Daily life of a cultivation judge

"We agree to the deal," he said with a deflated resignation in his voice.

"In addition, we will also hand back the noble pearl oyster fields to you with everything intact including this year’s harvest and the blue grade array present at the location. By the time you arrive at your sect, all our members will have vacated," Yu Hui added.

There was disbelief written on his face, almost as if he couldn’t believe he was the one uttering those words. He wasn’t the only one, both Xie Yuan and Meng Jiayi had widened eyes, especially the latter who ended up spilling a bit of tea from his mouth onto his willowy beard.

"Come again... You are handing it back?" asked Meng Jiayi.

"Yes." Yu Hui didn’t look like he wanted to answer, but he nonetheless forced himself to.

"Why?" Meng Jiayi wasn’t just shocked, he looked confused too.

He knew and understood why on a fundamental level the reason why the Yu clan had handed them the fields but he still couldn’t help but be shocked that they did.

Noble pearl oysters were a special type of spirit beast that acted more like spiritual plants than spirit beasts, in that, once they settled in an area they would forever be rooted there. If you take them out of that region they would instantly die.

They were notoriously fragile, but that wasn’t what made Yu Hui, Xie Yuan, Fan Ha, and Meng Jiayi look the way they did in reaction to the news.

The reason for their reactions was because noble pearl oysters were gold mines in the cultivation world. They were living breathing spirit veins and spirit mines.

Noble pearl oysters were bizarre creatures in that they would not grow in an area with a lick of spirit vein running through it, which as ironical as it was, finding areas with no spirit veins was harder than one might think.

The phrase that two lions couldn’t stay on the same mountain couldn’t be more true when one describes the relationship between noble pearl oysters and spirit veins. Noble pearl oysters functioned similarly to spirit veins in that they could absorb and condense spiritual qi, except the noble pearl oysters, took it one step further, just like high-grade spirit veins and above, noble pearl oysters refined the spiritual qi they absorbed into pure, gentle form that could be instantly absorbed.

That pure condensed spiritual qi would coalesce into pearls. Because of how pure the energy they contained was, those pearls always had an illustrious and elegant glow, hence the name noble pearl.

These pearls were nature’s spirit pills and consuming one was like the most refined energy borne out of 100 high-grade spirit stones, but unlike with the high-grade stones where the cultivator would have to carefully absorb and refine its energy, with the noble pearl one could directly absorb as is.

It effectively cut short the time needed to refine spiritual qi, and its quality was guaranteed to be much more than what average cultivators would be able to get from refining spirit stones or absorbing spiritual qi and refining it themselves, and the quality would only grow higher depending on the age of the pearl and the strength of the noble pearl oysters.

Cultivating with noble pearls in the qi refinement realm almost always guaranteed that you would end up with blue-grade pillars when breaking through to the foundation establishment. Alchemists all around the world are liable to kill you for using it that way though considering how precious it was as an alchemical ingredient.

It was what they called a universal ingredient that added value to any recipe it was used in and has been featured in tonnes in blue grade recipes as an essential catalyst or ingredient.

The domain expert from Starlight Lake Sect had managed to nurture some noble pearl oysters with a technique he had gotten from the Yu clan, who despite having said technique had never been successful in nurturing one. It took the domain leader of the Starlight Lake Sect almost 1,000 years to successfully nurture them, which showed how difficult it was.

That field had been a crucial resource for the sect be it in using some of the pearls directly to nurture their promising disciples or as a financial and relationship-building card, especially amongst the alchemical community.

It was one of the most precious resources that they depended on for their growth, and because of how precious it was, it became one of the first resources they lost to the Yu clan who cited reasons related to how it was their technique that made it possible in the first place as one of the guiding reasons for seizing it, and because of the mercurial nature of noble pearl oysters where they took root in one place and couldn’t be moved, they lost the field since it wasn’t within their sect grounds.

Noble pearl oysters grew in areas that lacked spirit veins which instantly eliminated their sect grounds that had a lesser dragon spirit vein powering it.

It’s been close to 30,000 years since they lost it and Meng Jiayi had even forgotten it belonged to them since it had already been seized before he was even born. He only knew about it because it had been one of the few things his master and the upper echelons at the time constantly moaned about.

Constantly imagining what the future would have been like for the sect if they still had the field under their control.

"We got it back," muttered Meng Jiayi, feeling slightly emotional.

Yes they were not getting it through their strength and were instead riding on Fan Ha’s relationship, but neither Meng Jiayi nor Xie Yuan seemed all too bothered by that as they smiled at each other, with Xie Yuan with glistening tear drops forming at the edge of her eyes.

Yu Hui’s dejected face became slightly better once he heard Fan Ha agree to her end of the bargain and with all parties in agreement, Yang Qing quickly drafted a contract, ratified it with his judge’s seal that contained the same binding power as that of the silver vermilion rose.

All three sides signed the contract while Li Tian served as the witness and Yang Qing, Xia Ting and Yu Gen signed off as the adjudicators and officiators of the contract on behalf of the Order.

With everything signed and sealed, Yang Qing handed each side their copy, as he was left with one. In addition he also gave them the visual recording of the proceeding which Yu Hui was all too glad to receive as he thanked Yang Qing profusely for it.

Once they were done, Yu Hui and Li Tian said their goodbyes and left, while Xie Yuan and Meng Jiayi excused themselves as Yang Qing still had one last thing to discuss with Fan Ha, a matter unrelated to the case he had just concluded, but important nonetheless.