Daily life of a cultivation judge

Bringing his attention back, Yang Qing resumed his investigation into the rune. The more he peered into it, the more enamored he became.

Although he enjoyed studying formation arrays, his interest in them could be said to pale in comparison to his passion for breaking down cultivation arts or delving into long-lost histories. However, even he couldn't deny that the rune before him had captivated him the way an incomplete cultivation art with an ancient lineage would.

The intricacies woven into it were so masterful that Yang Qing felt as if he were seeing a world within a world, and indeed, it was.

The rune was made of no more than 30 strokes, but each of those strokes seemed to carry a world of its own.

Yang Qing's eyes gleamed with excitement as he began unraveling the mysteries of the rune one stroke at a time. All those years spent deciphering formation arrays, runes, and glyphs back in his office were finally bearing fruit. They had done nothing to help him when he needed them most, but now, his heart brimmed with gratification. His efforts back then hadn't been wasted.

There was nothing more despairing than facing a wall you could never scale, no matter how much thought or effort you poured into it, especially when that wall had countless eyes watching your every move.

Safe to say, after over a hundred failures and punishments, Yang Qing despite his staunch will and stubbornness, had thrown in the towel on ever finding a loophole in the arrays of his courtroom. The despair and disappointment hit so hard that he even began questioning his own abilities.

Was he a fake talent, or was he just dumb when it came to formation arrays?

Turns out, it was neither.

Those years of stubbornly groping in the dark hadn't been wasted like he'd thought. Now, he could finally see the fruits of his suffering as he unlocked the mysteries of the rune before him.

His earlier assumptions proved to be correct. The rune was indeed meant for entrapment and isolation. Its functionality mirrored that of a formation diagram with the rune serving as the diagram while the cicada served as the main node, and the nebulous yin qi served as the fuel. Though he hadn't yet probed into it, Yang Qing was confident the spiritual imprint embedded in the cicada's soul was the controller of the formation.

Otherwise, why have the spiritual imprint?

"It's beautiful," Yang Qing said with a heartfelt sigh.

From its design to how it functioned, it felt like a rune tailor-made with the cicada in mind. It was likely selected as the target, or perhaps she was chosen as the node, precisely because of how well the rune played on her attributes. Its framework aligned with her abilities, while the nebulous yin qi and the spiritual imprint filled in whatever she lacked.

The ninefold natural yin array cicada was a walking formation whose forte lay in sensory deception, while the rune's exact purpose was entrapment and isolation. Achieving said goals was usually grounded in catching someone off guard. And what better way to accomplish both than by fooling the senses?

The rune leveraged the cicada's innate abilities to enhance its functions, while the nebulous yin qi and the spiritual imprint further amplified those effects. After all, if his guess was right and Jiang Hao—or Bai Chen—had indeed disappeared here, then no matter how skilled the ninefold natural yin array cicada was, it would have still needed external help to trap the two of them.

Its abilities, impressive as they were, simply weren't enough. Not with it being only at the quasi-palace stage.

Jiang Hao might have been at the same level as the cicada, and in a direct confrontation, it might have stood a chance at trapping him, but only under the assumption that Jiang Hao didn't rely on any external items.

Considering what he was transporting—or even just his responsibilities as an escort supervisor—there was no way Jiang Hao would engage direct, relying only on his bare abilities. He would use every resource at his disposal. And according to Duan Ting's and Liu Ying's testimonies, both confirmed that Jiang Hao had a monarch-grade artifact on him during that commission.

Alone, as skilled as it was, there was no way the cicada could have pulled off entrapping Jiang Hao—not with that monarch-grade artifact in his possession. The cicada would have needed an external item as well, and that's where the spiritual imprint and the nebulous yin qi came in.

That rune, in formation terms, was already at the middle tier of blue grade—at least by Yang Qing's humble estimation. Relying solely on the cicada's abilities, there was no way she could have activated it. But with the aid of a spiritual imprint and a generous infusion of nebulous yin qi, what had once been impossible became entirely feasible.

The spiritual imprint granted its owner both anonymity and control. They could decide when and how to strike, with the cicada and the rune serving as conduits for the attack, and the nebulous yin qi acting as fuel. All of it had been intricately woven into the cicada's body and soul.

Yang Qing already suspected that whoever had done this possessed a powerful soul, given they'd managed to pull this off on the cicada without her noticing. But now, seeing the level of ingenuity used in tampering with her soul, it was clear they not only had a powerful soul, but the skill and understanding to match.

Using his spell, Yang Qing continued combing through the rune, trying to extract every last bit of information he could. Only when he felt he had exhausted all he could did his attention finally shift away from the rune, drifting over to the spiritual imprint.

That one he had saved for last, and intentionally so. The spiritual imprint was interlinked with the rune, and it had taken Yang Qing considerable effort and care to isolate it. If he hadn't, and accidentally triggered the imprint, the rune would almost certainly have been erased as a result.

Actually, not almost. Yang Qing was convinced it would be erased. He had seen clear signs pointing to that outcome embedded within the rune—a failsafe, so to speak, woven into its core circuits.

While Yang Qing had seen through much of the rune's functions, that didn't mean he felt confident enough to tamper with it, especially not against the person who had created it. So the best he could do was lay down safeguards of his own to counter the other party's mechanisms. And to do that, he couldn't interact with the spiritual imprint. Not until his preparations were complete.

Since he had begun investigating the rune, nearly three and a half hours had passed, and of that, close to two hours had gone into laying down those safeguards. The remainder had been spent dissecting the rune itself.

Now, satisfied that the measures he'd put in place were sufficient, Yang Qing gently cupped the cicada with both hands instead of just one. He exhaled lightly, his expression turning somber as his gaze settled on the spiritual imprint.

The cicada's body, now covered in the white web-like sigil, was filled with glowing white-blue stars. Where earlier only half her body had been marked with lit star runes, they now dotted her entire body, leaving only four unlit among the hundreds.

Those four unlit stars were located precisely where the spiritual imprint resided—at the bridge between the thorax and the head of the cicada.

"Now then, for the final part," Yang Qing said softly.