The skies above the mist trembled and turned with unstoppable momentum at the flick of the scholarly man's finger.
He faced a particular direction like his gaze could pierce through space and void.
...
Ruins of the Ice Emerald Sect
Yang Qing and the rest used whatever strength they had left to move their heads and smile at each other as a form of reassurance and comfort that at least they wouldn't be dying alone. They would have each other for company.
Yang Qing was oddly surprised by his sense of calmness with death almost upon him and unavoidable.
He had spent all his life trying to avoid it, drove himself half mad thinking all sorts of ways he could die, and painfully at that, which led him to the doors of the Order and later to the courtrooms as a judge, which ensured he would be under the protection of the sturdy walls of the Order, and he would never meet any danger with powerful seniors above him to hold up the skies should it fall.
But things always have a way of going in their own direction no matter how one plans. In Yang Qing's case, his job as a judge did keep him out of the front lines most of the time, Of course in exchange he was worked to death, and when he was at the institute he became intimately familiar with the sensation of death every day thanks to the driven efforts of the instructors there.
But all in all, he was generally safe, and the times he was out of the headquarters on field duty such as promotions, it was relatively uneventful. This most recent one was the most activity he had seen, with the attack from a member of the Dark Ghost Helminth sect. Still, even then it wasn't exactly a risk to him since the attacker was in the core formation realm and the preparations he had made were for a core formation expert.
Thanks to that, Yang Qing was able to deal with it swiftly. That summed up his life as a judge in the core formation courts.
Then he got to the palace courts, the place he worked so hard to reach, all in the hopes of achieving his dreams of working less. Things seemed to be going the right way when he started. He had diligent inquisitors to help him, the cases were clear cut, he got a bump in salary and that juicy discretionary fund in his lap, and to top it off he had a month of doing nothing when he was asked to set and supervise the exams for new applicants.
Yang Qing thought to himself, this is it, this is what I've been dreaming of until Ma Yuan's case happened and he was hit with a sect demotion that had the potential to be sect destruction. It was only his second month in.
In the course of his job, he has executed his fair share of cultivators, he had made his peace with that, but a complete sect annihilation was something else. He had to resolve himself to slaughter thousands within a single moment, and within those thousands, there would be innocents, unlike the cultivators he had executed over the years.
He did not have the cushion of a moral high ground to lean on. Up to the point he actually executed the sentence, some part of him held on to hope that he would only have to deal with the guilty parties and that the innocents would take the olive branch he offered and spare him the weight of their lives in his conscience.
When they didn't, he felt dizzy and an extreme heaviness in his chest. He wasn't sure if it was because of the pressure, but he felt he had gone deaf, dumb, and blind for a brief second before his senses came back, and when they did, he swallowed up whatever he was feeling and didn't hesitate.
The feelings only came back after the Ba She was dead, and just as he was allowing himself to process everything, a sudden attack came, and within seconds, they who had thought themselves victors in the bout, and successful in the conduct of their duties, were about to die, and for Yang Qing, in the face of it, he had a sereness to it, that he didn't think was possible.
"Is this the tree's doing? Or has constantly battling old demon Lei and the cogwheel of the Order made me tougher and more mature?
I won't have to work tomorrow I guess... that babirusa meat, what a shame I didn't get to eat it. That bastard Feng Xin will enjoy it himself..then there are the 1,000 ingredients, I've only sampled 37 of it!! No No, Yang Qing, think positively.
I won't have to be bleed dry for that nasty bird that eats away at my income, and its pompous attitude after like I'm its human servant.
No more scheming, and the incessant worry of getting caught..well about that, I actually enjoy pulling one over the old demon Lei and the Order.
I'll actually miss it. The Order was more fun than I expected... If there is a second chance, I wouldn't mind going back there again.."
A blissful smile appeared on his face as he welcomed the torrent of thorn branches, ready to be run through and possibly eaten by the tree. With its eerie color and the smell of blood and death that surrounded it, Yang Qing was certain their death wouldn't be simple, and if his guess was right, that tree may have been one of the core factors in the Ice Emerald Sect's ability to assimilate and refine cultivators into fruits.
Yang Qing could only assume that a similar fate awaited them.
"I wonder if I'll be a tasty fruit..please, please let me be a disgusting one.." he silently prayed.
The attack descended.
"Huh!!!" Yang Qing who had expected to be desiccating and enduring the most painful death imaginable was shocked to see an illusory figure appear before him, standing elegantly keeping all the thorns at bay with a single flick of his finger.
"Vice President Tao Wen?!" Yang Qing muttered in disbelief as he looked at the illusory figure before him.
He had snow-white hair, a young handsome look, and a calmness to him as he stood there with one hand behind his back as his other hand held onto a horn.
The other four judges were equally as surprised as Yang Qing, they had been expecting their death.
They couldn't believe Vice President Tao Wen was actually there, especially after experiencing the powerful beguiling effects of the red abyssal thorn tree, their doubt was expected.
However, the doubt was soon erased when they felt they had regained the mobility of their bodies, while breathing even became easier, through a wave of the illusory figure's sleeves.
"Seems like you five got yourselves into a little bit of trouble. Who knew you would be unlucky enough to stumble onto a soul formation expert during your case? You sure are eager workers unlike what I've heard.." Vice President Tao Wen's illusory figure said with a leisurely tone and smile. Completely unbothered by the dense thorns, the thorn tree produced the moment he showed up and intercepted its attacks.
Millions of thorns appeared on it giving it a scarier look as they were dark red in color, and the stench of death they let out was enough to bloat out the sun, and fill all the surroundings with a chillness that accompanied the dead. The area turned to the netherworld with the appearance of those thorns.
Yang Qing and the rest felt like they had been submerged in a different world.
As Yang Qing saw all these, all he could think to himself was
"How the hell did my stories reach the Vice President too? Aren't they supposed to be sagely elusive figures with better things to do? Is the whole Order a gossip monger machine? How many things about me are floating around there?" Yang Qing worriedly thought.
Despite the antics he caused in the fight for his and his colleagues' wellbeing, he still cared about his face. He couldn't help but worry that the rumors floating about would damage the sagely expert demeanor he had worked so hard to cultivate from the moment he walked through the doors of the Order.
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