Daily life of a cultivation judge

The founder's disciple traded almost all of the treasures that they had in the sect, leaving the sect only with the barest amount with the incomplete blue-grade art the starry skies of the striding falcon. When that wasn't enough she redeemed the merit points that her founder's friends from the guild had left.

With all of that added up she was able to buy the palace path enlightenment pill. This was a top-tier blue-grade pill that was rumored to be able to temporarily boost a cultivator's realm to the palace stage, however, as wonderous as it sounded it had several restrictions. For one, it could only work on someone who was already at the peak of the core formation realm and had a rudimentary sense of their dao, and second, the boost was temporary. Rumor was it only worked for three hours.

After the effects of the pill subside, the user will be left paralyzed and unconscious for several months to a year. The severity of the side effects was usually dependent on the foundations of the consumer. The greater the foundations, the less severe and time needed to recuperate.

The palace path enlightenment pill worked by using the cultivator's own understanding of the dao as fuel to build a pseudo-palace realm within them using their own foundations. Since the palace realm wasn't the real thing its abilities paled to the real thing, however, since its base mechanism worked off of the foundation of the consumer, those with firm foundations were able to make the most out of it.

The founder's disciple who had solid foundations and a pseudo-gold core was one such person. 

The Palace Path enlightenment pill was a truly wonderful pill that could only be found within the walls of the Horizon Odyssey Guild. Its ingredients and how it even was created were completely unknown, except maybe to the guild itself, and despite the abilities or effects it created, unlike taboo arts, the users of the pill could easily survive its side effects.

If one were to draw a negative from it was, while it used the foundations of the user to work, the palace realm it builds was not a true one, because if it was, it would trigger a tribulation automatically. The palace realm built could be considered a tainted palace realm. This became a problem to the user since after the effects of the pills wore off, they would still have vivid and complete memories of how they formed the pseudo palace, which would be a form of corruption or veil for them as that memory would veer them off their true path. 

Cultivators who had a high chance of reaching the palace realm may be rendered incapable of reaching the palace realm after consuming the pill. That road created by the pill becomes imprinted on their soul and becomes so real to them that they are unable to remember their real path which hinders their progress forward. Removing that imprint requires considerable effort similar to the ones cultivators make to purge themselves of their internal demons. 

This was why despite its wonderous effects, cultivators with any chance of reaching the palace realm would try to avoid the pill if they could as it had the potential of cutting off any chance they had of ever reaching the palace realm.

However despite the founder's disciple knowing this particular issue she still decided to take the pill because of the predicament she and her sect were in. She was the strongest member of the sect with only a quasi-palace realm strength when their enemy was an empire with three palace realm experts even though none of them had reached the middle stages.

With such odds stacked against her, she had little to no choice but to opt for the pill. With the effects of the pill already giving her the strength of a palace realm expert, she used every means she had to sneak into the royal palace of the empire and targetted the three palace realm experts of the empire of which one was the grandfather of the prince she had just killed.

Because of her foundations, she was able to kill one of the palace realm experts who had just broken through not too long ago, however, though she was successful, the attack which she had hoped would go as a silent assassination snowballed into a full frontal confrontation that alerted the remaining two palace realm experts in the end.

Encircled by the two left with no choice, she used a taboo art that fossilized the two palace realm experts. The art created a bone ash storm that swallowed everything within a 500-meter radius. Anything touched by a single speck of the ash would turn into dry clay. The ash also had a corrosive effect that would come into play once the subject had been fossilized. It worked on both the living and the nonliving, it did not differentiate between the one who cast the technique and the one who was cast on.

The two palace realm experts were immediately immobilized but not before one of them used a one last ditch effort to hack the founder's disciple's body in two as she was fossilizing. 

The two palace realm experts immediately turned into statues though they were still alive, all the art did was render them immobile for a certain period of time. The taboo art was not able to kill them even with its corrosive abilities, however, it was able to incapacitate them for 370 years, which was the amount of time the art would remain active before it dissipated. This would give her sect enough time for them to escape.

News of what happened at the royal palace broke, spreading far and wide sending shockwaves to all who knew her, especially her sect, and her allies.

The founder had expected her sect would escape, but instead, they chose to use the time she provided to grow as strong as possible in order to avenge her.

When the time was almost up, one of her disciples, the retired supreme elder, Liu Kang managed to reach the palace realm. Though he managed to reach it, he ended up sacrificing his foundations to reach it that fast.