Daily life of a cultivation judge Chapter 1518: Child of luck

It took a bit for Yang Qing to collect himself, and even then, the version of himself that looked collected still had an unconcealed air of confusion about him.

"Where are they now?" Yang Qing finally asked after composing himself.

"Getting cleared at the entrance. It should not take long now. I could hold them at the Guard’s station for you," Fei Chen suggested.

Yang Qing briefly considered it before shaking his head, dismissing the idea. "Given their state, just let them be. Escort Supervisors Duan Ting and Liu Ying are sure to bring them to their building. Given what they have been through, they will likely feel more settled there than in an unfamiliar station. Especially the missing Escort Supervisor Jiang Hao... Better to meet them there."

"How is he, by the way?" Yang Qing suddenly asked.

"As far as I can tell, he is in one piece. No missing limbs. No drained essence. His soul seems stable. No hidden injuries. At most, he just looks confused. But other than that, in terms of his physical attributes and the state of his soul, he is perfectly fine. He has the vigor and vitality of a healthy Quasi-Palace Stage cultivator," Fei Chen said.

"There is no gu, parasite, or some other nefarious item planted in him either," Fei Chen added after a brief pause. "He may need to be checked out at the Medical Valley to rule it out completely. They are better at these sorts of things. Though I doubt the results will differ too much, given Chief Guard Kang Shi has also done the check and cleared them..."

Yang Qing did not respond immediately as various scenarios flooded his mind on why those missing people had appeared. Also, who was that old man who called via the Go Tile earlier? Was it the mysterious kidnapper or someone with ties to him? Maybe the painting’s spirit? He had too many questions.

"To confirm, Bai Chen is not among them, is he?" Yang Qing tentatively asked.

"He is not," Fei Chen confirmed.

"Figures..." Yang Qing wryly murmured to himself as he replayed that old man’s statement:

The disciple and the others... The wishful side of Yang Qing had hoped "others" included Bai Chen. But the painfully pragmatic side of him felt it was unlikely. If Bai Chen had been among the number, that statement would have started with him, or at the very least, it would have been "everyone has been returned."

Yang Qing sighed inwardly. His guess that this whole thing happened because Bai Chen had been the target had been more than proven correct by current events. But he was not all too enthused about it.

Pushing the countless thoughts swirling in his mind to the back, Yang Qing turned to face Veiled Destiny. The millions of questions at the moment would not matter if the senior before him could extract Bai Chen’s present location. Compared to that, it mattered little who the voice behind the Go Tile belonged to, or why Jiang Hao and the others had been released, or what Bai Chen was needed for.

But if Senior Veiled Destiny could not get the location, then these other questions dancing in his mind would gain relevance and the answers they held, though only insofar as they helped in the pursuit of Bai Chen’s location.

Seemingly reading his thoughts, Veiled Destiny softly said, "You should go see your friend and those who have just come back."

She then gestured to the materials floating in front of her as she added, "It will take me some time to use them. Like I mentioned before, verifying his race and even getting his face this fast was more of an element of luck that I happened to be friends with his ancestors, which in matters of karma gives a huge advantage, especially given that because of said relation, the same entanglement that bound me to his ancestors binds me to him.

"But that is only as far as extracting certain things, like verifying his bloodline and face. When it comes to his other life’s story, that will need time and may even take longer if he happens to be in a place or in the presence of things or people that may hinder my ability to track him."

"Go see your friend," Veiled Destiny suggested. "If anything fruitful comes up, I will be sure to inform you."

Yang Qing nodded as he stood up. "I have people still looking and verifying things on my behalf. Could I still send you what comes up?"

Veiled Destiny nodded. "You can use this," she said slowly as one of the stars on the table leapt into Yang Qing’s hands, startling him slightly as he awkwardly held it like a fragile egg about to fall and break.

Gesturing to the star in his hand, Veiled Destiny said, "It can transform to any form you want. From a communication talisman to a piece of parchment, a quill, or any other form you can think of. Just like that ancestral jade coin of yours." Veiled Destiny’s cup moved from the star and gestured to the right sleeve of Yang Qing’s aqua blue inner robes.

The sleeve she pointed to looked no different from the left sleeve. There was nothing there, aside from looking like an ordinary robe sleeve. And yet, Yang Qing’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief as he gazed back at Veiled Destiny.

Given the greedy gaze he had seen on Shitong and the coin’s inherent value, both in terms of its origin and the material used to create it, he felt it very important that he keep the coin under close watch at all times. There was no better place to do so than to have it on his own body. Not to mention the coin had extraordinary polymorphic attributes that made it an even easier decision for him to carry it on him.

Had it had a glaringly eye-drawing exterior that screamed "precious rare treasure" to anyone with eyes, Yang Qing would not have even dared walk around with it in places that were not the Order’s headquarters. If the coin had been eye-catching, he would have elected to hide it in his Chamber’s office, or if he felt inclined and sufficiently paranoid, he could redeem a bit of his merit points and store the coin in a private vault that the Order allowed its staff members to hire for a certain duration of time, with the length of time being subject to the merit points used, as one merit point granted you one year of use of the vault.

