Daily life of a cultivation judge

What an interesting cicada, thought Yang Qing, wearing an amused smile.

He might not have known the exact thoughts running through the cicada's mind, but based on its current behavior—and how closely it mirrored his own whenever he faced Old Fiend Lei—he could definitely guess the gist of it.

A shameless coward understood another shameless coward best.As such, with that understanding, he knew that no matter what he said to ease the cicada's worries, it wouldn't help. In fact, it would likely make things worse and only deepen its suspicions and apprehension toward him.

He even shelved the idea of tempting it with his qi for now.

His ploy to secure a cheap free formation might have to be put on hold, but not all was lost when it came to his other goals.

Knowing just how deeply cowardly the ninefold natural yin array cicada was actually made certain things easier to manage.

There was nothing a coward feared more than an unknown variable, especially if that variable was inside their so-called safe space.

As terrified of him as the cicada was, its fear was currently split between two sources. One side was directed at him while the other was at the nebulous yin qi.

At first, when Yang Qing filtered the qi out of its attack, all the cicada felt toward it was desire—a strong, instinctual urge to consume it, yet another trait Yang Qing was intimately familiar with.

But now, after Yang Qing clarified the source of the nebulous yin qi, the cicada's expression began to shift.

The voracious appetite it initially had for the qi gave way to confusion, then doubt.And now, that doubt was slowly graduating into fear.

Now all it needs is just another gentle nudge to tip it over, Yang Qing mused, a scheming glint flashing in his eyes.

He had already planted the seeds with his earlier comment when he mentioned that the cicada had traces of the nebulous yin qi on its body.

He could tell the moment he said it, the cicada had become flustered. That fluster had since begun morphing into solid fear, and Yang Qing could see the shift clearly.

Now, all he had to do was add a little more fuel to the fire.

"You still can't sense it in you, can you?" he said, pointing at the cicada's tiny body.

His actions forced the cicada to rein in its scattered thoughts.

While it had been engaging with him, it had also been sneakily trying to confirm his claim. But the process had been sluggish, given that most of its attention had been tied up guarding against Yang Qing eating it.

Not that it could actually do anything to avoid that fate other than maybe grovel shamelessly to be spared, given the vast gulf in their abilities.

With Yang Qing's reminder, the cicada refocused, determined to find out whether what he'd said was true—or if it was just some cruel mind game he was playing before he ate her, like how cats slowly tortured their prey before finally pouncing.

She was leaning more and more toward the latter.

Given the appetite she had sensed from his body, who knew how many eating rituals such a monstrous hunger carried?

So she conducted a preliminary, cursory check and found nothing.

Still suspicious, she followed up with a deeper search. It was slower, but much more thorough. Her body was small, and her soul was powerful, making it easy to comb through every corner of her being.

And yet, she still found nothing.

That should have been a relief, but it wasn't.

She chalked it up to one of Yang Qing's mind games.

Maybe he was just toying with her, torturing her to bring out a specific flavor. Some creatures claimed fear-seasoned meat tasted better.

But even as she tried to brush the thought away, a small voice in her mind refused to be silenced.

What if it wasn't a game?What if the qi really was inside her?

After all, that nebulous yin qi, as he'd called it, carried traces of her essence.

The possibility behind those questions terrified her more than the thought of ending up in Yang Qing's stomach.

Because if it were true…It meant something foreign had embedded itself deep within her, and she hadn't even noticed.

Not during the fight. Not during her preliminary scan. Not even now, when she was actively looking for it.

That thought unsettled her to her core because it meant there were invisible strings wrapped around her body, and she had no idea who put them there… or why.

How could she not be frightened by the thought, especially given her experience?

As a spirit beast with a powerful soul and a high proficiency in soul-related spells and techniques, she understood all too well how one could manipulate and affect the soul, especially that of other spirit beasts whose strength tended to lie more in their physical bodies than their souls.

There was a time, not long after she had moved into a new habitat, when she encountered a purple-eyed wind-corroding scythe monkey at the core formation realm.

It was a spirit beast known for its terrifying agility, sharp senses, and deadly attack power. A single swing of its claw generated a corrosive, poisonous wind. Its terrifying attacking capabilities, matched up with its sharp reflexes, made it a thorny opponent to face off against.

But this was exactly the type of opponent the cicada liked. It was a spirit beast whose forte lay in perception, stealth, and subtlety. Such spirit beasts prided themselves on their senses, and senses were exactly what she excelled at manipulating.

She spent three years subtly influencing and overriding the monkey's perceptions,

slowly weaving illusions into its awareness, before it slowly started influencing parts of its soul that were closely tied to those very senses.

Bit by bit, she subtly changed what it saw and tricked it into believing that it had discovered a jade spirit magnolia that was nearing maturity, whose properties just so happened to be exactly what the monkey needed to break through its bottleneck.

For three years, the cicada kept up the ruse, tricking the monkey into believing the jade spirit magnolia was steadily nearing maturity.

And once it did, its famed spirit-cleansing and blood-purifying properties would be there for the taking, ready to pave the monkey's way to the late stage of the core formation realm and maybe, just maybe, even the palace realm.

But it was all a hoax. There was no jade spirit magnolia, but the monkey didn't know that.

So when the supposed day of maturity finally came, the "magnolia" got stolen right out from under its nose.

Or so it believed.

The cicada had made sure of that.

Not only did she vanish the imaginary treasure, but she also left behind subtle trails of its supposed theft, all leading straight to the den of another core formation spirit beast, which, unlike the magnolia, was very real.

Said spirit beast was a blue flame python.

It had the same strength as the monkey, and the cicada ensured the monkey "discovered" that it was the python who had stolen its treasure.

Under normal circumstances, spirit beasts like those two, being of similar strength, would avoid each other. They'd maintain distance, both in terms of where their territories were and their regions of activity so as to avoid any confrontations.

Yes, spirit beasts were violent and bloodthirsty, but they were sensible when the situation called for it. They knew when to pick a fight, and more importantly, when not to, especially when there was nothing to gain from it and a lot to lose.

So under normal conditions, the purple-eyed wind corroding scythe monkey and the blue-flamed python would avoid confrontations with one another. But thanks to the cicada's manipulation, the monkey wasn't thinking straight. Its chance at the palace realm had just been taken from it, right when it was already within sight.

So how would it react when it found the culprit responsible for severing that path? Its reaction would be an unhinged and unbridled violence, and that's exactly what happened.

The purple-eyed wind corroding scythe monkey attacked the blue-flamed python with an unquenchable vengeance. It completely disregarded its own life and struck with everything it had, which in turn forced the hand of the blue-flamed python to react in kind, because if it didn't, it would die.

The fight was a brutal one that echoed throughout the forest. In the end, both spirit beasts ended up grievously wounded, to the point they couldn't even move, leaving them open for the cicada to take advantage of. It killed them both, which was no harder than moving its antennas, given how fatally injured they were.

It took their treasures, their beast cores—and from the blue-flamed python, it even excavated the embryonic form of the wisdom pearl it had been forming.

Up until its final breath, the purple-eyed wind corroding scythe monkey had no idea its strings were being pulled by an invisible hand or that it had died for something that never even existed.

The cicada had pulled that same move over a thousand times, which was why right now… its heart couldn't help but run cold with fear at the thought that it too had become one of those unwitting puppets.