Daily life of a cultivation judge-Chapter 970: True chameleons (1)

Yang Qing’s gaze drifted ever so subtly to Luo Suyun before moving to Han Lei, taking note of her reaction towards the former assassin. Earlier, even if she seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the plum blossom tea Yang Qing had handed over to her, she was still trying to control the murderous tempest within her as evidenced by the slightly cracked teacup in her hand.

Yang Qing heaved a sigh of relief that he had chosen that particular tea set that had been made from mountain-heart clay. It was a sky-rank material that was well known for its sturdiness and its ability to preserve the state of something.

A peak core formation expert could punch the cup and would not leave as much as a smudge on it, yet it had a few cracks on its handle which showed how much struggle Luo Suyun had been, but that struggle didn’t seem to be there at the moment.

"Han Lei seems to have some skill," Yang Qing thought to himself as he nodded to the former assassin, who subtly nodded back as his gaze fell briefly on Luo Suyun before finally falling back to Yang Qing.

Under normal conditions, Luo Suyun should have had the same reaction to Han Lei that she had toward Gao Wei. As a former assassin, he likely had the same bodies on him as Gao Wei did, and quite likely even more considering how infamous the Ghost Viper Court had been in its heyday.

There was only one way to rise up in ranks in assassin organization and Han Lei had risen to the rank of an elder. So whatever the number was, it was likely not to be small, yet Luo Suyun didn’t have a reaction at all to his presence, and it wasn’t because they were friends, or because she thought Han Lei was another tree like Yang Qing.

From the look of disinterest she showed towards the person, showed she didn’t. The only reason she didn’t have much of a reaction was due to Han Lei’s skill. His expertise as a seasoned assassin was on full show at the moment.

Part of being a skilled assassin was in your ability to blend and the truly skilled ones could blend seamlessly anywhere.

This wasn’t just as simple as being able to change your clothes or transform your appearance.

Cultivators as long as they had some sense in them, were the most cautious of individuals, which made it difficult to sneak up on them, especially with the presence of spiritual sense that made a cultivator extra sensitive to their surroundings.

With how powerful spiritual senses were, and how alert cultivators were, how would you assassinate said cultivator?

Completely dwarfing them in strength was one way, but when it came to these assassin organizations, the true elites had to be able to assassinate someone stronger than them within reason, or at the very least they needed to be equal in ability. They had to be able to assassinate the target and leave without commotion.

If their target was let’s say some high-ranking elder of some sect, they needed to have the ability to assassinate that elder within said sect grounds with all the other sect members none the wiser.

How do they do that? How do you sneak attack someone who has lived all their life at the edge of death to the point they have this supernatural intuition when their lives are in danger?

The answer was simple, don’t trigger that intuition, whether when stalking them, or even to their death, that intuition needs to remain untriggered and there were only a few ways to do that, and one of the ways Yang Qing knew was to be a chameleon and completely blend with your surrounding to the point you were completely indivisible from it.

Professional assassins were true chameleons of nature. If they wanted to pretend to be a rock, they would be rock to the point that they would fool even the eyes of a veteran geomancer.

A true assassin could replace a family member, and the family would be none the wiser that he was a fake. He could pretend to be someone’s grandfather, or father, and neither the wife, children, or close relatives would be none the wiser.

Yang Qing knew of an assassin that infiltrated a sect by replacing one of its inner court disciples. Said sect was a rank four sect whose sect master was a quasi-palace realm expert, waiting for just the right moment to break through.

The assassin got hired by one of the sect’s enemies who did not want the sect master to break through for obvious reasons. The assassin kidnapped one of the inner court disciples while they were out on a mission.

Once the disciple was captured, the assassin using whatever means he had at his disposal, pried every information they could from that disciple that would make the infiltration as smooth as possible. Once he had everything, he kept the disciple alive so his soul lamp would not shatter, alerting the sect to his demise. Unable to kill him, the disciple was left incapacitated with two types of gu in his system. One fed on him to keep him weak, and another nourished him whenever his vitals reached a critical level.

Said assassin had been in the same cultivation realm as that inner court disciple, which was at the eighth stage of the foundation establishment realm. Which other than access, had been the reason why that particular disciple was targetted.

Armed with everything he needed, he infiltrated the sect, fooling everyone including the disciple’s close friends, martial siblings under the same master, and even his master himself, who was a sixth-stage core formation expert and also one of the core elders of the sect.

To fool so many eyes, the assassin had to truly become that disciple, be it in terms of mannerisms. How he walked, how he talked, his intra and interpersonal relationships, how he cultivated, the techniques he was good at, the ones he was horrible with. That assassin mastered it all, including the cultivation arts of that sect.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freeweɓnovēl.coɱ.

It is unknown how, but in those six months he had learned it all to the level of proficiency of that inner court disciple, and even his qi signature was inseparable from that of the disciple.

With everyone none the wiser, he laid in wait, adopting his role as an inner court disciple. He took missions, continued relationships, and continued to cultivate. After four years he managed to break through into the core formation realm and rose in ranks from an inner court disciple to an outer core elder.

He continued to bide his time, slowly rising in ranks, and eventually after seventy years he managed to rise and become a core elder when he broke through to the middle stages of the core formation realm. During that period, he had nurtured disciples and contributed greatly to the sect, be it in competition for resources, going even to the extent of killing a few members of the sect that hired him, when a feud broke out between the two organizations and no one was the wiser. The one person who could have maybe caught on, luckily was in deep seclusion.

The assassin’s new role as a core elder granted him access and freedoms around the sect and he used said freedoms to map out the entire layout and gain an in-depth understanding of a few things such as the different arrays around the sect, and the spirit veins. Anything and everything about the sect he leaned to the point that if he claimed to be the second most knowledgeable person about the sect, no one would claim to be the first.

Once he had everything he needed, he struck. Borrowing the strength of the earth and spirit veins around the sect, he funneled ashes from a soul-dispersing phoenix moth into the chambers of the sect master who was in deep seclusion.

The ashes of a soul-dispersing phoenix moth were traceless as they were deadly. Anyone at the early stage of the core formation realm and below would die the instant they inhaled even a tiny particle of the ashes. The ash melted one’s soul. It was instant and painless and no one would notice someone had died. They would look like they were asleep or in deep meditation.

The ashes ignited a cultivator’s soul. That burning that occurred as the soul melted, inadvertently filled the body with vitality, which would then serve as the incubation chamber for the eggs of the soul dispersing phoenix moth, hence the phoenix part of the name. Only one of the thousands of eggs hidden within the ash hatch successfully.

Near the end of its lifespan, the soul dispersing phoenix moth uses its innate ability to combust its body into ashes whilst also producing its eggs in the process. The ashes burn the soul of its target, to nourish the body, while the eggs feed off the energy within that body.

That ash could evade the spiritual senses of a cultivator. Some of the arts created to evade the spiritual sense of a cultivator were done so by studying the workings of those ashes.