“Yin Yang genesis; Lark Serenity Aria..”

Yang Qing’s pupils had a subtle shift to them as a lark bathed in pure light flashed in them.

“Daoist Xioa Gun, Daoist Yao Chang, thank you for stepping forward..” Yang Qing gently said to the two rogue cultivators whose heads were still hanging low. But upon hearing Yang Qing’s voice, the nature of it emboldened them to look up, and when they did, as they gazed into his pupils they felt the sense of unease, apprehension, and the tenseness that had grown to the point of even choking them, start to leave their body.

As they looked at Yang Qing, they could a tranquil force emanating from him with them being slowly sucked into that sense of tranquility. Before they knew it their vision suddenly changed, where Yang Qing once sat now featured a lark with pure white feathers that emanated with the charm of the moon and something else, that gave it an otherworldly presence.

Its wings’ gentle flap produced a melody with an archaic power to it and a gentle calmness that subverted their imagination. They could feel and see the materialization of that melody transform into a gentle gust of wind brimming with warmth envelope them and in doing so filled with them with a peace they had never known before.

All the wariness, and accumulated fatigue they had built up their entire lives was washed away by that melody within that gust of wind. Their minds felt unencumbered, and their souls felt refreshed.

The average-height cultivator whose body was filled with the scent of herbs started tearing up as the illusion of the lark disappeared, and the courtroom went to its original view.

“Thank you..” said that cultivator as he used his sleeves to wipe away the tears in his eyes.

His partner next to him, the cultivator with the hawkish features, though he didn’t cry, was just as heavily impacted as he bowed to the waist toward Yang Qing.

Gong Jie had a puzzled look on his face due to the reactions of the two cultivators. He couldn’t make heads or tails of why one of them was crying and the other was bowing within a few seconds of being called.

For a second there he had thought they had gone mad from fear. It was visible to everyone present how petrified they were. From the way they walked, to the rest of their body language down to the movement of their qi. The tenseness of their qi was like that of a wounded and cornered animal. It was erratic.

But sensing it now, their qi was smooth, their bodies seemed relaxed and the look in their eyes had changed somehow. A curious glint flashed in his eyes as his gaze fell on Yang Qing. Seeing the reactions of the two cultivators, whatever had happened to them was likely tied to Yang Qing.

He alternated his gaze between Yang Qing and the two cultivators trying to see if he could discover a clue. Eventually, he gave up and decided to just ask their founder what happened.

“Founder, what happened to the two of them?”

“Peace..” Deng Jie calmly answered.

“Peace?” Gong Jie asked in stupefaction.

“Yes, peace… The reason they are so emotional is because Judge Yang Qing gave them something they have craved deeply all their life, but they could never feel it…” Deng Wei paused as his gaze fell on the two rogue cultivators before it went to Yang Qing. He too seemed to have been slightly affected by the display.

“From the moment they were self-aware, they have likely never known peace. Always being wary of everything around them, afraid that something bad would happen to them if they let up even once, and the world constantly proving them to be right to be wary.

Living under the constraints of such a burden for days, to weeks, to months, to years, to centuries, to a millennium… The toll it takes is anything but light. Who knows how much the two of them have accumulated, its weight I have no doubt is more than enough to drive many to near insanity.

You remember how it was for you when you ventured alone to look for me?”

Gong Jie nodded grimly as his back tensed up a bit. Those years were anything but easy, especially for someone short-tempered. It was okay to act how he wanted when he was within the confines of the Red Maple Empire, after all, he was part of one of the most powerful ruling families in the Empire, which let him behave how he wanted, and he also had a peak stage core formation cultivation base to rely on, which was more than enough capital within the Empire.

He who had never left the Empire, naively started his journey thinking he could act how he wanted, only to be given a rude awakening a few months in. He realized how terrifying the outside world was when he almost died at the hands of someone with a lower cultivation base than him and only survived thanks to the protective treasures he had been given by the Gong clan leader.

Things only went downhill from there and it wasn’t long before he had lost his boisterous personality and was acting no different than the two rogue cultivators. The fear got so much that he finally broke and got into a fight with someone he shouldn’t have, all in the hopes that the death that would come from it would end his misery, only things didn’t quite go as planned. He ended up being used as bait in the Bestial Churning Sea and was exposed to a new deeper level of fear that he never thought possible.

That whole journey had left him broken. Though it had been the reason he managed to breakthrough to the palace realm, that desperation, he never wanted to have that experience again, even if it meant that he would not get to improve his cultivation base.

That experience was something he would rather not revisit, and yet he only endured it for a century, unlike the two rogue cultivators. Who knew how much they had seen or experienced, unlike him, they didn’t have an anchor of a family like he did when things got really bad for him.

They had to face that storm knowing they had nothing to rely on but themselves. Gong Jie knew if it was him, he would not have endured it for as long as they did or as good as they did, even with how fidgety they had been. He would have long lost his life, or his mind, or both.

Seeing the empathic look Gong Jie had on, Deng Wei continued,

“So you can understand why they are like that. That burden getting washed away, all that fear, bitterness, and frustration. It’s like they are breathing and living again. While they still have to contend with that world again the moment they leave here, at least for this moment, they get to know what it feels like not living under such a suffocating sensation. They get to see life on the other side, which to them is more precious than even a saint-grade treasure..”

