The dinner at the Thousand Flavors restaurant extended well past midnight. Luckily since the restaurant was operated by cultivators, it was always open and had no closing hours, which worked well with the brutal schedule of judges, inquisitors, and other staff of the Order.
Wei Ying, Zhang Qingee's friend, ended up taking a much longer time to arrive. The one hour she had given, turned into three.
When they saw she was taking longer than usual, Dai Chen decided to invite Mo Liwei over. They could fill in both the two judges on the case, and with Yang Qing's inquisitors having already arrived, they had more than enough information to present to Mo Liwei for him to decide whether he wanted to be on the panel or not.
Mo Liwei agreed and around two hours in he had already arrived at the restaurant.
He was from the same class as Dai Chen and was one of their top performers, though if one looked at him they would not think like that. He was short, and had a small build and a regular-looking face, with a head of black hair that was given the most minimal of attention.
When Yang Qing saw him, he thought to himself
Now this is the true picture of an Order employee...
Other than the robes that were smoothened out thanks to the self-straightening arrays and other quality materials used in making the robe, Mo Liwei looked absolutely haggard. The kind someone who had been pulling all-nighters and had little sleep for over a week would get.
His eyes were droopy, his shoulders slumped, his walking style seemed like it took all he had to drag his feet, and every movement was slow and labored.
This was the true picture of someone who has been 'well taken care of' by the Order. Every last bit of his qi and soul essence had been thoroughly exploited.
Yang Qing couldn't help but wonder how much work would a palace realm cultivator in the third stage have to do to end up in the same state Mo Liwei was in.
It was only when they started discussing the case, did Yang Qing get an inkling as to the reason for his current state. Judges despite the station, were all meticulous in their working, but when it came to Mo Liwei he took it to another level.
Feng Xin and the rest felt like they were in an inquisition, and they were the ones being put on trial because of the millions of questions Mo Liwei fired at them, and some of them were pretty inane things like the weather that day, if dogs were barking that night and what the weather was that day.
By the time Mo Liwei was done, Yang Qing and the rest looked exactly like him, luckily Wei Ying came in and managed to save them from the long torture. She was more free-spirited in comparison.
She had black wavy hair, a beautiful face to boot that was sunny and filled with energy, and she had a lively personality to match it. She was all laughing and had a knack for bringing out hilarious stories that never seemed to stop.
With her addition to the group, whatever damage Mo Liwei had done to them was quickly healed, and they managed to get through the first discussion smoothly before they agreed to do the official deliberation the following day.
...
Yang Qing's courtroom, Morning
"We are here today to decide on the matter concerning the Ice Emerald Sect..."
Within Yang Qing's courtroom, the podium's look had changed. On a normal day, it would have been him at the seat, however at this moment the semi-circular podium had elongated to a rectangular shape, and behind the podium were five people.
Seated from the left going to the right were; Mo Lingwei, Dai Chen, Yang Qing, Zhang Qingge, and lastly finishing of the group was Wei Ying.
In front of them was Yang Qing's team; Su Jinjing, Feng Xin, Lu Mei, and Zheng Hu.
Along with them were the roaming inquisitors Yu Gen and Xia Ting.
Even though the courtroom was well lit it had a grim darkness to it, especially with the austere expressions being shared all around.
"When the case started it was a kidnapping case of a cultivator by the name of Ma Yuan. He is a fifth-stage core formation cultivator that I stumbled onto during my evaluations as he was trying to commit suicide in a yin-rich lake.
When I found him, he had his cultivation base crippled and the remnant energy left in his body showed that the technique used on him was a pure yin-based art.
Yu Gen, can you please present that fragment.." said Yang Qing.
Yu Gen produced a prism dark blue shard which he then placed on his right side of the podium.
Yang Qing heaved a sigh of relief and even sent a nod of gratitude Yu Gen's way. Yu Gen had chosen Wei Ying's end instead of Mo Liwei. With this they had avoided the chance of Mo Liwei over-analyzing the shard, delaying the chance for the others to do so.
"That was the shard produced by his attacker and also the person responsible for crippling him.
As per Ma Yuan's statement, seven years ago someone broke into his abode, actually not broke, I think it would be more apt to say they were let in.
Seven years ago, while he, his wife, and daughter were having dinner in their abode in Rapid Twin County, an intruder got into their home. Said intruder seems to have a connection with his wife, Shun Fei.
Shun Fei and Ma Yuan met 18 years ago in some mysterious realm, and as per Ma Yuan's statement, she was a seventh-stage core formation expert skilled with formation arrays.
