Daily life of a cultivation judge

Chapter 527 Young man by the white lotus

Ma Yuan later shared what had transpired, which earned the Starlight crab another beating from Yang Qing, which left it feeling very greaved that it made a few inscrutable noises which Yang Qing loosely interpreted as it saying it would never come out of the pond again, if that was the treatment it was getting for doing its job.

To prevent any future trouble because Yang Qing didn't quite trust Starlight, he employed a few measures to keep Ma Yuan safe. One was to ask the two black dragon horses to keep an eye on Ma Yuan when he was around. With their presence, the starlight crab could forget about acting up. Ideally, he would have asked the Celestial nesting weaver, but it was too lazy and arrogant to agree. It would likely mock Yang Qing if he dared ask.

The other thing Yang Qing did to ensure Ma Yuan's safety was to give him a top-tier sky-grade defensive treasure. It was a blue vortex jade whale amulet that would produce a vortex seal shield that would completely protect Ma Yuan against the full-blown attacks of an 11th-stage core formation expert. That defense could be sustained for three days, and before the defense broke, it had a lethal attack that would retaliate every force of attack it had sustained onto the attacker before it broke apart. 

With Ma Yuan's safety assured, they both went about their activities with relative ease. Ma Yuan spent his time in between Yang Qing's abode and the Medical Valley, which helped him improve his mental state every day while Yang Qing spent his days at the Medical Valley honing his arts, the Auspicious Grove to take care of his mind and contemplate about his Dao, and having discussions with his father, brother and occasionally his grandfather in their deciphering of his physique. He also shared his notes with Ren Shu after, who was still hard at work along with the Valley Master to ensure the Medical Valley did not have any latent threats hanging about. 

His schedule remained relatively the same for the next few weeks, it was only near the end of the third week did a change happen to his routine.

He was headed to the Coalescing Tranquility Rivers Of Healing pavilion when he spotted someone seated cross-legged next to the white lotus that was at the center of where the four rivers combined. The lotus atop which the pavilion was built on.

The lotus was the congruent graceful white lotus, and it was an ascendant-grade spiritual plant not too far away from becoming a saint-grade plant itself based on the estimates of Ren Shu. Yang Qing concurred with that estimate, as the lotus plant grew increasingly inscrutable and had an ethereal air to it that grew more distinctive by day.

Next to one of the petals of the lotus flower was the backside of what seemed like the back of a young man who had donned pure white robes, he had short wavy black hair. His presence seemed to mirror the gentleness and the tranquility being exuded by the lotus like he was an extension of it.

Yang Qing on seeing the figure, halted in his steps. Even without seeing the face of the person, he instantly knew who the person was, how could he not when over the past year, their judge group had thought about him a lot, and he came into the Institute in the same year as him, and he had the same distinctive peaceful aura about him even back then.

Yang Qing slowly walked over, stepping at certain points within the river before he finally stopped next to the black-haired man. 

"Yang Qing..." the man turned his head to his left revealing a charming young face with a tranquil smile and eyes.

"Lai Lei, you decided to take a walk.." said Yang Qing as he sat next to him.

"Well, there's no better place than this. It became a habit of mine to come here every day to meditate when I was admitted. Now that I've been discharged, I find it hard to break the habit. 

I grew attached to the lotus when I was here, and I think we became friends, right, senior.." the young man said as he stretched his smooth jade-like hands toward the petal closest to them.

The petal shimmered with an ethereal glow when his hand made contact almost as if in agreement with his statement.

"Tsk, I am not surprised. You have always been able to charm anything..." Yang Qing muttered with a jealous scoff.

"I doubt it, if senior lotus was made to choose between us, I have a feeling she would choose you.." Lai Lei said with a smile.

"How are you?" Yang Qing hesitantly asked as he ran his hands through the water creating ripples.

"Better than I was...You? Dai told me you had a thorny case.."

"Better than I was, too..." 

"Thank you for watching over Dai when I got injured. Knowing him, he would have done something crazy if you all were not there to help him.."

"It was nothing. He would have done the same thing for us.." said Yang Qing as his gaze turned distant.

Eight months ago, the peaceful-looking young man seated next to him had been ambushed by fifteen half-step palace realm experts in the conduct of his duties while he himself had been a half-step palace realm expert himself. 

He managed to breakthrough the besiegement by slaughtering ten of his fifteen attackers, however, he lost an arm and a leg along with suffering various grievous injuries, one of which was cracks in his dantian.

He managed to escape long enough to contact the headquarters who alerted the nearest branch to send reinforcements along with any inquisitor or Order employee that was close by. A domain-level roaming inquisitor was close and managed to reach him in time to deliver him to the headquarters where the Medical Valley got hard at work to repair his injuries.

They restored his limbs, along with various injuries he had suffered including purging his body of the curses and poisoning he had been inflicted with before they proceeded to work on his dantian that was filled with cracks close to shattering.

The senior figures of the Medical Valley worked on him to help repair it, and finally, about a month ago, he was given a clean bill of health. 

Yang Qing could tell from the stable rhythmic fluctuations of qi energy that he was releasing, that everything within his body was running smoothly as it should and by the looks of it, he looked just about ready to take the leap into the palace realm.

Things were better now, but back then when the news reached them, it was a grim period, more so for Dai Chen who considered Lai Lei a brother more than his chief inquisitor.