Thus close to the peak of qi refinement he left his family and went to the trial grounds of the order. He quickly passed their screening as a 10th-level qi refinement cultivator at that age and was nothing short of a genius. The cultivation realms in blue origin planet are as follows;
Body refinement→ Qi refinement→ Foundation stage→ Core formation stage→ Palace stage→ Domain stage→ Soul formation stage.
Yang Qing had heard there may be a stage above soul formation but he had no idea what it was in fact in all his life he had only ever once seen a core formation expert. He did so when he was at the body refining stage and it was enough to terrify him from the pressure he was emitting. That brief encounter shaped the person he was today.
The body refining stage has 6 levels namely: Iron body, Bronze body, Silver body, Gold body, Diamond body, and lastly the peerless jade body. As long as one reaches the silver body stage they will have opened enough meridians to begin qi absorption and enter the qi refinement stage.
Most opt to breakthrough to the qi refinement at this stage as cultivating a gold body and a diamond body doesn’t necessarily add longevity to your life. In addition, it takes considerable talent, effort, and resources just to breakthrough from a silver body to a diamond body. Some have taken a few decades losing time they could have used pursuing higher realms. The older you are the less vigor you have in your qi not unless you breakthrough to higher realms and get rejuvenated with more lifespan. As for the rest of the other stages from qi refinement going onwards, they all have 12 levels.
As for Yang Qing upon the evaluation tests, he was found to have already cultivated a peerless jade body and was already at the 10th level of qi refinement. This created quite a rave among the evaluators and instructors though such a situation wasn’t unseen. With how many people have applied to join the order in the past couple of centuries a few talents like his some even exceeding his have been known to have appeared on these doors and they ended up being the pillars that support the cultivation order to what it is today.
Yang Qing was easily admitted and it went exactly how he had envisioned it. He was lavished with resources and even given special one-on-one training and access to all kinds of cultivation techniques and facilities.
He had decided once he was admitted into the order he would do his utmost to ensure he stood out. In his mind the more he stood out as a prodigy the less they’d likely send him out on dangerous missions in fact they’d shelter him like a mythical treasure.
“Maintain a low-key. NEVER!!! So I end up doing grunt work that is bound to be dangerous and tiresome. I Yang Qing am a soft life cultivator.” He kept repeating this mantra to himself every day he was at the training institute of the order. Thus he poured himself wholly into cultivating and ensuring his brilliance shone. He even started involving himself in other occupations to show he was an all-around person. Study of arrays, beast taming, alchemy, herbology, weapon refinement, talisman production, and medicine. He did it all.
Of course, he ended up sucking at most of them except in arrays that he was forced to rein his zealousness and add humility to one of his amiable traits. However, all his effort soon paid up as he stood out amongst his peers in his class with his talent and dedication and ended up being one of the strongest people with an early core formation stage realm also known as the illusory core stage. Due to his results albeit too showy, he ended up being a direct entry judge instead of first being an inquisitor and then a judge.
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He had wept in joy when he heard he would be made into a judge directly instead of being an inquisitor first. The higher-ups thought he was weeping because of his deep sense of duty to the cause of the order. They even admired his breadth of character and berated the other trainees to have such dedication. Little did they know that the weeping was because his long-standing dream had been realized. Who were judges? Where were they stationed? Judges were among the highest officials of the Cultivation order and they all worked in the main headquarters which was heavily fortified and protected beyond any empire or 1st rate sects.
Wasn’t this what he always wanted? He’d get to sit all day in a safe courtroom judge people, get paid handsomely in all the resources he could ever want, and not have to risk his neck out there or work tirelessly. He had secretly planned to throw some of his workloads on the inquisitor attached to him. This was the dream he had envisioned after the trauma of being terrified to death by a core formation expert when he was at the body refining stage.
“GET READY WORLD SOFT LIFE YANG QING HAS COME” he internally yelled.
He couldn’t wait to get started or so he thought. He got swamped with a million cases the moment he started with set targets and his work was carefully monitored by a superior who Yang Qing was convinced was his internal demon because of the torment he went through.
Judges start as outer-core court judge and slowly make their way up the ladder as they increase in cultivation realms. And as the lowest of the rungs, they handle all cases from body refinement cultivators to the peak of foundation.
The bulk of the cultivation world is filled with people in these realms and only 1 in a thousand make it through to the core formation stage. A qi refinement cultivator? You could wake up tomorrow and find a blade of grass that has already started cultivating qi. Therefore the cases never end and since a core formation expert can stay a month without food or sleep, Yang Qing soon came to find out how true that statement was.
He was worked down to his core and last qi reserve and for some cases, he even had to leave the safe comfort of the courthouse and the trusty arrays flooding his courtroom. He was utterly disheartened at how black-hearted this place was. He couldn’t run he had heard of what happened to traitors. It was drilled into them with illusion spells. They were shown vividly in gruesome detail what were to happen were they to betray the code of conduct of the order.
Thus soft life Yang Qing died and broken sleepless Yang Qing was born.
Luckily amid his despair-filled days epiphany hit. If he improved in his cultivation realm wouldn’t the number of cases he had to reduce on the account of the type of cases he would get? The cases one dealt with usually correlated to the strength of the judge. If he was at the palace realm he would deal with palace realm cases and even if they decided to lower it, it would only be those at the peak of core formation realm. How many palace realm cultivators were there? Surely not as many as foundation and qi refinement members.
“Soft life Yang Qing get ready for your revival” Yang Qing silently muttered to himself with a crazy grin on his face.
“HEY HEY YANG QING what are you daydreaming for at the court’s entrance we will be late and end up doing sect valuations again.”
Yang Qing was pulled out of his stupor with the yell from Yi Jie. He quickly made his way toward him with renewed vigor as he was one step closer to his goal. At 23 years he was already at the palace realm in his cultivation and had passed the internal valuations to be a palace court judge. He would have started 3 months ago if not for the fact that his supervisor discovered Yang Qing lied about the time it took him to breakthrough to the palace realm during his seclusion. It had taken him 5 months to breakthrough and stabilize his realm. However, Yang Qing in his infinite wisdom decided to pretend it took him 8 months with him sleeping through the extra 3 months he had added on.
This little ruse never escaped the eyes of his supervisor Lei Weiyuan who was a domain-level expert and could easily tell from the stability of his aura how far back he broke through. With a bit of coercion, Yang Qing came clean and those 3 months were happily added to his schedule.