Daily life of a cultivation judge Chapter 1517: Two calls

Yang Qing's eyes instantly lit up at Veiled Destiny's reply, fixing on her as they openly bore the question: Which part was right?

Veiled Destiny, whose hands had already gone back for her teacup, softly said, "The four identities belong to the same person."

The parchment upon which Yang Qing had written said identities had its writings leap out of said parchment as if they had a life of their own. Then, using one of the golden strings attached to the parchment as a pathway, they dived into one of the stars that were still on the table.

Yang Qing's gaze grew heated at the response as he followed those letters that had already submerged themselves into the star and disappeared from view. Veiled Destiny hadn't exactly told him anything new, but, trust as he did in the work of the Flying Shadow Hawks, hearing Veiled Destiny confirm what they had confirmed had a way of just giving him relief, as he finally felt like he'd caught the tail of the elusive kidnapper and wasn't just relying on a foggy pathway.

"And given the level of resistance I am getting..." Veiled Destiny continued in her leisurely, mystical tone.

Yang Qing's heart decided this was as good a time as any to autonomously execute movement arts and start running, and Yang Qing wasn't going to stop it. If letters were growing legs and running, far be it for him to dampen his heart's lively spirit.

"Another one of your guesses was right... at least partially," said Veiled Destiny as she took a sip of her tea.

"Xie Huan. Xue Peng. Cao Tian. Wu Chen." Every time Veiled Destiny called out a name, a star amongst the cluster of stars would burn radiantly and enlarge from dot-sized to the size of a mango seed. By the time she mentioned the fourth name, there were four stars on that table, glowing brilliantly and standing out in a sea of a thousand stars.

Yang Qing's eyes widened in amazement as he felt the unfathomable and vast power flowing from those stars.

Pulling him from the sea of wonder was Veiled Destiny's serene voice as she said, "He is a mythical race, but not a pure one."

"Though he has descended from a prominent line," she added. So, he is from Xu Ya's and Li Jun's... Veiled Destiny sighed wistfully at the thought as her gaze fell on the four stars that were slowly drawing toward one another.

Upon coming into contact with one another, the four stars merged, and from them, something resembling an erupting geyser of golden radiance appeared. It soon settled into the golden light figure of a man garbed in loose-fitting robes.

His visage belonged to someone who looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. He had long hair tied into a half bun, and though it was done loosely with stray strands everywhere, he still looked graceful and elegant in that state. He was handsome beyond reason and possessed a heroic, free spirited air. His eyes shone with endless curiosity, and beneath that lay a certain righteous resoluteness.

His eyes are definitely hers, Veiled Destiny thought, sighing with emotion as she studied the figure's eyes. As for the rest...

Veiled Destiny's attention shifted to his face.

"That face is definitely that charmer's."

Veiled Destiny chuckled inwardly as she recalled a certain incident of a young man begging her to hide him while fleeing from five world-shaking beauties, two of whom were mythical races. One was an Azure Dragon, and the other an Aurora Dark Winter Jade Spruce Treefolk. Any one of them would have suitors lining up across the entire Blue Origin Ocean just for a chance to be considered by them, and yet a twenty-something-year-old human was going to great lengths to hide from them.

Veiled Destiny smiled, but that smile soon turned into a somber sigh as her thoughts once more settled on the golden figure that reminded her so much of her old friends from a bygone era.

"At least a part of them lived through."

Veiled Destiny sighed once more, reining in her emotions before turning her attention back to Yang Qing... and her tea.

"Senior..." Yang Qing began. "You said he is not pure-blooded... does that mean you can tell which race he is?" asked Yang Qing, whose gaze was unable to move from the golden figure. "And is that his real face?" he added.

The four identities the Flying Shadow Hawks had uncovered obviously came with vividly detailed physical descriptions, and not one of them matched the figure before him. Not that Yang Qing placed much stock in those physical descriptions. And neither did the Flying Shadow Hawks or any competent cultivator, for that matter, because it was a notoriously easy thing for cultivators to alter their forms, not to mention it was a common occurrence, even to the point that there were cultivators who did so because wearing a disguise felt more natural to them than using their real forms and faces.

In this moment, it was almost a guarantee that out there, right now, there were disciples who, thinking they had seen their master's true face, had in fact been seeing a disguise, with them being none the wiser about it.

Yang Qing had experienced the same thing at the Order with the Chief Librarian, who had made it a habit of wearing different faces and forms around the Order, such that no one could ever tell what his true face was, or if he was even as he appeared.

So, as cultivators, when it came to identifying someone, the face was usually the last thing they would go by.

But, given this was Senior Veiled Destiny he was dealing with, Yang Qing couldn't help but ignore said creed and actually pay great attention to the figure before him.

Answering Yang Qing's questions, Veiled Destiny said, "Yes, I can tell his race. Your assumption had been correct; he is an Aurora Dark Winter Jade Spruce Tribe member."

"As expected of Senior. Barely a second has passed by, and you have already confirmed his race. Your abilities truly are beyond measure," Yang Qing immediately said in genuine praise.

"While I appreciate the compliment, it wasn't my abilities that allowed for such fast results. Luck had a part to play in it," said Veiled Destiny. "Without it, even if our friend here isn't a pure-blooded mythical race, verifying his race would still have taken some time."

"The reason I could immediately tell is because I happen to share some history with him... or rather, the blood of his ancestors that flows through him," she added with emotion.

"History?" Yang Qing murmured the question as he turned toward her.

"Mmh," Veiled Destiny nodded as she took a sip of her tea. "I was friends with his great-great-grandparents. I was very close friends with them."

"He looks like them in more ways than one," she said, sighing as she gazed at the figure. "So much so like them," she added softly.

"Given the karmic entanglements I shared with them and how deep they are, verifying the identity of someone they share blood with wouldn't be hard. After all, I could be considered his Great Great Grand Aunt of sorts," she added wistfully before turning to face Yang Qing.

"And yes, that should be his true face. He looks just like them. It's uncanny," she said to Yang Qing.

Sensing the sadness in her tone, Yang Qing elected against pressing more questions and instead chose to let the Senior dictate the pace and what she needed to share next, while he decided the tea on his side and the snacks had been neglected long enough.

Just as he reached his cup, he felt a stir in his communication talisman, and almost an instant later, there was a stir on the Go tile floating above them, drawing immediate interest from Yang Qing as he saw it flash with silver-lit runes on its surface. An instant later, an old man's voice came through the tile.

[The disciple and the others have been released. You should be seeing them soon.]

Yang Qing's eyes froze from what he'd just heard. "Released?" he absentmindedly muttered.

"You should pick up your call," Veiled Destiny told Yang Qing as she gestured to the glowing communication talisman in his hand.

Still out of sorts, Yang Qing nodded as he hazily received the call, his gaze and most of his attention still fixed on the Go tile that had gone back to normal and no longer glowed.

"Yang Qing. You there? The two escort supervisors are back, and they brought a group of people with them, which, given the reaction of those two, they might be from the missing ferry.... Yang Qing?" came Fei Chen's voice, growing more insistent.

Yang Qing blinked a few times, growing even more dumbfounded by what Fei Chen had just said. "Huh?" he finally said as his eyes shifted to the communication talisman.