Daily life of a cultivation judge

To the Zhang clan, as long as you were strong enough to throw a fist, you were old enough to be on the battlefield.

From the record Yang Qing saw, they had a few six-year-olds who joined the battle fronts a few years back. At six years old he was busy thinking of ways to give his grandfather and the other elders diarrhea while the Zhang clan had six-year-olds joining a battlefront with another kingdom. A battleground filled with hardened killers, where even being a veteran of war counted for nothing as you could easily die in the next second same as a rookie.

The calm state the eight were showing was only to be expected. One of the instructors who had been involved in the large-scale wars that the Order had been in in the early years after it was founded, back then he had been a measly early-stage core formation expert fighting against countless enemies both hidden and open.

Night and day, he was in never-ending combat and the only way he managed to maintain his sanity through it all was by considering his life already forfeit throughout the whole period.

"Live as the dead, and you will thrive with the dead.." he always said. Yang Qing had a feeling the eight Zhang clan members had the same thoughts too. They already counted themselves among the dead on the battlefield and being here in the courtroom, it was just another battlefield to them, just wearing a different name and setting, but the stakes were all the same.

Since the moment they were born, they must have already been raised to consider their lives forfeit and have lived that way ever since. Why should they cower now?

..

Pushing his thoughts aside, Yang Qing went on with the case.

"Zhang Li, Zhang Wen, Zhang Dou, Zhang Xi, Zhang Wang, Zhang Luo, Zhang Wei, and Zhang Lixuang, you both stand accused of engaging in taboo matters that violet the charter on cultivation society conduct.

The taboo matter you are accused of engaging in is the practice of blood fiend arts. We have multiple witness account testimonies that attest to it. How you have been consuming the blood essence of your opponents to grow your strength.

At the discretion of those witnesses, I will be replaying their accounts. They will not be giving it in person, as they were afraid of reprisal after.

In addition, I have with me here a 36-petal sentinel sacred flame orchid and heaven light opal..." Yang Qing said as he presented two objects in the palms of both his hands.

One of those objects was encased in a transparent crystal rectangular jade box. Within that jade box was a single stalk orchid which from stalk to the petals was pristine white with a resplendent wavy light of gold mixed within. Even encased, one could feel the overwhelming energy of purity that emanated from it.

On his left palm was also another object whose presence and look was just as transcendent and ephemeral as the orchid. The object on Yang Qing's hand was an opal that was deep blue with mots of stars swirling within it. Looking at it, gave one the illusion that Yang Qing was holding a portion of the night sky in his palm. Even though the opal was the size of a mango, it contained the expansive presence of a full night sky. It looked like it could stretch for millions and millions of kilometers.

Both objects were ascendant-grade treasures that had been loaned to him for purposes of the case by the internal logistics department. They could sniff out even a tiny smidge of the presence of blood fiend arts on someone.

Both treasures could forcibly draw out the essence of blood-

fiend arts out of those who practiced them. The 36 petal sentinel orchid ignited in a sacred flame whenever a blood fiend cultivator was close and the number of petals ignited will be in respect to the concentration of blood fiend essence in said cultivator.

From what Yang Qing knew of the flower, igniting 16 petals and above meant one had consumed the blood essence of at least a million people. The tenth finger of the scarlet blood ghost hands syndicate had ignited 22 petals when he was tested.

When it came to the heaven light opal, when in the presence of a blood fiend cultivator, the opal would transform into a dim red color as the stars transform into red lightning whose shade of color will get darker and thicker depending on how dense the blood essence is on the blood fiend cultivator.

If it's extreme, like that of the tenth finger, the opal would detonate and transform into a blood-red cloud with a black-red lightning brewing within it that contained the same calamitous power as a tribulation lightning. From what Yang Qing had heard, that lightning contained the same lethality as the tribulation lightning of breaking through to the soul formation realm.

Despite the inherent risks paused by those two treasures on blood fiend cultivators, Yang Qing dared take them out because they were the best at exposing them, and it also wasn't that lethal to those with a low concentration of the blood fiend essence, which was the case with the eight Zhang clan members.

Even without using both treasures, Yang Qing's yin yang nature jade physique granted him the same ability as those treasures. Be it blood fiend cultivators, corpse cultivators, or poison cultivators, he could always sniff them out just as easily and even their levels were something he intrinsically knew. He had a natural sensitivity to the aspects of life, and he was especially sensitive to things that profaned it.

The slaughter cloak surrounding the eight clan members was different from that of Zhang Guiren, in that the latter was purer, it was in line with the great order of the world but for the former, theirs was impure and that impurity was brought by the fiend arts they practiced. But despite the eight practicing the art,the impure concentration wasn't a lot.

If Yang Qing were to guess, they had at most 100 bodies on each of them or less. That number was significantly less than what he would normally find on most blood-fiend cultivators. Their number was low, especially when one considered the eight clan members lived on a battlefield where they had countless opportunities to raise that figure.