Daily life of a cultivation judge

Yang Qing pursed his lips as he mulled over the matter, sinking deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole.

He dug through the archives of his memory, sifting through everything he had learned since first dipping his toe into the cultivation world, reviewing every scrap of information—no matter how slight—related to mythical creatures. Most of it came from his time after joining the Order at thirteen.

As for the years before, when he fought for his life at the old Yang Clan stomping grounds, he chose to ignore them. They were among the darkest of his life, and while his clan excelled in body cultivation, they were sorely lacking in other areas—including some aspects of basic common sense. It was a painful truth he came to realize only after striking out on his own and beginning his new life at the Order.

The clan's knowledge of mythical creatures amounted to little more than the ramblings of madmen obsessed with the body refinement realm. Since that path relied on specialized diets and alchemical baths—both requiring ingredients imbued with spiritual qi, or the vigor of life as his clan called it—it went without saying that most of those resources came from parts of spirit beasts and spiritual plants.

His clan, as obsessed as they were with the body refinement realm, had an innovative spirit that bordered on recklessly insane. As such, they came up with countless experimental recipes for the realm, and among those, a few contained parts from mythical creatures. They seemed to have a particular preference for dragons and the white tiger, as the majority of those recipes featured body parts or ingredients from these two mythical races.

Whether those recipes would actually work was anyone's guess, since they had never handled ingredients from mythical creatures before. The most valuable ingredient they had ever worked with was a gallbladder from a lava-scaled python in the seventh stage of the core formation realm. That, however, didn't stop them from harboring daring ambitions of using mythical-level ingredients.

Yang Qing often found himself wondering how his clan had managed to survive this long without some catastrophe befalling them, given their reckless nature. Other clans could live their entire lives cautiously towing the line, never making waves, and still end up destroyed—yet his clan boldly fashioned recipes from phoenix bone marrow, dragon saliva, dragon blood, and a host of other parts, or from white tiger testicles and innards, the tail of a black tortoise, and who knows what else. And somehow, here they were, still kicking, growing even bolder and more audacious—especially with the Order's funding.

Pushing memories of his clan to the back of his mind, he focused instead on all he had learned about the mythical races since coming to the Order. He'd picked up a fair bit of knowledge over the years, and having a roommate who was one—yet didn't behave like one—only motivated him to learn more, if only to prove it was a fraud.

Sifting through those memories, he realized that, other than the celestial nesting weaver, he had never actually seen or interacted with any other mythical creature or race. He had, however, met quite a few individuals with partial bloodlines belonging to them—case in point, Dai Chen, who carried the blood of a Hou. And Dai Chen wasn't the only one.

The Order counted among its members a substantial number of cultivators with some connection to mythical races. Even his two horses carried a trace of dragon blood, and more recently, during his rank evaluations (punishment from old fiend Lei), he had encountered two brothers in Summerfield Kingdom who possessed a thin bloodline from a treefolk tribe.

Seeing and interacting with people who had bloodlines related to mythical races may have been what contributed to his dulled his senses so he never really wondered whether some mythical races were missing or not. After all, after meeting so many cultivators—human and spirit beast alike—who had their bloodlines in varying degrees, in his subconscious, seeing them was the same as seeing the parent bloodline behind them.

Seeing Dai Chen, for instance, meant that somewhere out there, a great-great-grandfather or grandmother of his was a pure-blooded Hou roaming about. Every cultivator he met felt like proof that those races were still out there, living and reproducing. But now…

Mmh, it can't be all of them that are missing, right? wondered Yang Qing as he replayed various conversations he had had over the years about the matter. Going through them, he couldn't recall anyone explicitly saying they were missing… well, except for the recent one that Vice Palace Master Ren Shu and Vice Warden Shao An touched on. That had been during their discussion about Bai Chen's case, when the topic of the Aurora Dark Winter Jade Spruce treefolk tribe and the Dark Yin Water Oak tribe came up.

The subject had arisen because of the nebulous yin qi in Bai Chen's soul lamp, which the two soul formation experts said was the favored type of qi for those two treefolk tribes—especially the former, who could not survive without it to the point that they could die during their formative years if they didn't have it.

The two soul formation experts had said that members of the Aurora Dark Winter Jade Spruce tribe hadn't been seen in quite some time, their numbers dwindling due to the low supply of nebulous yin qi.

The absence of this particular mythical race wasn't some dark secret—it was something that could be explained, both environmentally and physiologically. If rivers dried up, it wouldn't be surprising to see the fish disappear.

Not seeing members of the Aurora Dark Winter Jade Spruce tribe for years was understandable. Nebulous yin qi wasn't a readily available form of qi; it required very specific conditions to form. On that note, while the two soul formation experts had said the tribe hadn't been seen, they also left the door open to the possibility that they were still out there, likely hiding away. After all, despite their mythical status as a race, they had been persecuted by cultivators who used them like hunting dogs to sniff out locations rich in yin energy or yin-related treasures, given their sensitivity to it.

Yang Qing agreed with that assessment, and if he was honest, he felt even more certain about it now than he did back then—largely because of the nebulous yin qi he had discovered in the natural yin array cicada. Nebulous yin qi was hard to find and even harder to use, yet he had found a substantial amount of it within the cicada's soul, cleverly used to power an array.