Daily life of a cultivation judge-Chapter 1158 It shouldn’t be surprising, should it
1158: It shouldn’t be surprising, should it?
1158: It shouldn’t be surprising, should it?
Xia Fang let out another embittered sigh, her hand subconsciously brushing over the amulet hidden beneath the layers of her inner robe and outer coat.
Yang Qing had noticed her doing that several times now.
Occasionally, one of her hands would drift to her chest, softly patting the concealed object before pulling away.
Her actions were like that of someone checking to confirm something was still there or seeking reassurance from it.
Though he couldn’t see what she was touching which he could have had he chosen to sweep over her with his spiritual sense but chose against—he could tell that whatever it was likely held deep significance for her.
It seemed like an anchor or a refuge for her of some sort.
“Pheasant’s reflection into the natural flow?
What’s that?
Her cultivation art or something else?” Yang Qing silently wondered.
Even though she had murmured it softly, his sharp senses caught her words as clearly as if she had spoken them aloud.
Though curiosity gnawed at him, he decided against pressing her.
If it was important to her story, she would mention it.
If not, he was more than fine leaving it be.
Xia Fang, perhaps unaware of her subconscious actions, took a moment to gather herself before continuing her story.
“So, after being goaded into action and our seniors taking the bait, the three clans responded with a measured and calculated reply,” Xia Fang said.
“They retaliated with just enough force to intimidate us but not enough to scare us away completely.”
She let out a bitter sigh.
“They left us just enough leeway to believe that if we committed more resources and trump cards, we might have a chance to overturn the situation.”
They had been played—just like how a cat toyed with its prey, exhausting it until it had no strength left to fight back when the killing blow finally came.
That was exactly what the three retainer clans had done to them, and they had been none the wiser about it at the time.
“During the first engagement, we managed to deal some damage to them, but in exchange, the monarch-grade treasure we relied on suffered significant damage.
That was their true aim all along,” Xia Fang continued.
“They forced a battle of attrition, slowly grinding away at our trump cards and manpower.”
She clenched her fists.
“With our connections to the outside severed and all our channels cut off, we couldn’t replenish anything—whether it be resources or people.
But that wasn’t the case for them.”
A pained look crossed her face as she muttered, “We were no different from a caged beast… and we had no idea.”
“We burned through resource after resource, losing more of our members as we chased that illusion of victory the three clans dangled before us,” Xia Fang said, her face painted with sorrow.
“We were already in a precarious position before it all began, yet my clan members acted as if they couldn’t see it.
We were short on both resources and manpower, but they carried on as if we had an endless supply,” she added, shaking her head at the recklessness of her seniors.
Their thoughtless actions had only made things even harder for her generation, pushing their chances of a comeback further out of reach.
“There were those within the clan who saw through the ploy early on, but with the internal dissension, the growing external pressures, and the chaos that followed, their warnings fell on deaf ears,” Xia Fang said bitterly.
“The clan as a whole only started listening when it was too late.” She lowered her gaze to her cup, her hands tightening around it before she took a sip.
Yang Qing, noticing her cup emptying, silently refilled it.
Xia Fang nodded in thanks.
“By the time my clan came to its senses,” she continued, her voice low and weak, “we had already lost about four hundred clan members, a hundred and forty of whom were core formation experts.
Most were at the middle stages or above…
a loss we could not afford to have, yet we suffered it anyway.”
A pained smile touched her lips.
She couldn’t understand her clan’s actions back then.
It had taken the loss of 400 clan members for them to finally reevaluate their approach.
Yes, that number may not have been their entire force given that the rogue cultivator’s son had spared anyone below the Palace Realm.
Inadvertently, this meant that while they had lost all the Palace Realm cultivators of their golden era, they still retained their Core Formation experts from that time, which was no small number.
According to the clan records, they had around 3,000 Core Formation experts at the time—a force that would be considered significant by any measure.
To an outsider, losing 400 members, even with 140 of them at or above the middle stages of Core Formation, might not have seemed like an unbearable loss.
Against a total of 3,000 Core Formation experts, it barely accounted for a sixth of their strength.
But Xia Fang saw it differently.
Even with that number, her clan was in a fragile state desperately balancing on the edge between destruction and resurgence.
They had just suffered an unimaginable blow when they watched their most powerful cultivators get reaped as easily as harvesting chives by a single cultivator.
Before they could even process that devastation, the one ally they had hoped to rely on had drawn a clear line, severing ties with them.
And before they could even catch their breath, they lost even more members in their failed attempt to break through to the Palace Realm.
This was a clan that couldn’t afford any more losses.
