Daily life of a cultivation judge

"He was there that day, the day the Shu family was supposedly annihilated by blood-fiend cultivators. 

He liked meeting up with Shu Wen every two days and that night was one of their scheduled meetups. He always used a coat made from the silk produced by a shadow cloak spider. It was a gift he received from the royal family of the Blue Spear kingdom. 

With it, he could move undetected from those in the core formation realm since it isolated the user from being detected by either the physical senses or the spiritual senses. 

He liked to use it to avoid the extra attention of those from the Shu family or Tang family if they knew he had come out to meet Shu Wen.

That night, he thought it would just be like every other night where he would get to share snow jasmine tea, and warm rice wine with Shu Wen like they always did as they envisioned the heights they would reach as cultivators and other things but there was a major alteration to his expected plans.

When he went that night all he saw was a grey-haired lady in her mid-forties with a mole under her left eye waving her palm which produced a bluish-black flame that sucked the life out of every member of the Shu family.

She floated above the clan grounds, coldly watching those corpses dry out to her flames, and in her hands was Shu Wen clasped by the neck.

She had tiny purple and blue flowers growing from her body and within ten minutes she disintegrated into dust while the purple and blue flowers combined together to form a white fruit that was in the shape of an egg that had butterfly wings on its surface.

My great great grandfather at the time was swallowed by fear and shock at what he was seeing that he couldn't even move. He stood rooted as he watched Shu Wen transform into dust, and her clan get drained of their very life essence to the last member.

He couldn't move, talk, breathe, or blink, all he could do was bear silent witness to what happened.

After the grey-haired lady had gotten what she wanted, she drew the blood-refining array in the middle of the Shu family grounds and left.

It was only after five hours had passed did my great-great grandfather regain his sense of self and mobility.

The first thing he did was to run to the Shu clan grounds. However, he was too weak to step into the Shu family grounds. The remnant energy left from the technique that lady used, was too much for his body to bear, even after five hours had passed, and the majority of the energy had dissipated.

He wanted to rush over and tell his father, the founder what happened, but in the run over, he had some time to analyze the details of what he saw. A single person had killed over 500 people with a single spell and they didn't even have enough time to scream. Their abilities were definitely higher than the founder, then there was the single fact that the cultivator seemed to be floating by herself. 

Even though at the time he wasn't sure if she did so with an artifact or by herself, it definitely meant they were no simple person and to err on the side of caution my great-great grandfather immediately assumed they were a palace realm cultivator.

The founder was a second-stage core formation expert, there was no way he would be able to handle someone in the Palace realm, and neither could the Blue Spear Kingdom's royal family. He thus decided to keep the matter of what he had seen to himself, lest he invite calamity to his clan, and when the opportunity to join the Celestial Harmony presented itself, he quickly jumped at it as a way to protect himself.

He wasn't sure if that grey-haired female cultivator had noticed him or not. When he came back to the clan, every night since then he half expected to be attacked along with the clan members. That they too would be engulfed in that blue-black flame which though was a flame, it might as well have been the frozen tundra in flame form. 

He said that flame had a chill that even put the chill of death to shame..." Tang Wenyan said with a shiver in his tone almost as if he was there.

"Even without the founder's suggestion to join the Celestial Harmony Sect, he had already decided to join them to protect his life. At the time he didn't care about the clan, or even seeking vengeance for Shu Wen, all he had was deep-seated fear. 

The Celestial Harmony sect was the best place he could run off to for safety since it had palace realm cultivators of its own. 

When he reached there, he went all out in the entrance test so he could stand out to at least draw the attention of the palace realm cultivators of the sect, which he did, and it was his master.

But sadly even with the protection offered by the sect, he couldn't escape the demons that haunted him from that night.." 

A soft sigh escaped his lips.

"Even as a core formation expert, he was still afraid, tormented, and maddened by the events of that night. He was even afraid to talk about it, which is why he never told his master, afraid if he revealed what he saw that day, it would spell his death.

It was only when he was nearing his death, did he finally mention it, and he did it to one person only, his son, my great-grandfather. Along with it, he left a decree to him which was to be passed along the family line until it was met.

The decree was to find the identity of that woman and seek justice for the Shu clan and Shu Wen. But the prerequisite was to have sufficient strength to do so. If we didn't then, we were to keep the evidence of what happened then alive until the day someone in our line was strong enough to do it.

Thus, the decree has always been passed from father to son. My father did so to me, and I did so to my son.

I think along with the fear, my great great grandfather was unable to forgive himself for how he acted. So leaving the decree was his way of atoning to Shu Wen and her family for not being able to act back then.."