Daily life of a cultivation judge

The line's progression seemed to move at a snail's pace according to Yang Qing's perspective. The sect master of the Flying feather sword sect couldn't arrive fast enough. Yang Qing didn't know what he was going to do yet, but the anticipation was eating away at him.

The Flying feather sword sect was a relatively average sect when compared to other rank 3 sects and organizations. It didn't have anything that made it stand out and it wasn't too shabby either.

From the information Yang Qing read about them from the talisman given to him by Song Guozhi, the Flying feather sword sect has been in existence for at least 50,000 years, however, it has been a rank 3 sect for about 7,000 years. In some regard, they could be considered a relatively new rank 3 sect.

The Flying feather sword sect just like its name, was a sect that focused primarily on sword cultivation. They cultivated the Avalanche feather storm sword technique, which in terms of grade, was a low-tier Blue grade cultivation art, which was okay as a mainstay cultivation art for an up-and-coming rank 3 sect.

The cultivation art focused on agility and light movements which would then culminate and create a terrifying sword speed that would shred an opponent to minced pieces. Yang Qing had a feeling Yi Jie would take a fancy to their technique since his 'silent phases of the moon lake' cultivation art also focused on achieving extreme destruction via extreme speed.

Their current sect master, Ai Shan, which Yang Qing suspected was not even his real name, took over the position of sect master 800 years ago when he broke through to the palace realm. In terms of talent, the information given to Yang Qing didn't say much about the sect master but the fact he was one of the recorded 13 palace realm experts that the sect had on file, his talent could not be considered to be bad. 

What the file did say was that the development of the Flying feather sword sect has been stable under him. Yang Qing could only assume that meant, there haven't been any major upheavals since he took over on both the positive and negative end.

Finally, only one person was left before it was the sect master Ai Shan's turn.

…

"Judge Yang Qing, it's Feng Lei. Assistant head Liang Wen and the rest have filled me in on what is going on and your suspicions about there being a potential Scarlet blood ghost hands member within our midst."

Just as Yang Qing was counting the minutes to his eventual 'meetup' with the suspected Scarlet blood ghost hands member, he heard an unfamiliar gentle easygoing voice in his mind.

"There's no need to answer back first, there are a few things I need to explain to you seeing as how you're already embroiled with the syndicate. Dong Yanlin was sent to us by you, No?

We are still questioning Dong Yanlin, so there is not much he has divulged yet on the Scarlet Blood Ghost Hands Syndicate, however, there were a few things he did divulge to us in regard to his master, senior brother, and senior sister. 

His master is called Mo Yin, the one within the Scarlet blood ghost hands that has the moniker, 'The bloodless refiner', who is also one of the ten blood fingers. 

From what little Yanlin told us, his rank within the Blood fingers is seventh.

As for his martial siblings, he has two; the eldest is his senior sister by the name of Yu Rue and then she is followed by his senior brother by the name of Gui Shiren.

Of his two martial siblings, he is a bit familiar with his senior brother Gui Shiren. The bits he told us was he was a palace realm expert at the second stage and was skilled in the way of swords, and he is a dual wielder. 

Your suspicions may not be wrong as I can see that the sect master of the Flying feather sword sect is also a dual wielder just like the Gui Shiren," said Assistant Director Feng Lei.

Yang Qing's pupils froze for a brief second before they went back to normal. If his guess about sect master Ai Shan was right, and he was in fact a member of the Scarlet Blood Ghost Hands Syndicate, then the information he was just given by Assistant Director Feng Lei, complicated matters.

It was one thing if sect master Ai Shan was just another run-of-the-mill palace stage member of the Scarlet Blood Ghost Hands Syndicate, and it was another if he was the disciple of a Blood finger ranked member of the syndicate. The implications between the two were far apart.

The Blood Finger of the Scarlet blood ghost hand syndicate was made up of members who were the highest-ranking members and also the most powerful, within the whole syndicate. For one to be a Blood finger, they needed to at least be in the seventh stage of the domain realm. 

So, every Blood Finger member was at the very least, a late-stage domain expert and there were ten of them in total. They were all given numbers as a measure of their strength from number one through ten, with one being the strongest and number ten being the weakest of the Blood Fingers.

The ten of them held the highest level of authority within the syndicate and were only below their elusive soul formation expert founder. 

The reason that the Order even knew about the Blood Fingers was that 300 years ago they managed to catch one of them, the ninth finger. 

Capturing him was anything but easy. That member had been caught in the midst of a large-scale ritual where he had sacrificed an entire city of a rank 3 kingdom for some cultivation art. He would have been successful in what he was doing had it not been for the intervention of a roaming inquisitor, who was at the early stages of the domain realm. 

A massive fight immediately broke out and the roaming inquisitor would have perished had it not been for the artifacts he had on him and the swift arrival of the backup he had called for before he began the fight with that ninth finger. 

It took the combined attack of three domain-level experts from the Order before that member of the syndicate was brought down. Of course, there were a number of factors at play there for the protracted battle despite the disparity in numbers. Some of those factors were; the experts of the Order wanted to capture him alive which was much harder than killing him, and the other was that member had various esoteric means in his repertoire that proved to be troublesome for the Order experts to deal with in the short term. 

The battle spanned three days before it finally had a successful conclusion, which was the eventual capture of the ninth finger of the Scarlet blood ghost hands syndicate. 

As for what happened to that ninth finger afterward, Yang Qing guessed he was likely a constant companion of the requiem guards and the special inquisitors. By his guesses, he more than likely hadn't spilled much to date seeing how the syndicate was still active, alive, and healthy.

...

"Whatever measures he has on him, there's no way it can match three saint-grade artifacts," thought Yang Qing as he lightly patted his deep blue robe. His thoughts were cut off when Assistant Director Feng Lei continued with his explanation.

"When it comes to his senior sister, Yanlin doesn't seem to know that much since he has only seen her once or twice from the time he got accepted as a disciple by the 'Bloodless refiner'. However, the little he could tell was she was the most powerful and prized disciple under his master, and not only to him, but she was also even well-favored among other higher-ups of the Scarlet blood ghost hands.

Based on that, we can assume she is either at the peak of the palace realm or she may very well be at the domain realm.

I wouldn't be surprised if she was even here. 

It would be interesting if she was here though…hehehehe…..ever since we captured the ninth-ranked blood finger, it's been long since we have caught another big fish from them, who knows maybe we may very well get the chance of capturing a seventh-ranked finger, " Assistant Director Feng Leo gingerly said.

"Yang Qing, by now I assume you have already enlisted the help of the saint-grade artifacts, right?"

"Yes, I have," answered Yang Qing.

"Then the way I see it, once we have confirmed the sect master of Flying feather sword sect isn't who he is, we have two options; 

One, is we let things play out for the long term and closely monitor all his movements and fully dig out everything that entails his life. This option may take time since Dong Yanlin's master more than likely knows he has been captured and as such they are likely to go underground or break off contact with the rest of his disciples including Gui Shiren who we suspect may be Ai Shan.

The second option is more direct and has a shorter time span, which is you attack him while I and the rest of my colleagues here will closely monitor the reactions of the guests in the hopes of sniffing out any of his co-conspirators in the midst especially that senior sister of his.

I leave the choice to you and don't stress too much about it, even if it fails, we still have the ninth blood finger with us. Even if he is still tight-lipped, it's not for too long. No matter what happens, it doesn't change the fact that we already have the scent of the syndicate. As things stand, we are not dealing with if but on when we will strike at them.

So, act freely, little judge."