Given how uncharacteristically cheap it was, Yang Qing would have had no qualms in using it.

But thankfully, the coin was anything but eye-catching. Not to mention its exceedingly outstanding polymorphic abilities that could fool even his own eyes, Yang Qing could use it and transform the coin into the most ordinary thing. In this case, he transformed the coin into a single clothing thread that matched the thread of his inner robe and had it coil around the right sleeve and join its other hundreds of thread brethren that made up the sleeve lining.

He thought he had found the perfect place to hide something precious in plain sight. How naive he had been...

A cold sweat quickly chilled his back as his mind immediately started jumping to all manner of horrible worst-case scenarios he could think of. His years of torment at the Institute, being a friend of Senior Bu Zhou, and the thousands of cases he had worked on as a judge where some unlucky cultivator or organization suffered great misfortune from being in possession of a treasure above their ability to own—all these factors ensured he had more than enough material for inspiration for his worst-case scenarios.

Easily seeing through his fears, Veiled Destiny chuckled before saying, "Do not worry. It would take an extremely talented Soul Master Stage cultivator to notice it, but even then, they would only feel it vaguely."

"To truly sense the coin, it would require someone in the Soul Supreme Stage. And for figures of that level, as precious as Ancestral Dragon Jade is, it is not something that they would lack if they so wished for it, given it is something one can easily find in parts of the Void or even the Millionsfold Treasure Ocean, which has no small number of Ancestral Dragon Veins if one knows where to look and has the ability to reach it—which a Soul Supreme Stage Cultivator more than has."

Smiling amusedly, she added, "So I doubt that they would stoop so low as to steal from you."

... Veiled Destiny mused inwardly.

"You should keep it on you," she finally said, before she added in a rather mysterious tone, "Ancestral Dragon Veins carry the fate of luck, and that luck affects places and people close to it. That coin made from its jade is bound to give you more good luck than bad if you keep it close."

Yang Qing, who had been halfway through imagining whether he would have a complete corpse or not for his loved ones to mourn, and what the eulogy would be, who would eulogize him (he humbly hoped for hundreds at least), who would miss him the most, and how he was sure to be used as a case study by the Institute on their course, "Foolish Ways Cultivators Invite Death," was pulled back by Veiled Destiny’s words, which brought much-needed life and some color to his paled skin.

"Luck," he murmured as he unconsciously caressed his right sleeve. He would not be opposed to some luck. With the years of dog luck he had been getting since he was a child, he would be the last person to turn up his nose at the chance of adding more.

So what if the risk came with drawing the attention of a Soul Supreme Stage cultivator? If a figure of such a realm chose to rob him of the coin, if he kept his life at the end of it, he knew himself well enough to know he would consider himself the winner of that exchange.

Regret would be the last thing he would be feeling. If anything, he would welcome the mugging. Getting robbed by a Soul Supreme Expert and living to tell the tale—how many bragging accolades would that give him? He would make a meal out of it, claiming he had enough wealth to make even experts with lofty cultivation realms abandon their principles.

He would brag about it every chance he got.

He could be walking into Thousands Flavors Restaurant, and the first thing he would say upon walking through the door would be,

Unbeknownst to him, a foolish grin had spread across his face as he rubbed his sleeve. "Child of luck," he absently mumbled to himself before he quickly collected himself and remembered where he was and whose company he was in. Luckily for him, Veiled Destiny seemed more amused than anything at his behavior.

Thanking Veiled Destiny for her kind and much-needed words, Yang Qing’s attention moved to the star in his hand. He had it transform into a green wooden jade token about the size of his pinky and the width of two fingers, which he pocketed in his sleeves before thanking Veiled Destiny once more as he prepared to leave. Only to find, as he turned, that the swirling vortex he had used to get here was not there.

Just as he was wondering how he was going to get out, his vision shifted. A second later, he found himself standing some distance away from a bustling entrance gate designed in the form of an eagle. There was a crowd of people dressed in different robes coming in and out of said gate.

"Yang Qing?" an uncertain voice called from behind.

Yang Qing, who had looked slightly disoriented, turned dazedly to meet an equally befuddled Fei Chen.

"You can manipulate space?" Fei Chen asked in surprise.

Yang Qing had been half tempted to say yes and brag, but he was too surprised by the means of Senior Veiled Destiny to even have the mental capacity to be shameless. "A Senior I was with is the one who sent me here," he replied truthfully.

Fei Chen, whose expression seemed like he wanted to ask, "Which Senior?", ultimately decided against it as he gestured with his chin to the left. "They have just got into their building," he said, gesturing to the Bluefin Escort Agency building.

Yang Qing turned to face that direction.

"Should we go?" Fei Chen asked.

Yang Qing, after taking a slow breath, nodded before the two made their way to the building.