Daily life of a cultivation judge



"I'll settle the matter of the Silver Blade sect with the review committee on my way out..

Oh, and the branch chief of the Yellow plains county said you should pay her what you owe."

Yang Qing who had been secretly grinning to himself about how he had a nice start in the palace courts and may actually finish his cases for the day before lunch reached, flinched at Yu Gen's statement.

He remembered throwing the mess with the Scion of the Golden Bamboo Pavilion on her lap when he was doing his evaluations.

In exchange for her temporarily grabbing hold of his mess, he promised a few treasures.

With the examination schedule and how long it run, he had forgotten all about it. 

"Did she say anything else?" Yang Qing cautiously asked. 

He hoped the Yellow Plains county branch chief was not cut from the same cloth as Assistant Director Jun Pei of the internal logistics division, who would tack on blood-draining fines by the second with a kind smile on her face.

"She did manage to dig up a few things on your behalf, so she hopes you show additional appreciation later. 

Most of the information she dug up concerns Lin Duyi himself and some of the things he has done within the Red Maple Empire and other affiliate regions associated with the Golden Bamboo Pavillion.

She has released the previous emperor Duan Hou since it seems he had no part in the matters concerning Lin Duyi, though he may have known and chose to turn a blind eye to it, which we can't necessarily convict him for, so she decided to let him go, but the other person you sent along with them, Yao De, the branch head of the Golden Bamboo Pavilion stationed in Red Maple Empire, was found culpable and had direct involvement in all of the cover-ups within Red Maple Empire.

She sent the results of the investigations along with both of them. I have the case files with me, which I want to follow up on after this. I think in the next day or so, we should have everything we need to charge them and bring them before court.

Also, she did manage to dig up a few things about some of the aristocratic families within the Red Maple Empire, especially the Mo family. They seem to be in bed with the blood-fiend group known as the Grim Scavengers.

The Grim Scavengers have been active in the area, especially on the border between the Red Maple Empire and the Five Clover Sect. 

At the moment it's unknown if the royal family and the other families are in bed with them, but she feels it's less likely for the royal family to take that risk, and as far as the Mo family goes, she has met with their patriarch a few times. And while he is ambitious, he is not reckless enough to get in bed with blood-fiend cultivators. It's unlikely he knows of the involvement of some of his family members with the Grim Scavengers.

She is investigating how widespread tentacles of the Grim Scavengers have spread within the Red Maple Empire and the parties involved.  Because of personal reasons, she will handle the Grim Scavengers, but the families in bed with them, she will leave them up to you.."

"Personal reasons? " muttered Yang Qing in wonder.

"Senior Yu Gen do you know about the Grim Scavengers?"

There were too many fiendish organizations within the Southern Continent for Yang Qing to keep track of. The ones he knew off were those who had a certain level of renown and infamy around the continent or ones the Order had direct confrontation with such as the Dark Helminth Ghost sect.

He had planned to brush up his knowledge on a few more of them, especially with him being assigned an intelligence network. Having knowledge of dark organizations around the continent could help him in ensuring the survivability of the members of his network.

"The little I know about them is they are fairly new and very ambitious. It's rumored that they have a domain expert supporting them who was a former deacon of the Crimson Tide.

I don't know if that's true or maybe just some propaganda to gain more members but what I can confirm is they have some ability to them seeing how they have been able to escape senior Jin Niu's traps while causing a bit of disturbance on both the Red Maple Empire and the Five Clover Kingdom.

It's because of them that Senior Jin Niu was sent there in the first place. Over the past 50 years, she has been rooting them out, and about a decade ago one of the inquisitors under her fell into one of the traps set by them and ended up with a corrupted body and qi due to the ghost sarcophagus blood poison used on him by a senior member of the Grim Scavengers.

The inquisitor in question is alive, but he had to have his body destroyed and cultivation dissipated to be healed completely..." 

Yu Gen and Yang Qing sighed simultaneously. 

Destroying a body was easy, but reforming one was a complicated process and would require astronomical resources. Then came the period of familiarizing yourself with the body, and then retraining from the beginning.

All the progress one made in their cultivation would be gone just like that, and one would have to start over from scratch. Reforming a body would take a decade at least, retaining to align yourself with the body would take another five years before they can start cultivating again.

"What stage had they reached?" 

"Ninth stage of the core formation realm but losing the physique is the regrettable part. He had the Spring Twilight physique which made him highly coveted by the Medicine Valley due to its purification and rejuvination nature.

He had been sent to the Yellow Plains County branch to help with miasma build-up there from corpse poison, and it was also part of his combat training before he finally settled in the Medicine Valley.

Sadly just two years before he was due back, that happened..."

A short somber silence ensued. While a body could be restored, natural physiques couldn't. What he'd get was just a stronger-than-normal body because of the materials used in reforming his body, but when it came to the Spring Twilight physique, that was gone forever.

Yang Qing could now understand why the branch chief had taken the matter of the Grim Scavengers personally. With such a loss, as the head of the place, she felt responsible for what happened to that Order employee.

The cultivator's journey may have potentially been ended. Even if their body got restored, and their cultivation base too, there was also the mental aspect of it. Losing something intrinsic to you such as your natural physique had a cost to it.

He couldn't help but wonder about his peerless jade physique. If circumstances were to force him to lose his body, would he be able to recultivate again and acquire another peerless jade physique, or does anyone only have one shot at it, and if by some luck he succeded would he end up with the Yin Yang jade bones or would it be something else.

Yang Qing sighed as he decided to abandon those ominous thoughts.

Yu Gen left moments later and in came Xia Ting with the parties involved in the next case.

At the lead was a middle-aged man with short, well-combed black hair and had amber eyes and a small moustache, and white robes with the emblem of a plate that had a golden duck on it.  He was a second-stage palace realm expert. 

The last person was a young lady who looked to be in her late twenties. She had curly pink cherry blossom hair tied at the top with butterfly clips. She had chubby rosy cheeks which added a sense of vibrancy and liveliness to her/ Her eyes were round and limpid and she wore light blue robes that had white flower embroidery around at the corner of the sleeves.

Though her robes looked beautiful and new, when it came to quality as per Yang Qing's estimation it couldn't have cost more than 100 low-grade spirit stones. The materials and the arrays on the robe were at most mid-tier earth-grade materials.

While the arrays inscribed on the robes at the bottom of the barrel too. The defensive array could at most block two or three attacks from a middle-stage foundation establishment realm cultivator before they broke.

The arrays may as well not be there since the lady in pink hair was in the sixth stage of the core formation realm. She could sleep soundly and a middle-stage foundation establishment cultivator could punch her or hack her with an earth-grade sword and she wouldn't feel a thing.

"Maybe she bought it for the design.." thought Yang Qing as he prepared himself for the start of the case.