As he finished, Deng Wei couldn’t help but sigh in gratification as his gaze fell on Yang Qing. Yang Qing hadn’t just offered them reprieve, but he had cleansed and restored their souls in that brief moment, and such a feat was a work of wonder, especially when Deng Wei felt the nature of the underlying power within said action.

When he walked into the courtroom, he did feel some slight affinity to Yang Qing, a kind of resonant, which led him to the assumption that maybe Yang Qing had the bloodline of the treefolk like him.

If they had met anywhere else but the courtroom, he would have been able to verify it easily with his abilities, but here, it was a tall order. Other than the surface level of information, Yang Qing was completely isolated from deduction. It was as if there was a powerful veil or ward around him that hid all the relevant things about him.

That isolation prevented Deng Jie from digging deeper into the resonance, but now, he didn’t know the spell Yang Qing had used on the two cultivators, but he could tell its nature, which more than confirmed to him that his guess had been off the mark.

Yang Qing didn’t share the same treefolk bloodline as him, and the resonance he felt was not a bloodline-related one, but a dao resonation. That impact was greater than if Yang Qing had a treefolk bloodline, because dao resonation meant, whatever dao Yang Qing practiced was of the same root as that of treefolk.

Dao resonation wasn’t a common thing, it wasn’t easily triggered. There were countless Daos out there, and countless cultivators who though may cultivate different techniques, the Dao pathway they choose may be similar, but such cultivators may not trigger a resolution, the only way they would trigger one is if the Dao they both practiced was a supreme grand dao.

It was only the supreme grand Dao that could trigger dao resonation. What was the supreme grand Dao? One could think of it as the highest grade of Dao, the very threads that held the operation of a world. Time and Space were supreme grand Daos, and so were other esoteric forms like Destiny, Fate, and Karma.

Supreme grand dao could be considered the ultimate form of Dao. Mythical creatures were a terrifying force to behold because they each had a natural affinity to one of the supreme grand Daos, with some even capable of manipulating two like the Kunpeng that could manipulate space, and the primordial water dao, which was the ultimate form of the water dao. frew𝐞bn𝗼v𝐥.𝚌𝗼𝚖

The things they could do, the abilities and powers they could display, it was to a stupendous degree that even words couldn’t describe it, nor imagination capture it, and all of it was because of their attunement with the supreme grand Dao.

The treefolk had an affinity with the Dao of life which gave them absurdly long life spans, high vigor and vitality, and high sensitivity towards the form life takes and its manipulation. To them what constituted as life was a broad concept, for example, to them, the Dao could be considered a breathing living entity as would an animal, a plant, or a human, and the treefolk’s sensitivity to life made them expert practitioners and manipulators of different forms of Dao.

Deng Wei had only managed to touch upon that power because of the assistance of the red maple spirit that helped unlock a bit of his bloodline, and when it did,it was like a whole new world had been opened to him. Even now, as a middle-stage domain expert, he still felt marveled and inferior to the world that lay within the pathway of the supreme grand Dao. That path was called the path of the transcendent, and few ever had the opportunity to walk on it let alone gaze upon it.

Sensing regular Dao was difficult enough as it required a significant degree of talent, wealth, and comprehension,with greater demands being placed on talent and comprehension, but when it came to the supreme grand Dao, the degree of difficulty grew infinitely.

Only ten in a million cultivators could actually sense the supreme grand dao, and of those ten, only four would sense it well enough to actually internalize it and pursue its path, and even then it was an upward battle, with the degree of difficulty being as hard as scaling the heavens.

For Deng Wei, the only reason he could sense the pathway was that his treefolk bloodline gave him a right of access to it, and even then when he started out it was vague. It only became clearer when he used various resources and help from a few powerful friends to improve the degree of purity of his bloodline.

Having felt its power himself, he was intimately aware of how difficult it would be to grasp that power without a cheat like the bloodline of a mythical creature flowing through your veins, yet Yang Qing had done just that. Relying on nothing but himself, he had earned himself the right to walk on that path, and based on the arcane and primordial nature he felt when he executed his art, the ticket Yang Qing had wasn’t any less than that of a pure-blooded mythical creature.

His understanding of it may still be in its infancy age, but the purity of what he had access to was similar to that of those mythical beings. Such a feat was capable of shaking the hearts of not only Deng Wei, but also Lin Guiren, Cai Hong, and the Imperial Household Manager, Liu Guan who understood the difficulty and implications of such a feat, especially Lin Guiren, whose eyes flashed with an emotion that was akin to envy.

“A transcendent walker..” he thought as his look of envy was quickly replaced by determination.

Every domain expert present knew what it meant to touch upon the supreme grand dao. Not every domain expert was a transcendent walker, but for transcendent walkers, provided they lived, were all guaranteed to step into the domain realm, and when they did, their foundations and abilities were terrifying to behold.

Myths and legends were built from people like them.

When they walked into the courtroom, they may have looked at Yang Qing as just another talented cultivator from the Order, but now, with his identity as a transcendent walker, he could no longer be seen as such because it was already set in stone that provided nothing unexpected happened, he would become a peer soon enough. They couldn’t overlook him, especially the couple whose son had an altercation with him.