Daily life of a cultivation judge-Chapter 942: Have you come to a decision

The art he had assumed to be basic had overturned his world to the point he believed that only a transcended being could have come up with such an art. The art covered almost every base conceivable, and it had this marvelous way of knitting all those bases together, like how training in the sword could strengthen one’s soul, or how a palm move provided an interconnection with the spear.

Over the past few months of training in it, he discovered what a bottomless treasure trove it was. It was thanks to it that he had gotten a much granular and more refined control of every part of his body.

Using less but achieving more. For someone who could now only rely on the raw abilities of his body without his access to spiritual qi, owing to his shattered core, the control, and ability the art gave him on how to use his body was much more precious than if someone handed him a monarch-grade weapon.

With the gains he had made over the past few months, he had confidence in slaying someone who had just broken through to the core formation realm. With his spiritual sense that was still active because it was tied to his soul, coupled with his newfound control and developing insight into the strength his body held, a first-stage core formation expert, provided they were a normal one, possibly one at the orange grade and below, he had enough confidence of killing them in an open fight.

Realizing he could still grow in strength, he couldn’t help but feel emotional. Back then he didn’t even have time to process the loss of his cultivation realm because he had lost something much more precious in his wife and daughter.

Later, when he couldn’t find them despite years of relentless searching, part of what drove him to quick despair was his lost cultivation base which fed his sense of powerlessness.

After Ma Ling was brought back, after the relief of her being alive had passed, he was quickly beset by worry once more, and the cause of that worry was his strength. As a rogue cultivator, and both as a husband and as a father, he had seen firsthand what lacking in strength meant.

With him crippled, he had been nervous if he could protect her. Seven years ago he couldn’t, and he had his cultivation back then, what about right now, as a cripple? Would he fare any better?

The answer to that question made his stomach turn in knots to the point he couldn’t bear it and asked Yang Qing if there was a way for Ma Ling to be accepted into the Order. At least this way her safety could be guaranteed.

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It was then that Yang Qing did all he could to paint the realities of what he could expect if she passed the assessment and got accepted into the Order.

What would that future look like the good and the bad?

Yang Qing didn’t gloss over anything, especially when it came to the demands of being part of the Order. Using himself as an example, he told of the worries his parents and those he was close to had, whenever he was out there doing his duties. The Order may be powerful but they were also at the frontline of the chaos within the continent, trying to prevent it from spilling over, and there was no more dangerous place in the entire continent than that.

Every day his parents had to wrestle with the idea that something might happen to Yang Qing every time he left the headquarters and ventured outside where all the countless dangers lay.

It wasn’t just them, Yang Qing experienced the same worry too whenever Yi Jie and the other inquisitors from his team went to conduct their investigations.

Anything could go horribly wrong, which was why he didn’t hesitate to use his own materials to create a bunch of talismans for Feng Xin and the others, immediately after breaking through to the palace realm, and he continuously does so every time his strength improves, even marginally.

But even then, that worry never leaves him. If Ma Ling joined the Order, Ma Yuan would have to learn to be comfortable with that worry, and with what he had just endured, the trauma of it all, was it really something he wanted to live with constantly, every single day?

Ma Yuan could feel his heart race wildly even now as he imagined that future. Unwilling to go down that rabbit hole, he decided to distract himself as he went into the details of his experience with the mortal’s path to transcendence cultivation art, with Yang Qing occasionally nodding and interjecting here and there, and before they knew two hours went by with both consumed by the discussion.

At the end of the meal, Ma Yuan couldn’t help but sigh once more. He wasn’t sure whether it was because he had his cultivation base crippled, or because of the intensive training he had been doing, along with the work in Yang Qing’s abode, but a long-forgotten sensation came back, hunger and the deep sense of satisfaction and satiation that comes from eating.

In the early days whenever Yang Qing brought back food, he acted polite and mindful, sometimes refusing to eat, and other times, eating just the barest amount that even a child at the age of ten wouldn’t get full from, but when the pangs of hunger kept growing to the point that he became dizzy, he no longer held back.

The hunger reminded him of when he was in the body refinement realm. Whenever he was about to break through, he had to consume a diet packed with dense spiritual qi among other nutrients that the body would burn as energy for the evolution. If the energy in that concoction, or nutrient, and in his case, an alchemical bath filled with all manner of ingredients, if the energy within that bath was lacking during the breakthrough then, the evolution would make up the difference by consuming his blood essence.

This was why it was so dangerous for one to cultivate the body refinement realm without sufficient resources. Every leap in the stage was a leap in the energy required and since one couldn’t actively absorb spiritual qi in the air, and could only do so passively, the energy required can only be gained through the consumption of ingredients reached in spiritual qi.

Ma Yuan could never forget how he felt when breaking through to the gold body stage. The bath he had prepared was filled with at least a dozen earth-rank herbs and over a hundred mortal-rank ones that could be used by those in the qi refinement realm, but even then, when he was breaking through, the energy in that concoction wasn’t enough and he was forced to swallow a 1,000-year-old earth flame ginseng that was at the cusp of reaching the sky grade, so he could meet the demands.

Ever since he came back, he could feel that hunger come back. He chalked it off to maybe his body adapting to missing a core and moving to other ways to acquire the energy demands his body required, and proof of it was how he felt his body’s condition improve subtly every time he ate after he cultivated the mortal’s path to transcendence.

With just two of them left at the table, with the celestial nesting weaver having returned to its nest, and Ellie having fled when it failed to steal Yang Qing’s food, Yang Qing decided to ask the question he had been meaning to ask but had been hesitant about.

"So have you given the matter we talked about much thought? Are you any closer to a decision, on whether you want Ma Ling to try and start over here, or would you like a fresh start some place else?"