Daily life of a cultivation judge

After apologizing, she moved to answer Yang Qing's question.

"Yes, it's more than enough," she said with a smile. "Though, if you don't mind—it'll only take a couple of minutes—could you excuse me for a bit? I need to hand this over to Madame Cai Shan. For an item of this level she needs to be made aware of it as the supervisor," she added in an apologetic tone.

"No, it's no problem. I can wait," said Yang Qing with an easygoing smile. "I'll wait here," he added, already having decided where to sit: one of the futons beside a round table near a window, positioned to the front left of him.

Sun Biya nodded appreciatively and left as soon as Yang Qing settled into his seat.

Yang Qing smiled leisurely, glancing around with curiosity. The fourth floor was deceptively larger than it appeared from the outside, especially in terms of length, which seemed to stretch close to 300 meters across.

It seemed like he was alone on the floor, but Yang Qing had an uncanny feeling that he wasn't. He sensed faint fluctuations, likely from activated formations coming from a few of the tables. And if his guess was right, which he felt it likely was, then those tables or other pieces of furniture were likely fitted with isolation arrays.

It was a common feature in most establishments of this stature. All the restaurants he'd been to—especially their VIP areas—had similar arrays installed.

Yang Qing looked around for a bit, admiring the layout and aesthetics of the floor before his attention settled once more on the most captivating thing here: the live painting.

He peered into it, allowing himself to feel its depth. The words he had read earlier were no longer present—it had since transformed into the sun that now lit the painting, likely the chief suspect behind its present liveliness. But even without the words being visible, Yang Qing remembered them clearly—not because of his sharp memory as a Palace Realm expert, but because of the profound effect they'd had on him. He had resonated with them deeply.

Yang Qing chuckled lightly as he continued to gaze at the painting. The source of the laugh wasn't the artwork, but Sun Biya's earlier reaction. He hadn't missed that beaming look she gave—the one that plainly exposed some of her inner thoughts and desires.

I can't believe she thought I was a painter, Yang Qing mused with amusement as he shook his head. She hadn't said it outright, but with how obvious she'd been in both expression and comment, how could he not guess what she was thinking—and how wildly mistaken she'd been?

While he would shamelessly admit to anyone who cared to listen that he was a man of many talents—a fact he once tried to prove years ago as a first-year at the Institute by taking nearly every class available just to stand out— to which life decided to add humility to his lessons. He ended up being terrible at more than a few of them. Among the things he discovered he wasn't good at was drawing.

He could maybe sketch a decent banana, or a few scattered pebbles. And when it came to painting, he might manage some passable grass, the sun, or the moon—but that was about as far as his talents in that particular area could take him.

So, his ability to see through the painting had nothing to do with any skill as a painter. And as far as being an appreciator of art went, while he didn't dislike it—and wouldn't mind having a few pieces at his abode to spruce up the place—his feelings were lukewarm at best.

He was fine with it if he had it, and just as fine without it.

So, when it came to this painting—the one he currently couldn't tear his eyes away from—his reaction had nothing to do with appreciation. It had everything to do with resonance. It had struck a chord within him.

Whoever drew that painting had likely carried the same heavy feelings he did when they made it—that special feeling of trudging with difficulty toward hope, on a path waist-deep in the mud of regret, surrounded by voices trying to convince you that what you're walking toward might not even be there. And yet, you keep walking, stubbornly pressing on.

It was the same thing he was doing with Ma Yuan and his daughter—hoping that, somehow, his meddling might help mend what was lost, even as he wrestled with the regret of failing to save the one greatest thing they had lost: his wife, her mother.

At the same time, he worried—wondered maybe—whether what he was doing with the father and daughter was truly helping, or if it was already a lost cause. Haunted by their past, could they ever truly heal? Or worse, what if it worked—only to fail later, if they ended up meeting the same fate as Ma Yuan's wife?

Yang Qing could feel the doubt in that painting—the worry, the regret—but also the determination to keep moving forward along the path they had already chosen.

He saw through the painting as quickly as he did because he and whoever had drawn it resonated with each other through the shared weight they carried.

As Yang Qing mulled over the words he had read, trying to see if the painting might offer deeper insight into them, his concentration broke when Sun Biya returned—with Cai Shan in tow.

Though the latter hid it well, Yang Qing could still tell she shared the same reaction to the jade slip that Sun Biya had. That made him briefly wonder if he should have gone with a different research topic—perhaps something in herbology. Maybe a study on how to grow or harvest certain rare spiritual herbs, like heart lotus seeds.

He didn't actively practice herbology, but his physique and his purple-grade art gave him an unnatural—and frankly unfair—advantage in it.

Where certain plants required high skill to harvest—either because they were too delicate or too difficult to handle—Yang Qing, more often than not, could simply walk up to them and pluck them. Some even seemed to offer themselves to him, like the heart lotus plants, which were notorious for being elusive to the point of even being fatal toward anyone they deemed an intruder, yet readily revealed their presence to Yang Qing due to the attraction they felt toward his Yin Yang Peerless Jade Nature Bones Physique.

He could have easily shared the characteristics he'd observed from them, as few ever got the chance to observe such plants up close. And given how precious heart lotus plants were—especially their seeds, which could quell heart demons and refine the spirit—he was sure the information would've met the value threshold.

And perhaps… it would've drawn less extreme reactions from the two staff members.

"What's done is done," he thought with a sigh.

Yang Qing had known his insights into body refinement were valuable. But even with that awareness, his background had skewed his judgment when it came to just how valuable they truly were.

He was born into a clan whose over 20,000 years of existence was dedicated solely to uncovering the secrets and mysteries of body refinement. The report he had just handed over was the sort of thing you could casually find in his clan's archives; his grandfather and the other Yang clan elders had written even deeper and more comprehensive ones.

And then there was the Order. Being part of it meant he was constantly surrounded by people with special physiques, which had dulled his sense of how rare such individuals really were. Not many across the continent could casually say they were friends with two people who had peerless jade physiques—or shared drinks daily with someone carrying a mythical bloodline.

All of that had led to his misjudgment.