Daily life of a cultivation judge

After enjoying the uplifting thrashing of the new students at the Institute, Yang Qing resumed his normal schedule in the following days.

At his mother's insistence that had a few meal bribes mixed in, Yang Qing 'reluctantly' ended up staying at his parent's house for almost a week. He had to be filial and did not do it for the tantalizing meals his mother cooked up in the week he was there to the point he contemplated maybe moving back for a month or two would not be a bad thing.

However, in the end, his sense of independence won the fight. He moved back to his abode after a week but not without promising his mother that for the next month, he would pass by once a month to which Yang Qing could only helplessly agree to it when he saw her well-concealed worry as she made the plea.

Even without her plea, he would still have had to make regular visits back home because of his father who had now become a regular instead of the absentee he had been.

Just as his grandfather had suggested, Yang Qing and his father documented almost every change within Yang Qing since his physique went into a hibernated state.

Yang Qing was deeply awed by his father's meticulousness and the way in which he conducted their study. It was well-structured and methodical. Every documentation, finding, and hypothesis seemed to be targeting or building toward something. Slowly by slowly the fog of his physique was being parted with help from his father and at some point, his brother got involved too, as he brought other secondary materials such as ancient scrolls that contained ideas that cultivators around the world across different time periods had about the peerless jade physique.

Things seemed to be improving all round. Even though there were no tangible benefits yet, he could intuitively feel he was making progress when it came to understanding his physique, and in its absence, just as Ren Shu and the Valley Master suggested, he was making improvements in his understanding of the medical arts they had taught him, and also his own understanding of the Universal Duality Of The Myriad Worlds Cultivation art was improving gradually. 

His physique had helped him in the conduct of these arts, it added an almost instinctual advantage toward it kind of like how cats could climb on trees without knowing how they did it, but with his physique in hibernation, he focused on understanding the details he may have overlooked due to the presence of his physique that may have filled that gap for him, and the harvests were great. 

When his physique was fully restored, he knew he would experience a qualitative jump in the execution of his abilities, and it wasn't only that, he could already feel the barrier leading to the second stage of the palace realm was already loose and would not take much effort for him to take that leap. However, he had held off for a number of reasons one of which was he wasn't at 100% yet with his physique in an almost comatose state, and he still had the mental demons from the Ice Emerald Sect to deal with.

When it came to his meetings with the saint grade tree, the Auspicious Grove, the experience with the brook of clarity was still taxing, however, the increase in the time given to him for its restorative properties was a welcomed bonus. The Auspicious Grove had increased the time from two hours to four hours. The two hours were used to relax his mind from the harrowing experience of reliving every detail of what happened at the Ice Emerald Sect, while the additional two hours, Yang Qing took advantage of the mental relaxation it brought him to meditate and delve deeper into his cultivation art, and also his Dao.

He still remembered the question Green Cocoon had asked him on what he thought Vitality was, which was the Dao he used to break through to the palace realm. With mind-clearing effects from the colorful aurora mist produced by the brook that also boosted his cognitive abilities, he could spare some time toward that end.

Ma Yuan's current state also managed to free him of some of the guilt-ridden mental burdens he had. Ma Yuan seemed to have some life in him as he worked in Yang Qing's backyard. After his sessions with Ma Ling, he would come straight to Yang Qing's abode. Yang Qing used his merit points to redeem all kinds of seedlings from the regular treasure vault of the Order, which he then gave to Ma Yuan. In addition, he even permanently redeemed a few herbology books that had a complete step-by-step guide on how to care for those seedlings to maturity, which he gave to Ma Yuan to study.

Ma Yuan was all over the moon when he got those books. He constantly pored through the books with an infatuated gaze like that of a kid who had gotten the gift he/she most wanted. He barely slept because of it. 

Of course, in the early days when he came over to Yang Qing's abode, an accident happened to Ma Yuan. Starlight who had been wholly absorbed into refining the wisdom pearl Yang Qing had given it, ignoring everything outside, finally took a break, and when it did, it discovered Ma Yuan, gleefully examining Yang Qing's backyard. The moment it saw him, despite being familiar with Ma Yuan as they both became acquainted with Yang Qing on the same day and place, it still attacked him. It could still remember Yang Qing had asked it to be his guard, and thus it acted, faithfully executing its commands.

A fight broke out between the two and luckily Ma Yuan still had his core formation body and his rich combat experience as a rogue cultivator to rely on so he was able to hang on long enough for Ellie the cloud-swallowing kite, to save him.

She had come over in typical fashion to maintain her weekly routine of 'requisitioning' a reasonable amount of fish from Yang Qing's pond when she knew he would not be around. She did not want to disturb him, she was reasonable and considerate that way.

When she arrived, she saw Ma Yuan barely hanging on, she ignored it as she had priorities. Nothing came before food, not Ma Yuan and not even her own well-being. It was a creed that Feng Xin and Yang Qing had ingrained into her ever since she was a young chic, and it was a creed she has upheld to this day, and she wasn't about to break it.

It was only when she was done picking the finest of fish from the school did, she stepped in to save Ma Yuan. She slapped the Starlight crab around before she knocked it unconscious, otherwise knowing how obstinate the crab was, it would follow her to the ends of the earth if left awake. She left soon after.