"Pardon me, the Chief Librarian is the owner of this place?" asked Yang Qing.
"Yes, this place is his," answered Vice Warden Shao An.
"He is also the true warden of this place, however because of his disinterest of being in the place, another person had to be appointed to hold the position in his place.
But since only En Sang is the only one who can fully control this grotto, the current warden can only be considered a nominal warden."
Yang Qing found the whole matter curious. The chief librarian has always been a mercurial figure within the Order. No one knew his true face, gender, or even race. He would go around transforming into a different person all the time, and make appearances in random places. It could be at the students' mess hall at the institute or a party filled with high-ranking figures like Dean Zhu Lao's welcome ceremony.
Yang Qing had always kind of admired his seemingly free-spirited and mysterious nature. He never seemed to have a set work schedule and could go wherever he wanted to.
Hearing that someone like him held two posts came as a surprise to him, and none of those posts was small. The chief librarian was the head of the largest library in the whole of the Order, while the warden was the topmost figure in a place that locked some of the most infamous cultivators in the Southern Continent.
As Yang Qing wondered about their mysterious chief librarian, he suddenly recalled Vice Warden Shao An's statement.
Yang Qing turned his head and counted the mountains. He repeated this action about two times and finally turned his head.
"You said 11 mountains but aren't they 12?" asked Yang Qing.
"The mountains are 11 and the place we are right now isn't a mountain but something made by En Sang. Everything you have seen; from the mountain itself to the river and the spirit beasts, every single thing here except for this tree was formed from En Sang's bloodline trait," said Vice Warden Shao An as he pointed toward the short golden red tree they were seated under.
Yang Qing's jaws were hanging loosely, wondering what bloodline trait could create a whole massive mountain and a functioning ecosystem. He even scanned the area once more for good measure.
It was still a mountain.
"There's no need to wonder about him, he is a monster through and through even by the Order's standards. Now let's get to the matter at hand…" said Vice Warden Shao An pulling Yang Qing's cascading thoughts back.
"As you've been already told you will be handling the evaluation and rehabilitation of a few prisoners from here. The exact number is seven. You will stick with those seven for the next four years, in which you will be giving an evaluation report of their conduct, annually.
That report will be shared with Requiem, the judicial committee, and the spirit council. However, you only need to give it to the judicial committee and they will do the rest. Someone from the review committee will also be working alongside you.
You will get the various list of projects from them and the daily supervision will also be done by them. Your part will be to conduct random check-ins every year.
As for how many times you need to do the check-ins, well you can decide that for yourself, as long as it's sufficient enough for you to make an accurate judgment about them.
The judgment criterion is pretty simple. It's to find out if they're pardonable and redeemable. Every year you will give points in accordance to your judgment of their character and your reasoning needs to be clear to us, so be thorough.
Whatever you need to do to find out their true characters, do it. Be as creative as you can in testing them. At the end of the four years whatever conclusion you come to will either have them released, sent back here permanently, or executed. So be very mindful of your assessment and don't make it lightly. The four-year period can be extended since four years is the basic bare minimum for the programme. With your instruction, more years can be added.
Also, I think I should tell you, the seven cultivators you get for the programme and every other cultivator after that will be your responsibility. If they get pardoned and cause a tragedy years later it will be up to you to clean it up regardless of whether you will be in the palace courts or the domain courts or in the Spirit council or judicial committee.
Whichever station you will be in, doesn't matter. Every prisoner you get from this moment on will be your responsibility for life. So do keep that in mind," Vice Warden Shao An said with an austere look.
"I will," Yang Qing solemnly said.
"Okay. Now for the prisoners. You will need to have at least one palace realm cultivator in your list of seven, as for the remaining six it is up to you. You can mix them up or you can single out one cultivation base, it's all up to you.
After our talk last time, I went ahead and created a list for you. In there, you will find thirty names. Four are in the palace realm, twelve are in the core formation realm, eight are in the foundation establishment realm and the remaining six are in the qi refinement realm.
You can go and look at them in depth later and decide which seven you'd like," said Shao An as he handed Yang Qing a white jade talisman.
"You will find their bios, the crimes they committed and why they did it, along with that you will also find the thoughts of different guards on the cultivator themselves which are based on the interactions they have with them both directly and indirectly. It should help paint a picture of who you are dealing with," said Vice Warden Shao An.
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