Daily life of a cultivation judge

Speaking of the Lai Clan, with his trip over giving him time to think on it, he had this nagging suspicion that someone from the Lai clan being chosen as the sect leader of the Violet Feather Sword Sect—rather than someone from the Ning clan, which had the backing of the rank two Song Kingdom—may have had something to do with Xia Huang and the other Xia clan members in the Silver Crane Sect interfering in the matter. As filial as they were in upholding their founder's will above all, even to the point of letting the Xia clan be destroyed in obedience to it, they were not entirely unfeeling toward their clan. This was clear in the parting words Xia Huang had given Yang Qing to pass on to Xia Fang.

Those words revealed someone who was still concerned about his clan, even if his actions seemed to suggest otherwise in the eyes of other Xia clan members. Because they were not entirely indifferent, and even though the three retainer clans were justified in acting against the Xia clan, one has to wonder—what did they feel when they saw everything that happened and how the vengeance was carried out? They may have washed their hands of the matter, but surely they must have seen how it all unfolded.

Maybe the Lai clan had indeed been loyal. After all, for the Xia clan to trust them as they did, the Lai clan must have endured the same hell, which meant they must have lost members too in the long skirmish against the three retainer clans.

Maybe they allowed their clan members to die because they were that devoted to selling the ruse of loyalty, when in truth, they weren't. But for them to go to such extremes, they either had to hate the Xia clan so much that they were willing to endure it, yet, according to Yang Qing's experience, having an heirloom taken, while deplorable and enough to create a substantial amount of hate and resentment, was not enough to drive the Lai clan to willingly sacrifice their members just to dupe them.

Such a level of hate required something far more extreme. Maybe the Xia clan members were desecrating the corpse of the Lai clan's founder, and if they had done something like that, Yang Qing was sure Xia Huang or even the last living disciple of his ancestor would have been the first to act and punish the Xia clan.

The way Yang Qing saw it, the Lai clan may have indeed been loyal, and somewhere down the line, something shifted. The impetus of that change may have been Xia Huang and the others. They may have told the Lai clan to let the Xia clan fall, while at the same time warning the other clans against acting against them. Then, because of the loyalty the Lai clan had shown, Xia Huang, or perhaps the influence of the Silver Crane Sect, installed them as the rulers of the newly formed sect as a reward for their loyalty.

As for the matter of Lai Hu duping Xia Fang, well… that could also be explained as loyalty. The heirlooms and legacy arts taken from those clans—where were they kept? Chances were, if they weren't within the Xia clan's grounds, they were stored outside. And for something so precious, places like the Banyan Battlefield made for a good hiding spot.

Maybe Lai Hu's duty wasn't so much to betray Xia Fang as it was to find those heirlooms and return them to their rightful owners. They may have been retainer clans, but the way Yang Qing saw it, their loyalty was bound more to their founders' master than to his descendants—just as it was for Xia Huang.

As for the three retainer clans, the Ning, Fan, and Chi families were within their rights to seek vengeance for what the Xia clan did to them. But Yang Qing doubted whether Xia Huang and the rest would allow them to be the heads of the sect they founded on the very land of his ancestor, where the blood of his clansmen had been spilled.

As much as Xia Huang and the others understood why things unfolded the way they did, and even allowed it, that didn't mean they would go along with everything. Those three clans had spilled the blood of their kinsmen, and just because they understood and let it happen, didn't mean they would also endorse them as leaders of the sect they wanted to establish together on the very grounds where they killed their clansmen.

It was much easier to support the clan that hadn't spilled the blood of your members than the ones that had, even if the latter was justified.

Broad-mindedness had a limit. Mortals often presumed that cultivators became more broad-minded the further up the realms they advanced, transcending the mundane and its associated relationships. But that assumption couldn't be further from the truth. If it were, then the continent would not be as plagued by cultivator conflicts as it was.

Cultivators held on to things and were influenced by emotion just like the rest of them. The Xia clan's downfall was living proof of it. Even he was living proof of it. He'd thought he'd be some broadminded person the higher up the realms he moved, but to his dismay, Yang Qing discovered that the same petty streak he had as an iron body refinement junior—when he poured laxative herbs into his soup to get back at the black dog that peed in his solution bath—was still alive even now as a palace realm expert.