The couple settled in Leek Valley Town in the Mandrake province of the Qian Kingdom. They lived there for a few years before suddenly his wife suggested that they move.
From this incident, we can infer that she was on the run from something or someone. In every place that they have lived since then, she was the one to choose the locations.
From Leek Valley they moved to Monk's Birch which is in the territory of the Wild Birch sect, then they moved to Fairymoss town of the Green Hollow Sect, after that they moved to Flowing Boar County of the Bandicoot Kingdom, then to Yellow Flame County of the Burning Flame Sect before finally settling in Rapid Twin County which is under the control of the Lunar Bug Sect.
Seven years ago, was when the intruder got into their home and attacked them kidnapping Ma Yuan's wife and daughter in the process.
I had to use a mind-clearing incense stick to help Ma Yuan recollect the details of the day since it seemed like the memories pertaining to that day had been tampered with purposefully.
The memories showed that Ma Yuan's wife, Shun Fei knew the perpetrator as she purposefully disarmed the arrays in their home to let the attacker in. From the events that followed it doesn't seem she anticipated that Ma Yuan would get crippled or her daughter getting snatched up in the process.
Before they were attacked, Shun Fei seemed to have been aware that the attacker would be making her way into their home, as she was the one who tampered with Ma Yuan's memory before the intruder came in.
The tampering was a single targetted seal that was meant to distort Ma Yuan's memory of the attacker.
Shun Fei seemed to have done this as a form of protection for him. Seeing how she willingly let the attacker into her home with no fight and had been running away moving from place to place over the years, we can surmise whoever she was running from, she thought she was no match for them.
Whoever they were, they were strong enough to make a seventh-stage core formation expert run away from them or abandon all thoughts of fighting.
This is why I think she placed that seal on Ma Yuan, it was to protect his life by eliminating any clues he could use to track them.
However, her plan was ultimately flawed because the moment the attacker came into their home, Ma Yuan attacked, and he ended up defeated within a few seconds and a smoothly shattered dantian.
The attacker was clearly skilled as Ma Yuan despite being in the fifth stage core formation realm, he had a gold body, so his foundations were solid. Any cultivator that could effortlessly defeat him within a few seconds and smoothly shatter his dantian in the process has to at least be someone at the peak of the core formation realm, with extremely sturdy foundations.
As for the identity of the attacker, this is the image Ma Yuan showed and described..." Yang Qing said as he used his qi to depict the image of a cold white-haired young lady with breathtaking beauty.
"The attacker was well on her way to kill him, but his wife stepped in and pleaded for his life, and in the process she let slip a name before she hurriedly stopped herself. The name she said was 'Yao' which we can presume has some tie to the attacker.
The fact that Ma Yuan is alive shows that she listened which shows some relation with Ma Yuan's wife. However, in exchange for sparing his wife, she asked that along with Shun Fei coming back with her, their daughter had to come along too, which Shun Fei vehemently refused to the point of attacking her.
But, as per the memories of Ma Yuan, the moment Shun Fei tried to attack, a seal appeared on her glabella that knocked her out. This woman took her and Ma Yuan's daughter, called Ma Ling, who was eight years old at the time and should now be fifteen.
I enlisted the Wind Gliding Mercenary Escorts for help in tracking the woman using the shard, along with entrusting the matter to Yu Gen and Xia Ting who did an excellent job of it.
Assuming Shun Fei was running from someone, then the locations she chose to live at had to be places where she thought whoever she was running from would have a hard time tracking her. It had to have little to zero of their presence.
I had Zheng Hu look into the areas they lived in and correlate the powers in charge of those locations and see if they had detrimental relations with any sect or organization that was skilled in yin-based techniques.
Yu Gen and the rest managed to trace it back to the Ice Emerald Sect, however along with discovering their identity, they also discovered that the sect over the past 40,000 years has massacred close to a million people, kidnapped children from their families while they killed their families.
In addition, there have been a few sects, and families that have been destroyed. On paper, they were destroyed by bandit raids or fiendish cultivators.
However, if you look closely, those organizations had one thing in common, they all had a part of the Frozen Serenity Scripture, and the Ice Emerald Sect had a hand in their destruction.
This is just but a bit of the long nefarious deeds that they have dug up.
I'll let Yu Gen take over, and then I hope we can all decide on what is the suitable punishment for the Ice Emerald Sect depending on the findings. This is no longer just a kidnapping case."
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