Daily life of a cultivation judge-Chapter 983: Who had it better

Contained in the information was the list of their current hierarchy from the sect master to the elders. Yang Qing quickly went through it to see if the names that were on the contract still remained in the present organizational structure of the sect.

It did not remain the same, with a few major changes to its organizational structure. For one, Meng Jiayi, the one listed as the sect master in the contract was no longer the current sect master.

It wasn’t only him that was missing from the current hierarchy list of the Starlight Lake Sect. Long Zhaozu who was also in the contract and the vice sect master at the time, and core elder Liu Jie, whom Fan Cai had mentioned was likely to be an acquaintance of his mother, they were all missing from the current lineup of the Starlight Lake Sect.

Only one person from that list of signatories remained and that was Xie Yuan. From the report given, which was about 100 years old, she was the current sect master of the Starlight Lake Sect.

That wasn’t the only thing that had changed, her cultivation base had grown too, from the second stage she had been back then to a sixth stage palace realm expert.

As for Meng Jiayi, Long Zhaozu, and Liu Jie, none of them was listed as present members of the sect, and their current states wasn’t mentioned either. Because of the nature of walk in cases, it meant that one didn’t have time to dig deeper into matters.

Whatever information you worked with was what the Order had on hand, and in his case, it was a general report from a survey conducted on the sect by the Shadow Hawks Division about a hundred years ago.

With how many organizations there were around the continent versus the number of people the Shadow Hawks Division had on hand, they didn’t have the manpower to dig deeply into all the organizations around the continent, not unless they had sufficient reason to do so and walk-in cases didn’t meet that particular threshold since almost all walk-in cases were arbitration cases.

If it was a regular case with certain implications then maybe the report would have been denser than it was, but regular cases gave time, unlike walk-in cases, which were immediate.

Still, the information provided was more than enough for Yang Qing. At least it let him know that one of the signatories of the contract was still alive and as to the state of the other three members, even without a guiding report from the Shadow Hawks, he could form a few assumptions himself as to their current state and the guiding light for said assumption was the contract in his hand.

The contract had been issued 23,000 years ago which was close to the amount of lifespan that an early stage palace realm expert had. A regular early stage palace realm expert had a lifespan of 25,000 years. That number varies depending on the quality of dao one uses to breakthrough.

The typical mainstream ones were the ones that gave 25,000 years. Those who had gained mastery over higher-level forms they were awarded a higher base lifespan when they broke through to the palace realm.

For example in his case, when Yang Qing broke through to the palace realm, he gained a lifespan of 34,000 years. When Dai Chen and Zhang Qingge broke through, they each gained 33,500 years.

That difference of 500 years wasn’t to say that Yang Qing had better foundations or mastered a superior dao to them.

He had not, since when it came to combat, the best he could force out of the two was a draw and in Zhang Qingge’s case, he wasn’t even that confident to begin with. She was a true prodigy when it came to combat with the only one in their group guaranteed to go toe to toe with her being Kang Huilang. Xia Boqin could probably hold his own against her too with how versatile he was, but in their group, as much as he hated to admit it, Kang Huilang was the only one he believed could defeat that shy human incarnation of absolute destruction.

As for the rest, the best they could hope for was a draw in which they both lost, and such a result was favorable to Yang Qing since he had the greatest recovery of them all.

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The reason why his lifespan was higher than that of Dai Chen and Zhang Qingge had nothing to do with his accumulations but more to do with the nature of his dao.

He used nature’s vitality dao to breakthrough to the palace realm which was part of the life dao. It was a given he would gain more lifespan all things considered.

This didn’t only apply to him. Cultivators who used some form of dao tied to the life dao would receive the same advantages, maybe not at the same level as Yang Qing because he had touched on the main root of the life dao itself which wasn’t something easily done.

Regardless, those who touched on the life dao in some way shape, or form, would receive some increase in their lifespan, among other benefits related to the supreme dao of life.

But even with the advantages afforded to them, they still couldn’t match the absurd lifespans spirit beasts and spiritual plants were naturally endowed with.

His 34,500-year lifespan couldn’t match the lifespan of some spiritual plants and spirit beasts in the core formation realm, especially those with an affinity for the wood, water, or earth element. Spirit beasts and spiritual plants had long lifespans in general, but those with a special affinity to those three elements had much longer ones than the others.

The world was said to be fair. It gave humans short lifespans and weak bodies, but in exchange, they had the most malleable minds and bodies capable of adapting to different environments and cultivation arts, which helped them to rapidly improve their cultivation realms.

Then there were the spirit beasts and spiritual plants who had long lifespans, strong bodies, and innate abilities at birth, but in exchange for all that strength and advantage, they were inflexible in what they could cultivate, and their rate of improvement of their strength was at a snail pace.

Barring special circumstances such as consuming precious treasures, consuming each other, or some fortunate encounter, spirit beasts couldn’t hope to match the speed of human cultivators, especially in the first three realms.

It was only by breaking through to the palace realm that the playing field became somehow even, but from the core formation realm going below, the gap between them and humans was night and day.

A human with an average talent could maybe take 1,000 years to reach the core formation realm but a spirit beast or spiritual plant with an even higher aptitude than them could take five or ten times that much time just to reach the core formation realm.

This was the reason spirit beasts consumed one another, or even spiritual plants or spiritual plants that consumed spirit beasts and other plants, it was all to shorten that gap. As long as their lifespans were, it was still finite, it would end at some point provided they didn’t improve, and if they didn’t improve, they still ran the risk of being devoured by the humans who were rapidly improving their strength.

For humans to live long, they needed to rapidly improve their strength, but even then, they could never match the years of those spirit beasts and spirit plants, but at the very least, they could at least defeat them or even make use of them.

If you were promised immortality but weak strength, would you take it?

If you were promised absolute strength, but a finite lifespan, would you take that instead?

Cultivation was about finding the best of those two choices.

Though often at times Yang Qing wondered which of the two groups had the better advantage, the adaptable humans with short lifespans, or the spirit beasts and spiritual plants with long lifespans and natural advantages at birth.