Daily life of a cultivation judge

After parting ways with Xia Fang, Yang Qing returned to his abode to comb through all the pieces of information he had gathered so far. Only after he had done would he then finally set out to do some ground investigations—which was something that left him feeling a little worse for wear, especially since he was doing it out of his own volition and not at the behest of the Order.

Could they have finally found a way to get past my mental defenses and subtly influence my decisions without me realizing it? Yang Qing fearfully wondered as he rounded the bend past the gate of his abode.

As he stepped inside, a frown immediately colored his face when his gaze fell in a particular direction.

"That damn bird!" Yang Qing's face darkened. "One of these fine days I'll really eat it, that is if I don't pummel it to death first," he added through gritted teeth as he made his way to the pond.

There, lying upside down, was a pristine white crab with golden starlight motes shimmering on its carapace. A slight dent near its head marred the otherwise smooth shell.

With how still it was, one could easily mistake it for a corpse—but Yang Qing knew better. The crab was very much alive. Just unconscious. No doubt, thanks to the handiwork of a certain bird.

Yang Qing squatted beside it, leaning in close. His gaze shifted from the starlight crab to the pond, and his eye twitched involuntarily when he saw how bare it looked now as compared to how full it had been earlier in the day.

Yang Qing involuntarily clenched his fists at the sight. It was a sight he had already expected to see given that he had sensed the state of the pond immediately after stepping into his abode via his spiritual sense—but some part of him had clung to the faint hope that it wasn't true, that his pond hadn't been emptied by almost two-thirds.

"Not even the fingerlings were spared," Yang Qing muttered, a fierce look on his face as his eyes fell on the seventeen fries left behind who were the only survivors of Ellie's latest heist. Judging by how agitated they were, it seemed Ellie had struck not too long ago.

Fueled by rage, Yang Qing was of a half a mind to drop everything, drag Ellie out from whatever hole she'd hidden herself in, and give her the worst beating of her life. Maybe even strip her feathers, tie her to a stick, and parade her through the Beast Tamer Hall so every spirit beast who held a grudge against her—which were many—could gloat at her misfortune.

But, alas, he was pressed for time, and when it came to difficulty, tracking down Ellie would prove to be just as hard as tracking down Bai Chen's whereabouts.

There were a few reasons why Ellie was so audacious in stealing from Yang Qing despite the consequences. Chief among them was that she was a hopeless glutton, who—much like Feng Xin—would risk almost anything for a meal, especially a good one. It couldn't be helped, really, since Yang Qing and Feng Xin had been the ones to raise her ever since she'd hatched.

In their defense, they hadn't expected Ellie to turn out the way she did. The only reason they'd put so much effort into raising her—and chosen the particular methods they used—was because they'd read that cloudswallowing kites had a remarkable nose for sniffing out water-based spirit beasts with special bloodlines.

They'd hoped to rope Ellie and her nose into searching for some of those spirit beasts, which were bound to have heavenly tastes.

To test that hypothesis, they procured fish and other sea-based spirit beasts, which, though not rare in bloodline, were still unique in their own right—to see if Ellie could detect them. She did, and with flying colors at that.

Unfortunately, in the process, they created a monster with the same fiendish appetite as them, which eventually led her to become a seasoned thief as she stole from Yang Qing and refined her heists with every attempt.

In the beginning, she was clumsy and predictable. That led to plenty of failures and bruises to her head from Yang Qing's vicious pummeling. But over time, she became far more sophisticated. Where once she would try to nab any fish in Yang Qing's pond, even the common ones, or clear it out completely—not even sparing the eggs—she eventually reined in her greed and became more selective in her targets.

If she was going to risk a severe beating, then she would much rather do so for a worthwhile prize.

Then, little by little, she evolved and started thinking up ways to avoid those beatings altogether. That was how she ended up studying Yang Qing and his routines. And when that wasn't enough, she moved on to developing her hiding skills.

With how vast the Order was—and how devious she had grown to be, likely learning judiciously from Yang Qing and the schemes he regularly tried to pull behind the Order's back—she had refined her methods to an impressive degree.

Yang Qing could forget about finding her in the short term. He'd have to wait a few months—three at most—for her to crawl out from whatever rock she'd hidden under and reveal herself either to pull off another heist on a different target… or to make amends, which was yet another skill she'd developed.

When it came to making amends, she had two options. And given how much her behavior had been influenced by Yang Qing, it went without saying that one of those options involved being cheap and shameless.

That option was her begging one of Luo Meili, Su Jinjing, Dai Chen, or Yu Huifeng to speak on her behalf, hoping they could help allay Yang Qing's wrath.

It went without saying that that particular option wasn't sustainable in the long run. It stopped working after being used a couple of times, and she had to keep switching targets to speak on her behalf. That was what eventually led her to entertain the idea of roping in Lei Weiyuan to do the job.

From her years of silently studying Yang Qing, she knew just how deathly terrified he was of that old geezer. In her mind, there was no better person to use. Yang Qing would never say no to him, and as a bonus, she'd get a little revenge for all the vicious beatings she'd suffered at Yang Qing's hands.

But things didn't go as planned.

Not only did Lei Weiyuan reject her idea, he took it a step further by closely monitoring her for nearly seven months, foiling her plans at every turn, and even informing Yang Qing about a few of them in advance, which gave Yang Qing plenty of time to set up proper traps just for her.

Those seven months marked one of the darkest periods of her life.

It was during that time that she ended up developing her second option for making amends, which was paying back what she took with something of equal value.

It turned out cloudswallowing kites didn't just have a great nose for spirit beasts. That same sense was equally effective when it came to spiritual plants, minerals, regions, and or, anything that had a special quality to it.

While it wasn't always a guarantee, cloudswallowing kites had an innate ability to sense the specialness of something—or someplace. That didn't mean they instantly knew what exactly was special about it, only that it was. It was like a sixth sense for spotting treasure hidden in the mundane.

About half of the treasures Yang Qing had accumulated from cultivator markets that ended up having more to them than met the eyes were in large part thanks to Ellie's guidance.

The artifact tied to the Blue Fairy race that Yang Qing had gifted Dean Zhu Lao during his welcome-back ceremony was counted among those treasures.

Because of how she was raised—and who raised her—Ellie cared little for anything beyond good food, and even then, her tastes leaned heavily toward meat dishes. It didn't matter whether the spirit beast in question was from land, sea, or sky—if it was delectable, she'd love it.

As such, when it came to her innate sense for treasures or special objects, she showed little interest unless they were food-related.

But that wasn't the case for Yang Qing.

While he loved food with as much enthusiasm as she did—hence the vicious beatings whenever she stole from his pond—he also loved other things with equal measure.

Ellie secretly mocked him for that. She judged him for having such a weak Food Dao heart, unlike her and Feng Xin. But even so, his weak heart gave her something to work with.

While some random rock pulsating with the wondrous charm of the Dao held little interest for Ellie, the same couldn't be said for Yang Qing. Or some weathered stone hiding a cultivation art. Or an artifact with bizarre power swirling within it. All these things—she knew—would send Yang Qing to the moon with ecstasy.

So... Ellie, knowing who he was and who she was, found the perfect balance between them.

She'd rob him senseless on occasion, and in return, she'd collect all those weird trinkets he loved hoarding and use them to trade for leniency and, with it, avoid a beating.

That dysfunctional, symbiotic arrangement between the two had served them well. So well, in fact, that Ellie eventually started building up a stockpile of the strange objects she'd find during her travels.

And that, in turn, only emboldened her further when it came to thieving from Yang Qing.