Daily life of a cultivation judge

Luo Meili handed Yang Qing a few talismans she was given by the inquisitor of the Green Sparrow Branch. Within those talismans was the recording talisman given to the disciple before him to record the happenings of the sect, while the others contained information surrounding the Striding Falcon Sect.

Yang Qing handed Luo Meili the talisman he had been given that had been given earlier by administrator Mo Guang which contained a summary version of events surrounding the case.

The young disciple who was left standing by himself nervously looked around as he kept his arms close to his body. Extreme nervousness and unease washed over him as he kept rubbing his sweaty palms on his robes in fear of dirtying the courtroom.

He still couldn't believe he was here or that he had actually followed through on something he and other countless outer sect disciples in the same circumstances as him had fantasized about.

The whole week from the moment he made contact with the Order to finally being here, all felt so surreal to him. In the past week, he even suspected he was hallucinating from some sort of illness borne from his draining daily routine.

Suspecting himself of having hallucinations wasn't some far-fetched notion as he had seen it happen countless times over to other outer sect disciples whose minds broke owing to the pressures, struggles, and torments they were subjected to. Their minds couldn't take it anymore and they just snapped.

Every time he left his shack, he would come across such instances, like today before he left the sect under the guise of completing a sect mission, he met one of the newer disciples who had cracked. He found said disciple paying respects to two blades of grass and from the conversation he heard in passing, it seemed like the disciple thought those blades of grass were his parents, and he was busy bragging to them how he would make a name for himself.

The young disciple left the place in a hurry lest he find himself sucked in. He could feel his mind was slowly sipping away too, which was what prompted him to risk reaching out to the Order despite how far away it was from his sect, or the risks involved.

Though he may not admit it outwardly and even to himself, when he decided to make the trip earlier in the week, his greatest hope wasn't that he would reach the Order and they would hear him out, but it was that some cultivator out there would find him an eyesore and put him out of his misery. He made the trip half hoping to die in transit and after he reached the branch and gave his report, some part of him entertained the earlier thought when he thought he would be going back to the place that taught him what a living hell was like. But luckily or unluckily someone from the branch served as his protector back and when today arrived the same was waiting for him.

"I really have lost it, if even now some part of me is still hoping to die by some bloodthirsty cultivator's blade.." he wryly thought to himself.

..

It didn't take long for Yang Qing to go through the information contained in those talismans in its entirety. He had to admit the Green Sparrow Branch had done a thorough investigation of Striding Falcon Sect. Any information he could think of was contained there including those he couldn't.

Their history, the relationship between the higher-ups both within and outside the sect, any debts they have, secret partnerships especially among the elders and outside factions, down to even their hobbies, nothing was left out.

Just the information was enough for him to make a solid judgment on the case.

The sect itself was created 37,000 years ago by a rogue adventurer of the Horizon Odyssey Guild. The adventurer used all his accumulated merit points to redeem an incomplete blue-grade cultivation art from the repository of the guild, that cultivation art was the starry skies of the striding falcon. A cultivation art known for its agility and its practitioners use their bodies as weapons. It had excellent palm and claw arts that worked in tandem with the movement technique.

The founder wasn't particularly talented despite cultivating tirelessly he only ever reached the early stage of the core formation realm and with a red core at that. However, the reason despite a lacking talent he decided to go for a top-tier cultivation art that he would never even reach the emergent stage was because he had found a talented disciple during his adventures.

He and a few other friends from the guild decided to create the sect, though it was a sect, it felt more like a clan because of how close-knit they were when it started. The adventurers and the founder poured all they had into the founder's disciple. He was like their legacy, and that disciple's talent really shone as she reached the middle stages of the core formation realm when she was just twenty exceeding her master who even at 3,000 years old was still an early-stage core formation expert.

The found and the few friends he formed the sect with soon died with gratified smiles as when they left she had already reached the seventh stage of the core formation realm, and the sect they had just started as a house for her had grown into something they didn't expect and with her at the helm it was bound to reach greater heights.

Years passed as the sect slowly grew in fame and repute with her at the helm. She earned the title ' the graceful falcon' because of her skills with the cultivation art, and her looks and graceful temperament. 

Eventually, she reached the quasi-palace stage. Things were looking up for the sect, she was about to become the first palace realm expert, and the sect gained a few more talents who had the same level of talent as her, and one of them was the retired supreme elder, Liu Kang. 

The sect seemed like it would only continue rising, however, tragedy struck. The same fame that accompanied that disciple, was the same fame that doomed her. She drew countless suitors over the years however because of her abilities and reputation, none were too bothered when she rejected them all, until one, some lascivious prince of a rank 3 empire that wasn't too far from them.

That prince didn't handle rejection too well and eventually resorted to using underhanded means such as attempting to use the forces of the empire to kidnap her, which all ended in failure, and eventually, the prince got killed in the process which then drew the ire of the empire.

Since the disciple couldn't flee because the sect would be implicated, she sold all three-quarters of the treasures they had accumulated and used it to exchange for anything that could help her fight against the empire.

It wasn't easy to find places with the means of helping a quasi-palace stage expert gain a measure of abilities that would help her fight against three palace realm experts, but lucky for her, she did, and it was the one place that was the impetus for the sect coming up, the Horizon Odyssey Guild.