Daily life of a cultivation judge Chapter 1502: Retribution and rest (1)

Frowning slightly at the sight, Yang Qing walked over to Luo Suyun, now in her saber form. His hand stretched forward and gently clasped around the handle. A steady stream of spiritual qi, filled with radiant colors, poured down from Yang Qing’s hand, down the handle, then to the rest of the blade, and in no time the entire saber was coated in blue, white, orange, green, purple, violet, and yellow colored qi.

The blood pouring out stopped. The billowing steam rising from the saber ceased, and with it, the voices that had been repetitively screaming went completely mute. The saber stopped trembling, and not long after, a red, much gentler mist poured out of it, dissolving its form as it once again reformed into Luo Suyun’s human body, curled on the ground, looking as though she were already fast asleep.

The pool of blood that had formed around her had already vanished, owing to Yang Qing’s intervention, and in its place were small flower blooms and colorful grass that seemed to have reacted to Yang Qing’s qi, sprouting and growing in just a few seconds.

"Why did you move?" Yang Qing asked softly as he used his finger to draw some of the strands from Luo Suyun’s face, sweeping them back over her shoulder. Her closed eyes twitched into a frown when Yang Qing’s hands touched her hair, but it immediately smoothed back as her expression relaxed.

Yang Qing sighed as he silently debated whether to move her, but as his gaze fell on the Green Flame Tree, he changed his mind and decided to leave Luo Suyun where she was. The grass and flower bedding around her was just as soft as any futon, and given that it had soaked up his spiritual qi, it would continue to soothe her, which she very much needed after what she’d endured.

Yang Qing’s eyes moved to her feet. "Half a step," he murmured as he peered at the heel of Luo Suyun’s bare feet and the patch of grass beneath.

He didn’t need Shitong to explain what had happened. The evidence was right there. Luo Suyun had moved from the position he’d left her in. Half a step. That was all she’d done. She’d taken half a step forward, and with it triggered fierce retaliation from the Green Flame Tree.

Everything she’d just endured had been the Green Flame Tree’s doing.

Looking at the gentle, warm, soothing, and refreshing aura radiating from the Green Flame Tree, no one would have imagined that only moments ago it had been boiling and burning a monarch-grade saber from the inside out. Given enough time, Luo Suyun would have been melted down and reduced to ash.

[Thank you for holding back,] Yang Qing said to the Green Flame Tree via voiceless transmission.

As gruesome as the scene was, and as excruciating as Luo Suyun’s pain had been, her injuries were nowhere near as severe as her agonized cries and the chaos surrounding her suggested. What she had received was little more than a slap on the wrist. The Green Flame Tree had been holding back. Had it not, Luo Suyun would have long since been destroyed in both body and soul. After all, if she truly intended to kill, the Green Flame Tree possessed the power to purge even a peak Palace Realm cultivator or a monarch-grade artifact within minutes.

From the brief examination Yang Qing conducted as he healed her, it seemed she had endured the ordeal for close to five hours. It had undoubtedly been a nightmarish five hours, considering the agony she had suffered, yet most of the damage was meant to inflict pain rather than leave lasting harm.

Luo Suyun had no doubt been spared on account of him, and likely Shitong had also had a part to play, and... Yang Qing’s gaze alternated between the Green Flame Tree and the sleeping Luo Suyun, who wore an expression so content and restful it made her look as though she were having the best sleep of her life. Sensing the relaxed fluctuations from her soul, Yang Qing had no doubt she was.

His gaze moved back to the Green Flame Tree. This was the first time he’d ever seen her react so aggressively to someone.

She was the embodiment of gentleness, kindness, warmth, and genuine concern. The liveliness of all the creatures in this abode, from the plants to the animals, was in large part because of her. Her presence always seemed to ease them, on top of nurturing them. There was no plant, no creature, not even people themselves, who didn’t feel relaxed, safe, and welcomed by the presence of the Green Flame Tree.

That was up until... Luo Suyun.

The essence of the Green Flame Tree lay in life and its sanctity, and the only time her normally gentle nature gave way to such fury was when that sanctity had been violated. She was a Natural Dao Treasure attuned to life in all its facets. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone, or anything, with a greater sensitivity to life and its path than the Green Flame Tree. Because of that extraordinary sensitivity, there were things others would never sense that stood out to her as plainly as the noonday sun. One such thing was the lingering grievances and dying cries of innocents who believed their deaths had been unjust.

When those grievances ran deep enough, they stubbornly clung to the one responsible like a malediction. Only this particular curse possessed no strength or harmful effect on the person it clung to. It neither injured nor weakened its bearer. Its only purpose was to stubbornly cling to the essence of the one responsible, refusing to disperse, holding on in the vain hope that maybe, one day, that grievance would have the strength to claim justice. But until such a time, it could only stubbornly hold on.

That voice. That presence. It couldn’t be felt by most, and even those who could perceive it never did so to the degree the Green Flame Tree could. She not only heard their voices, but she heard the anger within them. She heard the fear, the sorrow, and every emotion deeply entrenched in those lingering grievances. Because she was so deeply attuned to life, those grievances and the spirits they belonged to, could speak to her. They could tell her, and show her, the story of their lives from beginning to end.

She saw and heard every moment of their existence. In the end, she even witnessed what they felt when death came for them, and what they felt after they realized they had died. She experienced what consumed them in that pivotal moment.

That resentment. That anger. That grievance and deep-seated unwillingness. Their final, all-consuming wish.

Those were what transformed the Green Flame Tree’s gentle, nurturing flames into the

Using her flames as the medium and the grievances of the innocent as the fuel, she enacts retribution on behalf of those who have been wronged, burning the perpetrator and subjecting them to torment that matched the level of grievance their victims held toward them. The flames would not cease until the aggrieved spirits bound to the offender found satisfaction in the retribution being exacted.

Only when those aggrieved were finally free from the resentment that had bound them would the burning come to an end. Until then, the flames would continue to burn, tormenting the guilty without pause, until the paths of retribution and rest finally intersected.