Daily Life of a Cultivation Judge - Chapter 852: Sentence given (29)

?Shen Mu felt a shiver travel up his spine when he saw that smile.

“Is there really something wrong with that river?” he wondered.

Even though he asked himself that, the warning from his mother and Song Ba’s reaction already answered the question.

There was no way the Order would be so lenient as to let go of cultivators who engaged in taboo matters. If they did, they would be drowned with criticism and public outcry for being corrupt or inept in their duties.

Cultivating pill slaves and human cauldrons was considered a sinful act, commonly associated with fiendish cultivators. Even before the Order was created, those harboring human cauldrons were considered a public enemy to the entire continent.

If it was known that the Order was letting go of those found guilty of such acts, what would the continent’s reaction be like?

As it stood, the Order was already on thin ice on the continent, add a scandal like this, and that ice would quickly melt bringing a fierce storm to the Order’s doorstep. Even if the Order was powerful enough to wade through all kinds of storms, they would not willingly invite one if they could avoid it.

Once his thoughts reached that far, Shen Mu’s eyes widened. If the Order made that offer, then that meant they had confidence that no one would be able to survive the Chaos yang river of redemption.

The Order has been in existence for almost 1,000 years and in that time, what manner of characters have they come across? For the reputation they had built, countless had fallen to their hands, and in that number surely there was no small number of core formation experts, palace realm experts, and maybe even domain experts, but in all this time, Shen Mu had never had a single person guilty of heinous taboo crimes being released.

This could only mean one thing, no one has ever survived that river to date. When he reached that conclusion, he could feel his whole body freeze over. He had almost thrown himself to an early death under the allure of a potential release that never existed in the first place.

“How cruel are they?” thought Shen Mu as he looked up, finding a strange glint flash in Yang Qing’s eyes as it fell on him. If moments ago, his thoughts were merely, then the look Yang Qing gave him, all but confirmed it.

…

“I hope you can all maintain the same zeal when the moment comes..” thought Yang Qing as he took in the crowd’s reaction.

He had sensed Shen Mu’s temptation, which wasn’t all that strange as he had seen others follow his train of thought when they made a deal opting to endure the test of the Chaos yang river of redemption, believing it was a better choice, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

That river could kill a peak-stage soul formation expert in a thousand years, a peak-stage domain expert in a hundred years, and those below the domain realm would not last more than ten years. That river contained the most pure and ancient form of yang flames which were so potent that it could burn through space, burn through air, burn through any dao that was not related to it.

The river was only one kilometer long and twenty meters wide, however, it reigned sovereign, one hundred thousand kilometers around. Whatever it didn’t permit to exist, would not exist without its say-so.

But with danger comes rewards, as destructive as the river was,it also brought countless benefits to those who were able to endure it or gain its recognition. The Chaos Yang River of Redemption was a mystical dao form that was rumored to have been in existence in the primordial era when the world was formed and as such it contained mysterious truths and secrets that preceded antiquity. A power that was unique and unmatched in profundity. Those able to grasp even the tiniest portion would harvest the benefits well after they have broken into the soul formation realm.

Yang Qing had heard that a few of the higher-ups of the Order cultivated there, especially those looking to break through to the soul formation realm and it wasn’t only them, even those looking to break through to the domain realm would have a chance to cultivate there under the protection of a soul formation expert to be tempered and reforged by the flames of that river.

The reason why the Order had a lot of domain experts was rumored to be because of the river’s effects.

But, even with the apparent benefits, no one ever stays there for more than a year. Only those in the soul formation realm could push to double digits, but even they would not dare hit triple digits, especially when one considered a thousand years in that place was enough to kill any peak stage soul formation expert, despite their foundations and accumulations.

The river’s ability to refine one’s entire essence from their body to their soul, to their mind was second to none, but that was only if you could survive it.

Per Yang Qing’s estimation, when it came to the Chen Clan elders before him, it was in doubt whether they would be able to survive six months let alone 247 years. A peak stage domain expert would not be able to endure those flames let alone some late-stage core formation experts, but if by some chance one of them endured it, they would be released, not because the Order honors its promises, but because of the Chaos Yang River.

A core formation expert enduring its flames that long could only happen if they gained the river’s recognition, and if they did, killing them would prove difficult bordering on impossible, after all, it was rumored that the river shared the same source as the phoenix’s flame of rebirth and those who gained its recognition, received the same favor as the phoenix did.

Anyone outside the Order would believe such a thing to be false, after all how unique were the phoenix’s flames, its rebirth ability was something born of the supreme dao, making a replication of its ability nigh impossible but within the Order, there was a record of one person surviving its flames well beyond what should have been their ability to survive it.

Four years old that person was when he came across the river. Starving and dehydrated, that child made his way to the river and survived for eleven years as he drank the yang water from that river, as his body was broken and reformed several times over during that period until finally, the river acknowledged that child.

All this time, only that person has ever been acknowledged by it and is the reason the Order got to have that river in the first place. That person was none other than the Chief Justice of the Order, Lai Ning, the immortal child.