Yes, they may have only lost a fraction of their experts, but for a clan in such a precarious state, even the loss of 140 Core Formation experts carried the same weight as losing two-thirds—or even their entire generation—of Core Formation cultivators.
It wasn’t just about numbers; it was about what those losses represented in the minds and hearts of the surviving Xia clan members.
This was a clan that, given its fragile state, couldn’t afford to lose even a single member.
In Xia Fang’s lifetime—over the 300 years she had lived—the number of Xia clan members she had seen perish was no more than 40.
Yet each loss hit her with the same crushing weight, as if she had lost the entire clan all over again.
She couldn’t understand how, despite having already endured so much, her clan had been able to stomach such devastating losses.
Was what those three clans said really so intolerable?
Or had her clan simply been that desperate for a victory?
“Those three really knew their target well,” Xia Fang thought bitterly, reflecting on both her clan’s actions and the calculated cruelty of the three retainer clans.
“By the time my clan realized we were being led by the nose, we had already lost three of the four monarch-grade treasures at our disposal.
But the greatest loss wasn’t the treasures but the devastating mental blow the clan suffered as a result of those losses,” Xia Fang slowly said.
“It was already hard enough for our members to achieve breakthroughs due to the mental and heart demons that plagued them as a consequence of the rogue cultivator’s son’s actions.
You can imagine how much worse it became, how many more got affected, after the losses we suffered at the hands of the three retainer clans,” Xia Fang said with a sigh.
Yang Qing nodded in understanding of that weight, having faced his own battles with mental demons before.
“They destroyed us mentally while at the same time forcing us to reveal our trump cards and exhaust our resources,” Xia Fang hypothesized.
“They attacked us not long after that, this time revealing their full strength,” she continued.
“Before, when our clan fought them, only the Chi Clan had sent a Palace Realm expert, while the other two relied on quasi-Palace Realm cultivators.
But when they launched their real assault, all three clans fielded Palace Realm experts.
The Chi Clan sent three—including the one we had already been fighting—while the Ning Clan and the Fan Clan each sent two.” Xia Fang’s voice though calm was filled with the weight and severity of those memories.
“Was it strange?” Yang Qing suddenly asked.
“Was it strange for all of them to have palace realm experts?” He raised a brow slightly.
The three clans may have been retainers, but they descended from palace realm experts, so their ability to produce palace realm cultivators shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Xia clan.
Yes, it wasn’t always guaranteed that a power with palace realm ancestors would continue producing palace realm experts—he had seen and read about countless cases where such legacies declined—but in the case of the three clans, it should have been possible for a number of reasons.
Setting aside the cultivation base of their founders, which could have contributed to their ability to reproduce palace realm experts, there was also their association with the Xia clan’s founder to consider.
They had been his personal disciples.
And while the Xia clan founder had certainly prioritized his clan’s growth, the fact that all five of his disciples reached the palace realm spoke volumes—not just about their talent, but about his abilities as a teacher.
More importantly, it showed that he hadn’t been stingy when it came to their cultivation.
Producing a single Palace Realm expert required talent, a capable teacher, a refined cultivation art, and a wealth of resources.
Producing five?
That suggested an environment that was capable of nurturing and producing high-level breakthroughs.
And from what Xia Fang had said earlier, though she didn’t know exactly how far all the disciples had progressed, one of them was rumored to have reached the sixth stage of the Palace Realm.
What if the others had reached similar heights?
This highlighted the kind of environment and care the Xia clan founder must have provided, and Yang Qing was certain that the benefits of that care would have trickled down to the families of his disciples.
Who knew what he had left for his disciples—and, in turn, what they had left for their descendants?
There was also the Xia clan founder’s relationship with the Silver Crane Sect to consider.
His personal disciples would have been the grand-disciples of his master, and when it came to valuing relationships, who would his master or martial siblings favor more—his disciples or his descendants?
Understanding the inner workings of a sect, Yang Qing had an inkling of which side they would favor.
If the Xia Clan had been able to consistently produce Palace Realm experts over the years with the resources and foundation left behind by their founder, then why wouldn’t the same hold true for his disciples’ families?
After all, where would a crippled core formation cultivator have found the resources to nurture five palace realm experts?
Given all of this, Yang Qing strongly believed it was only natural for those families to continue producing palace realm experts.
Their backgrounds all but guaranteed it.
Unless…
A flicker of inscrutable light flashed through Yang Qing’s eyes as his gaze settled on Xia Fang, his thoughts drifting to the one disciple who had left the clan immediately after the Xia clan founder’s passing.
“Maybe the reason the Silver Crane Sect distanced itself wasn’t entirely because of the Cyan Crescent Kingdom…” Yang Qing mused.
