Yang Qing was surprised by Lei Weiyuan's sudden request. He turned to question him but he had already disappeared from the spot and was already mingling with the other guests.
Yang Qing could only shelf his question as he continued his small talk with vice dean Yu Long and Yu Huifang.
"Well Huifang, I will leave you with your friends, I still have to play the role of a dutiful host because we all know your mother won't. That lady.... she can never just stick in one place," said vice dean Yu Hong as he weakly smiled with Yu Huifang patting his back in consolation.
....
"So Huifang what did you tell your mother about me?' Yang Qing quickly asked the question that had been eating at him ever since his interaction with Yu Hong.
"Nothing much, just the normal stuff," said Yu Huifang as she chuckled with a mischievous glint flashing in her eyes.
"I thought you were nothing like your mother but you're definitely your mother's daughter alright," grumbled Yang Qing.
"Mmmph what do you know...So where do you want to head first?" asked Yu Huifang.
"I'm in no hurry. By the way, how come Dai Chen isn't here?" Yang Qing curiously asked as he didn't seem to spot him around. Considering his relationship with Yu Huifang he was sure he would be here too.
"He is afraid of my mother so he decided to stay away," answered Yu Huifang as she smiled in exasperation.
After Yang Qing's brief interaction with her mother, he could understand why. If he were in the same spot he would put a wide berth between himself and her.
"I bet you are wishing you had a few recording talismans on you, Mao Mao. You can't get a better scenery than this then add the numerous big shots around, it's a recorder's dream," Yang Qing teasingly said which landed him a fierce elbow to his gut from Mao Yunru.
"I didn't expect there'd be these many bigshots around though. It seems Dean Zhu Lao is well-liked," Yang Qing said as he gazed around.
Among the guests around there were those he was familiar with and none held a small title.
There was an old man in a light brown robe who had a hunched back and seemed to be at death's door. However, his gaze seemed youthful and filled with unparalleled wisdom. He was the Chief librarian and was in charge of the institute's main library.
The library was one of the institute's most treasured facility as all sorts of cultivation arts and techniques ranging from red grade down to purple grade were stored in there. It wasn't only restricted to cultivation arts, but history, painting, tea brewing techniques, and beginner guide to all sorts of instruments be they for entertainment or not. Anything that could be categorized as knowledge was stored in the library, making it one of the largest facilities in the whole of the Order. It was bigger than even some minor branches, about the size of a small town of 30 square kilometers housing scrolls and books that easily numbered in the millions at most and hundreds of thousands at the least.
As the man in charge of such an enormous library, his position in the Order wasn't small. His name was Xu Ning, he also went by another nickname, the thousand faces shifter. He was a master of disguise. Very few people knew his true looks and rumor had it he may not even be human. When not in the library he usually disguised himself among the students or random passersby in the restaurants and inns in the Order's compound.
Luckily or unluckily he was not one of the only oddities in the Order as there were many others just like him who had weird temperaments or hobbies.
Yang Qing always wondered if it was the Order that made people weird or did it specifically attract people of a certain quality. Of course, he always thought he was one of the few normal people in the Order completely oblivious to his nature.
Throwing those thoughts to the back of his mind, he turned his attention to the rest of the guests whose titles were just as illustrious as the Chief Librarian Xu Ning. There was the director of spirit stone mining operations, the vice head of auditing, a few assistant directors of the administrative hall, hall master of the beast hall, the vice-captain of internal security, and the vice head of the commissions' hall.
Those were but the few Yang Qing could recognize. He had to seek Yu Huifang's guidance to know the rest. Among those whom Yu Huifang helped with there was one Yang Qing paid special attention to, the vice warden of the requiem. He had a youthful look of someone in his early thirties. He had short dark purple hair with matching eyes and pale white skin. He had a cold handsome appearance as he calmly took everything in.
The requiem was the ironic title given to the Order's prison. Usually, when cultivators were found guilty they would be put to work like the Shen brothers or Cheng Yuan and Peng Zhen. Still, there are certain cases where the crimes are so heinous that labor isn't enough to mete out justice or their mental states are too erratic to leave them outside or they're too dangerous to be left outside.
Whatever the reason, all who were thrown into the requiem were guaranteed anything but rest. Everything within the prison was geared towards breaking them over and over rebuilding them back and breaking them over again. Worse was, thanks to the cultivator's longevity and vitality it ensured that the loop was almost infinite.
A weaker mind would not be able to survive there that included even the guards. It was for this reason that their entry requirements were the strictest in the whole of the Order even compared to the roaming inquisitors whose requirements were also demanding.
For one every guard had to have an abnormally powerful soul which would be a boon for training spiritual techniques for strengthening their mind, they also had to have an equally strong physique to handle the baleful qi produced in the prison that would corrode even someone in the core formation realm if they stayed in there for a year. Their skills in combat, formation arrays, medicine, and defense had to be a cut above the rest. Most special inquisitors were either former guards or were trained by them.
If most people outside were to be asked which was the most fearsome entity in the Order they'd say the judges and the inquisitors of the main headquarters but those within the Order knew without a doubt it was the custodians of the requiem. Their base talents were a cut above the rest even by the Order's standards not to mention the vice warden who was a quasi-saint cultivator.
But the real reason Yang Qing paid special attention to him wasn't his cultivation realm but because from what Dai Chen and Zhang Qingge had told him, one of his duties as a palace realm judge was the supervision and rehabilitation of a prisoner from the Requiem. The prisoner would serve under them and it was the judge's duty to constantly evaluate them and at the end of three years decide if they were redeemable or not. If they are not they will be sent back to the Requiem but if they are they will serve under the evaluating judge for a couple of years. The specific duration is left to the monitoring judge's discretion. If their evaluation at the end of those years is stellar the prisoner would be released during which they would then be constantly monitored by the Shadow hawks, the intelligence branch of the Order.
Just as Yang Qing was contemplating how he would make his approach to the vice warden, the hall room went quiet as four figures made their appearance. One of them was Yu Hong and the remaining three were a single woman and two men.
The other lady's beauty wasn't overshadowed even when standing next to a wild picturesque beauty like Yu Hong. However her beauty was different, she had an aura of a reserved, meticulous scholar.
As for the next two gentlemen beside her one of them had a pristine white robe and a shiny bald head that reflected the light of the room. Everything about him screamed extreme cleanliness down to even his walking, as even though he was walking his feet barely touched the ground.
Yang Qing recognized both him and the lady immediately as they were the dean of survival and adaptation and the hall master of the formation hall respectively.
He was extremely familiar with both of them as he had classes with the former when he was a student in the institute and also the dean was the domain expert who got trapped in the glowing respite valley when it was the waste dumping ground of the Myriad beasts sect and later got saved by the members of the Order.
As for the formation hall master, they have had frequent interactions, mostly reprimands to him for trying to tinker with the arrays in his carriage and courtroom.
It was only the rotund gentleman with amber hair tied in a topknot that he didn't seem to recognize. Though with the sudden change of air in the hall it wasn't hard to guess his identity which was soon revealed by Vice dean Yu Long's welcoming words.
"Good that you are finally here brother Zhu Lao, the party can finally start," said Vice dean Yu Hong as he thunderously clapped hands with the rotund gentleman as they both uproariously laughed.
