Yi Jie walked forward towards a different entrance than the one they had gotten in through. This entrance door led to a different hallway where the defendants and victims under dispute were held by other inquisitors awaiting the call-up from the judge.
The hallway was packed full of cultivators with different robes awaiting to be summoned in the different courts. Despite the huge number, order was still maintained, in part it was due to the inquisitors present with them and in other was due to the prestige the Cultivation Order Courts had created for themselves in their years of service. Especially towards troublemakers within their grounds.
"Sect master Cheng Yuan of the green fog swamp sect and the emerald leaf cow your case is being heard first. Please make your way over" Yi Jie gently called out in the hallway.
As Yi Jie was doing this, Yang Qing busied himself by familiarizing himself with the case at hand.
...
The Green fog swamp sect was a Rank 4 sect. Meaning it was a sect whose highest-level powerhouse was at the core formation stage. The ranking of sects, clans, royal families, merchant organizations, and other various cultivation organizations started getting ranked the moment the Order was established.
The ranking system became part of the Order's organizational framework. The cases the Order handled and how they were distributed, was in part decided by the rank of the party or parties in the case.
The various groups were ranked according to the strongest powerhouse present among other basic minimums, however strength was the main deciding factor.
There were a total of 5 ranks with rank 5 being the lowest and rank 1 being the highest. Rank 5 had a foundation establishment member as the strongest powerhouse, Rank 4 had a core formation member, Rank 3 had a palace stage member, Rank 2 had a domain-level expert, and lastly, rank 1 which was the highest rank, had a Soul formation expert at the helm.
However, there were 2 groups that were unranked. The families and sects that had qi formation members at the highest level, with the other group being families/sects/ clans that were dubbed as Holy Lands.
There were 13 Holy lands spread out on all the continents around the Blue Origin planet. The central continent had the highest number having 5, followed by the western continent which had 3, then came the southern continent and the eastern continent which both had 2, and lastly, the northern continent just had 1.
What set apart Holy Lands from the rest was that it was rumored that the powerhouse at the helm was above the soul formation stage. Even without verifying whether the veracity of that statement was true, their base strength is enough to declare them unrivaled as they could easily topple a few long-established rank 1 organizations, several times over.
The Cultivation Order Society could be considered a holy land due to its ability to accomplish the same feats even though it has a shorter history compared to the two holy lands in the Southern continent.
People in the southern continent always wondered why these two Holy Lands allowed the formation and the eventual growth of the Cultivation Order Society. Outwardly, it seemed detrimental to them for another party to rise up and muddy the waters in the continent. However, those in the know (or so they thought), or those too tired of closed-door cultivation and need a little breather and decide to gossip with some friends in a fancy pavilion somewhere stacked to the brim with voice-dampening formations. They hypothesized that the two Holy Lands namely; the Radiant Sword sect and the Flowing Valleys sect, secretly founded the Cultivation Order Society to be their dogs and keep other sects from growing to their level.
Over the years since its founding, there have been a few things that happened that lent credence to this hypothesis, one of them being the decimation of a long-established rank 1 sect. To date it's unknown what triggered the Order's reaction to attack that sect, all that is known is the Order cemented its profile as a powerhouse from that day.
However such hypotheses were not to be trusted as they most likely came from those who had bellies full of anger against the Order. Most likely they were at the whipping end of the Order's justice. The other hypothesis which had a much greater sway than the former was that the two holy lands were warier of the holy lands from other continents than what could happen internally. The invasion by other forces during the Southern continent-wide wars further cemented this guess.
They were thus in tacit favor of the Order being formed, even though they never donated anything to the Order. Not a single low-grade spirit stone or even a single recycled cultivation mat that a dog would pee on in disdain. Stingy bastards.
However, their silence and no intervention was their way of saying "Cultivation Order Society you have our blessing to exist". Through the Order, the lifeblood of the southern continent would be preserved and the two sects would get to have a steady supply of talents who would have otherwise been snuffed out in the flames of war.
The most dangerous thing to these sects wasn't some lecherous young master who would bring sect-destroying calamity to their doorstep, which to this day they don't know which despicable bard spread the rumors that all these cultivation holy lands have lecherous habits of lusting after swan meat. Their recruitment of female disciples suffered a massive blow during the height of those rumors. They scoured the whole continent, used karmic spells and all sorts of derivation techniques but never discovered who spread those rumors. One of the few unsolved mysteries to this day.
However, the most dangerous thing to a Holy Land, especially if they want to remain standing and competitive amongst other Holy Lands for thousands of years is, generational talent gap.
This comes up when there is no new blood in the sect or the new disciples have low talent that is not enough to match their predecessors. Since immortality hasn't yet been proven it exists, the sects need a steady supply of talents to succeed them and ensure continuity. But if the young cultivators at the bottom have horrible talents, they will never match their predecessors or other rival Holy Lands, thus when they get into power, the levels they would have reached would not match up to their status as a Holy Land. This fat sheep would soon be devoured by others once they notice this.
Holy lands have never lacked resources, what they truly needed were geniuses. Extraordinary talents that are able to bring the best out of these resources and be worthy of the title of 'holy land'. Rampant wars would only end up snuffling out these talents who even under normal circumstances were in short supply to begin with.
Some crazy disillusioned cultivators out there say that geniuses flourish in adversity and turmoil, but in the eyes of these Holy Lands, it is all nonsense. Geniuses are geniuses because they can flourish anywhere, under any circumstance, with little to no effort or stimulus to them. Some breakthrough in their sleep, others do it when gossiping, others when eating some delicious spirit beast, and some could even sneeze and end up having a minor breakthrough. They couldn't understand why people believed the lies that geniuses need to fight within an inch of their life to have a breakthrough or epiphany. This was most likely rumors spread by some blood cult member so he could have endless pools of blood for their cultivation.
Peace in the southern continent was thus in the best interest of the Holy Lands and the other residents of the southern continent.
...
"Mmmh the Green Fog Swamp sect. They are rather gifted in the cultivation and growth of spiritual herbs. Feng Xin once told me that their spiritual rice has one of the finest tastes among all growers in their province…Gulp...I wonder if I can scam some samples from them." Yang Qing silently wondered with a gluttonous look on his face.
"It seems in their many spiritual herb propagation experiments, one of the herbs had an effect on one of the cows increasing its spirituality. This must be the emerald-leaf cow.
She managed to activate a tiny part of its hidden bloodline which they later found out through her was part of the radiant emerald cow bloodline, a potential soul formation bloodline. The sect made a collaborative pact with her once she gained enough spirituality to understand them.
The rough content of the deal was that they would feed her with all sorts of spiritual herbs to help in her cultivation and further refine the radiant emerald cow bloodline. In exchange, the cow would provide her spiritual milk, which has been known to cleanse the bodies of cultivators, solidify shaky foundations, and is an excellent emulsifying ingredient for alchemy potions.
However, once she broke through to the core formation stage she refused to continue with the terms of the deal and ended up in a fight with the sect leader of the Green Fog Swamp sect.
No clear winner came out of it, despite the emerald cow being at the early stages of the core formation realm, and the sect leader being at the middle stages.
Mmmh, She must have a higher grade core compared to the sect leader. No wonder he came to the Order to solve his dispute. He is afraid in a couple of years he won't be her match. She might even usurp his position as the sect leader. That would be an interesting turn of events" said Yang Qing with an amused look on his face.
