?After he was done with his gloating, Yang Qing ushered the next case.

“The next disagreement to be heard will be that of Xiao Gun and Yao Chang whose case is against Branch Chief Yao De, and Commander Duan Mu, but since the latter has already passed, that burden falls on you, Emperor Duan Hu, since it is believed he had been working as your representative on the matter.

Could the two Daoists please step forward..” Yang Qing said as he motioned toward two cultivators.

It was the two cultivators who when they walked in looked wary of their surroundings, especially the people within it. They seemed to be scanning the courtroom for potential exits.

As Yang Qing called them forward, despite the gentleness in his tone, one could tell they were visibly anxious being there, and that anxiety only grew when the court’s attention was on them.

One of them was the tall and thin cultivator donning blue robes and had sunken eye sockets, bulging cheekbones, and a downward claw-like nose that gave him a hawk-like look. He had lightly greyed-out hair tied into a slightly messy bun that was held together by a red wood, which Yang Qing recognized to have been wood from a redworm tree, a tree famous for its healing properties, especially against yin-related maladies.

Walking next to him was the cultivator in cyan robes, an average build, and face, and had a heavy scent of herbs on him. Based on the density of the scent, one could assume he was either an herbologist or an alchemist.

Both cultivators were at the peak stage of the core formation realm, and based on their fluctuations, by Yang Qing’s estimates, they both had orange grade cores, with the thin and swallow cultivator edging out slightly either in terms of the purity of the grade or his accumulations.

Yang Qing couldn’t detect the ‘flavor’ of dao on them. That meant they still hadn’t found the pathway to the palace realm yet, or even the quasi-palace stage. If they didn’t, then the peak stage of the core formation realm would be the highest level they would ever reach.

Mustering whatever strength they had, the duo made their way to the center of the courtroom, occasionally lowering their head submissively to avoid eye contact with those present, including even Yang Qing.

Yang Qing couldn’t help but sigh when he saw their display. The way they reacted seemed almost second nature to them. A habit they had no doubt gained from repeating the same action over and over for the majority of their lives.

Seeing their demeanor, and how nervous they were only further reaffirmed Yang Qing that he was right to have crossed off becoming an itinerant cultivator from the onset. Most children who had just started their journey, if any one of them was asked, Yang Qing had a feeling that six out of ten would want to become a rogue cultivator.

On paper, it had a romantic charm to it that was appealing to the dreamers. Using the earth as your bed, the skies as your blanket, traveling from west to east, north to south, with nothing but your sword and wine skin, and creating legendary memories in between. To be free and unfettered. Not chained to anything or anyone, but the heavens above and the earth below. There was nothing freer.

Yang Qing born with genes of a proper coward, a trait he no doubt believes he had inherited from his father, and born into a clan of lunatics that provided him with optimal grounds to hone that cowardice, all this factors made Yang Qing the ultimate practitioner in the dao of paranoia.

He was unlike other children who were free to just indulge in their fantasies at a young age. At their age all Yang Qing could think of was how dangerous a situation could be, and the millions of ways things could go wrong, and when it came to becoming a rogue cultivator, he had a million of them.

He greatly dreaded being a rogue cultivator and it was to the point that if he was given a choice between being a lifetime guinea pig of his grandfather and his band of lunatics or becoming a rogue cultivator, he would, with no hesitation, choose the former. He was afraid of it that much and with good reason.

Rogue cultivators were not as free as how they were romanticized to be. Whatever freedoms one has, one immediately loses them the moment one becomes a rogue cultivator. Yang Qing had never seen a more restrained people.

From the moment you wore that cloak, you became an outsider in your continent. You had to be mindful of every step you took so you don’t end up offending someone you should not. You could not be too outspoken, you could not be successful, because the moment you are, you get branded a bandit, and get killed and stolen from under the banner of righteousness. Everyone around you was yet another person who could harm you, from the nobles to the prominent sect and clan members, to scions of powerful organizations, down to even your fellow rogue cultivators.

You had to always be alert to the countless dangers around you. You were doomed when you were poor, and you were doomed when you were rich, doomed when in the trenches, doomed when successful.

The only path to survival was lowering your head up until you had enough strength to raise it, and even then, most would still look down on you.

No one who had a choice in the matter would ever choose that path. It was fraught with nothing but tribulation and countless dangers that never seemed to pause, but those who managed to survive it and even thrive in it …. 𝗳r𝐞𝐞w𝐞bn𝚘ve𝚕.co𝐦

The rogue cultivation community was looked down upon by most. They were looked down on even lower than mortals with no cultivation, but all these powerful organizations never took it too far, especially the powerful ones, those ancient rank two organizations and above. They were always mindful of their actions, a habit they reinforced in their members in how they handled the rogue community, and the reason for that was, within the rogue community, there were terrifying individuals whose individual strength could rival that of an entire sect, be it rank one or two.

That reputation wasn’t unfounded. At the Bestial Churning Sea, a place filled with the most vicious spirit beast even a domain cultivator would easily lose their life there if they ventured in too deep, the further one went in, one would finda few small islands. When it came to size, Yang Qing’s abode was several times larger than any of those islands, but when it came to richness be it spiritual qi, or the natural force of dao, those islands would make Yang Qing’s abode look like a pauper’s lair.

Those islands were birthed from the origin energy of that sea, which made them rare and extremely precious cultivation grounds filled with all manner of dao natural treasures that one would never find anywhere else, but no matter how blessed and attractive those lands were, some of them lay uninhabited. Reaching them meant traversing over half the sea, and at the mid-way point, even an early soul formation expert would have to be wary, while those islands were further in, located in the most dangerous region of the entire sea, where only the most vicious of those terrifying spirit beasts had built their lair.

No human would ever venture to that place and come back in one piece, let alone dare to cultivate there, all except one person. There was someone, save for just a spear, who ventured into that place, and claimed a single island for himself, and that person was a rogue cultivator, who to date still lives.

If the midway point was dangerous to an early-stage soul formation expert, one could only imagine what horrors lay that deep, and that person had managed to not only reach it but even take one of those places for himself, and build an abode there. Such a feat spoke volumes of the person’s ability.

The heavens were said to be fair, whatever they took, they gave back in kind in another form and vice versa. The path of a rogue cultivator was a highly treacherous path, fraught with dangers all around, those who not only survive but also thrive in it, end up reaching heights that others could only ever dream of.

Their abilities and accumulations are terrifying to behold. In fact, went it came to the domain realm, almost seven out of ten rogue cultivators who reached the qualifications for it, ended up surviving its tribulation and breakthrough.

They may not have the highest numbers overall, but they had the highest success rate. But that was only if you were strong enough, talented enough, and lucky enough to survive and grow on that path.

The sad news was, that not many could endure it, let alone survive it. Most end up dying in the early phases of that path, while others … well others end up broken by it, afraid to ever look up at the sun and they stall, forever bound in that darkness, unable to take even a single step, forward, till all they are is broken shells of themselves who are constantly fearful of everything around them like the two cultivators that stood before him, who looked like they wanted nothing more than to hide themselves under the marble floors of the courtroom or dash through the door that was behind them.