And if he was being perfectly honest with himself, that petty streak had even grown since then. He wasn't above it all. If he found the chance to get back at someone, he would not let it go. He was also a little more shameless in his affairs.

Maybe it was his petty mindset guiding his thinking, but he didn't believe that Xia Huang, as broadminded as he seemed, would just swallow everything and let things be with the retainer clans. He might not punish them or blame them, but he for sure wasn't going to endorse them in their new endeavors.

If the Lai clan had been loyal like he guessed, then placing them as the heads of the new sect would have been exactly the type of thing he would have done in their shoes.

He would have been like, "Oh, you don't want the Lai clan to be the head? Well, you're welcome to leave and create your sect elsewhere, as long as it isn't on my ancestor's land. If you want to stay, then the sect leader and a few of the higher positions have to go to the Lai clan. If you don't want that, then you're free to take everything that belongs to you and start somewhere else. I wish you all the best."

If they left, he would nurture the Lai clan, and that would be that.

Of course, their presumed loyalty was nothing but baseless conjecture at this point. About the only person who could confirm it was Xia Huang. As such, Yang Qing decided against sharing what he felt, only focusing on the facts he had uncovered as he slowly guided Xia Fang through it.

When he reached the end… well, things played out the way he'd expected in some aspects where Xia Fang was concerned. In reaction to the information, she vomited blood and passed out not long after. She only came to about two hours later, and that was with Yang Qing pouring his spiritual qi into her body and using other restorative spells in conjunction with it to stir her awake. Left to her body's natural mechanisms, it wouldn't have been a surprise if she'd been unconscious for days as opposed to just two hours.

"S-sorry for that poor display," Xia Fang weakly said once she'd raised her body from the sleeping position she'd been in on the seat.

"It's okay. If I had been in your shoes, I would have reacted the same way," Yang Qing softly said as he returned to his seat, having confirmed she wasn't in any immediate danger of becoming unstable.

Still, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly when he saw how listless she looked. Her skin seemed paler, and on her head, he could already see a few patches of dull grey strands. That, coupled with her pale, almost sallow complexion, made her look sickly, fatigued, and slightly malnourished. It was as if she had aged by two thousand years in the span of those two hours.

Xia Fang stared listlessly into her untouched wine cup, a resigned, bitter smile on her face that occasionally slipped into a hollow chuckle. Coupled with her vacant look, it made her seem as though she had gone mad.

"What do I do?" she asked feebly as she finally looked up at Yang Qing. "If you were me, after hearing all that, what would you do?" she followed, her voice and smile carrying the same frailty.

"I don't know, because I don't know what such a weight feels like," Yang Qing replied honestly.

"Could you humor me?" she said, still wearing the same smile. "Please," she softly added in an almost desperate whisper.

Sensing her desperation, Yang Qing sighed and shared his honest thoughts.

"If I lost my grandfather, I would try to honor him by living or doing things he would have wanted me to do," he began, his eyes blurring slightly as though his soul had slipped into that scenario. "I would struggle with it, of course," he added with a faint smile, his eyes still unfocused on the present.

"I would cry, I would curse, I would laugh, I would feel lost. I would be tempted to seek vengeance, but through it all, I would always keep asking myself what grandpa would want me to do, and I would endeavor to do that. I would talk to him, tease him a little, and honestly bear my heart out to his departed spirit about everything I am feeling," he said, his eyes regaining their clarity as he focused back on Xia Fang.

"I would try each day to do that, until the point where I feel like I have started living with the loss, to the point that when I think of him, all I feel is gratitude. Only then would I pause, reevaluate, and think on what I want to do next," he said sincerely as he looked at Xia Fang.

"Do I pursue vengeance against those who took him, or do I look for something else?" he softly added.

"Your grandfather..." Yang Qing softly continued, "He must have shared what he hoped for you, right? Especially close to the end? What he hoped you would do with your life after you escaped, or even just random conversations you had with him about what you would have been doing had you been born in different circumstances," he gently asked. "Those scenarios that brought just a little more color to your situation and made the days easier."

Xia Fang softly nodded her head.

"Then start with that," he gently encouraged. "Let that be the next chapter of your life until you can clearly and firmly decide for yourself on what is next for you."