Daily life of a cultivation judge

"What am I doing wrong?" muttered Yang Qing in confusion.

He had done the whole process with careful attention, analyzing and controlling every minuscule detail of the described process.

He just couldn't understand where the problem was. There was no rhyme or reason as the whole process seemed to collapse at the onset and he didn't know why.

Unwilling to throw in the towel just yet, he spent the next couple of minutes replaying and analyzing every minute detail of the first two processes and correlating it with what he did to try and see if there was anything he might have overlooked.

He went through everything with a fine comb but still could not spot whatever mistake he had made.

"I have two more tries, whether I succeed or fail, fifteen tries is all I will do today.." said Yang Qing, using those words to control and firm himself.

If he didn't, he was afraid he would be completely consumed in exploring the art, and before he knew it a month would have passed by without him knowing. It was safer to set a deadline and work with it.

"There must be something I'm overlooking here, something with the memory or is it the spiritual essence?...should I alter its form into the cerulean moth, maybe that might enable it to absorb the memory easier..

But will that really work? It wasn't mentioned and for some reason, I have this nagging feeling, the reason I'm failing is something overt..."

Yang Qing mulled over countless ideas before he finally decided to try and alter the shape of the cleansed spiritual essence and try and see if the structure was the issue of the failure, if that didn't work, he had a couple of other ideas he wanted to try, but with only one more try left after this one, he could only choose one.

With a plan already set, Yang Qing meditated for half an hour to get himself in optimal condition before he began the process over again.

He split a sliver of his spiritual essence and went about cleansing it into a blank state. Though he still took some time to cleanse it completely, the process felt relatively easier after the previous two successes.

After he was done with the erasure, Yang Qing took a deep breath and regulated his breathing as he cautiously started molding the fragile-looking spiritual essence in his hands.

He didn't outrightly transform it into a butterfly as what he was doing was ad hoc. Changing the shape of his spiritual essence wasn't mentioned in the process and this was him just taking a shot in the dark to try and see if something would come of it, though, if he were being perfectly honest, he didn't feel like the odds of it succeeding were that high.

But with little to work with, he could only wing it and act on his guesses, and if it failed, at least he would have eliminated shape as a factor in the failure.

Molding his spiritual essence wasn't something unfamiliar to him, as most cultivators did it when leaving their spiritual imprints on something or when refining an artifact or treasure of some sort and even in the creation of talismans.

When it came to manipulating his spiritual essence, Yang Qing felt he had a fair bit of experience with it. After he broke through to the palace realm and decided to give himself a well-deserved break that landed him in trouble with Lei Weiyuan later, he spent the duration of that time playing around with talisman refinement.

Three months, for three months he was holed up eating, sleeping, giggling at the thought he had pulled one over Lei Weiyuan and experimenting with talismans. While he couldn't call himself a master talisman refiner, he had improved and gotten pretty good at it, and as a consequence, his skills, when it came to the manipulation of spiritual essence, had grown along with it, which was one of the prerequisites for talisman refinement.

Since Yang Qing couldn't outwardly tell how the spiritual essence in his hands differed from a regular spiritual essence, he used normal shapes such as circles, squares, and rectangles as a baseline to test its durability and malleability.

Yang Qing let out a soft smile of relief when he saw it effortlessly transforming into different shapes without dissipating. After a slight pause, he moved on to complex shapes, till finally when he saw it was malleable he finally weaved into the shape of the cerulean moth.

"Now is the time of the moment of truth.." said Yang Qing as he exhaled, letting out turbid air.

Just like before, he calmed his heart, centered his attention on the memory he wanted to use, and gently and carefully poured it into his moth-shaped spiritual essence. His palace sense was deployed to its maximum enveloping that spiritual essence and its interaction with his memory.

Yang Qing couldn't help when he detected the signs of dissipation when the memory came into contact with the essence. Even though outwardly it looked okay, via his palace sense he could already see it had failed, and a millisecond later it did.

"Shape doesn't seem to be the issue.." Yang Qing said with a slight sigh of frustration.

"Now for the last try...What do I go with?"

Yang Qing's brow contorted together with almost ten minutes passing by without him moving before finally he let out a sigh of exasperation followed by a stretch of his body as he said,

"The lazy carefree route it is.. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, well that's it. I have a lot of time to play around with it when I go back.. I still have a party to go to."

As he said that, Yang Qing breathed in and out, exhaling his fatigue and frustration from within his body as he welcomed a cleansing of relief.

Yang Qing took a seat and began the process over again. He split his spiritual essence and swiftly moved on to cleansing it of its entire makeup. He wasn't sure if it was because of how at ease he was with the thought of the part spurring him on or the carefree relief brought by him not attaching much importance to whether it succeeded or not as it was his last attempt nonetheless, but the process was much much smoother than the previous four times.

After the cleansing was complete, Yang Qing didn't waste a second as he moved on to the next step. At this point, he was even hoping it would fail so he would go see if the ingredients he had told Administrator Mo Guang to procure had arrived.

Still wearing the same carefree demeanor, he channeled his emotions as he did before, only this time, he wasn't wearing the look of some monk who was as still as an unperturbed lake, this time emotions were showing on his face as he closed his eyes.

On his face, one could see glee, relief, fear, excitement, and anticipation. Yang Qing didn't open his eyes, as he channeled his emotions into the crystal-clear spiritual essence. The spiritual essence shivered like it was about to dissipate like last time, however, this time, Yang Qing's hand produced a blue mist filled with mots of light like little starlights that seemed to quell the excitement of the spiritual essence, and slowly permeated into it, transforming its look into an ocean blue color with tiny mots of lights.

Yang Qing's eyes were still closed, almost as if his mind was in another realm while the spiritual essence in his palm was completely transformed and looked like a tiny patch of ocean that reflected the sky on its surface. When the last of the blue mist dissolved into it, it contorted like clay being molded, and transformed, from its formless shape, into a delicate blue-

colored moth.

With its form complete, it started flying around excitedly as it left a blue mist-colored trail as that exuded an aura of freedom.

Without even looking up, Yang Qing could already tell he had succeeded. He slowly opened his eyes with a smile, meeting the excited blue-colored moth that dashed straight at him, heading straight for his nose before making a beeline for his hair where it did circles, turns, and twists.

Yang Qing couldn't help but chuckle as he sensed its rambunctious nature and its purity. He stretched his right index finger and as if on cue the blue moth flew from above his head toward the stretched-out index finger and perched itself on top of it.

"So that was what I was missing.." muttered Yang Qing as he admired the crystal blue moth gently flapping its wings. Within its wings, he could see an image of a younger version of himself. Chubby cheeks, innocence written all over with a hint of mischief, curiosity, excitement, fear, and expectation.

"I can't believe it's been 10 years since then.." Yang Qing wistfully said with a nostalgic sigh escaping his lips as he took in the image of him at thirteen years old when he had left home, with a rush of countless emotions flooding through him as he imagined what lay next for him.

"Things may have not gone exactly as I envisioned, but it's more than what we hoped for little Yang Qing.." he said with asmile.

"Ten years from now, I wonder what that Yang Qing will tell me.." he added as he saw the crystal blue moth flap its wings, fly above him to the roof above, and disappear.

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