the fortunes of the continent from the rest, stifling them as a result.
Such thoughts were shared by a few in the beginning but now, it had spread like burning wildfire. Right now you could visit an inn and hear bards tell the tales of how glorious the continent was before the Order was established, about how the continent was filled with dragons among men and phoenixes among women, spiritual herbs grew like cabbages that even mortals could eat their fill every day, middle-grade spirit stones filled the roadside like common rocks, villages filled with the same auspicious qi as prosperous empires, where the road of cultivation was smoother and wider.
They even touted the southern continent as the strongest continent among the five continents which was why it could incite their greed to the point they dared come to their backyard traversing across the dangerous waters that separated their continents.
The reason why those foreign organizations felt confident to venture this far into their continent was glossed over or intentionally ignored altogether, with the primary focus being on the southern continent's 'glory days' and how since the Order was established, those days were lost and the continent was no longer prosperous.
Some even purported that the Order's existence had angered the heavens, and the continent was being punished because of it and would continue to be punished until the Order was completely removed.
'For the sake of returning the continent to its glory days, the Order had to be disbanded, or removed by force if they refused' was the slogan being spread, and slowly supporters of that slogan had been growing in number from well-established organizations that were using it as aknife to gut the Order, to the young organizations and mortals who were sold the dream that the reason they're not soaring in the skies like dragons is because of the Order.
The bloodied past that almost wrecked the continent apart was slowly being pasted over by the tales of the Order being the enemy. The irony was, because of the Order's presence and the support it provided through various means such as enrollment slots at the Insitute, countless organizations were able to rise from it, and it was these young organizations that were easily swayed by those tales.
Their history was too short for them to have been present during those dark days. They had no idea how bad it was making it easier for them to sold on the dream of the prosperous era. As for the organizations that were present during that era, they had already recovered and no longer needed the Order, in fact, the Order was a thorn in their end as its presence restricted them. They would have long swallowed these young organizations had the Order not been presented.
The Order now had growing enemies everywhere both from the past and the present, and with that growing enmity, the Order was extremely sensitive to the survival of its members. Every loss was treated as that sword hanging above its head coming ever so closer which was why the loss of the two inquisitors from the Deer Mountain Range hit every member so hard whether they knew it or not, or why they went out of their way to celebrate whenever they graduated from the Institute or recently when he got promoted to the palace realm. Every improvement strengthens the Order against the sword above them.
"But just because she is about to reach the domain realm, is that really a sufficient reason for her to be given this post? Ideally, her being stationed at the headquarters makes so much sense as it usually happens.."wondered Yang Qing
Seemingly reading Yang Qing's thoughts, Xu Biya said,
"The other reason we chose her for the role is she's a spirit beast herself and she struck a friendship with a spirit beast from there when she was searching for a culprit that had escaped in the green fog region. The search lasted for two years and in that time she ended up striking a partnership with a metal moon tornado lynx. They saved each other's lives in there.
She was all too willing to take up the post because of it. With the whole thing that happened with the obsidian serpent couple, because of her background and history, its easier for her to accept the conclusion we came to than most. With how fragile things are, she is definitely the best for the role.."
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