Daily life of a cultivation judge-Chapter 918: Are you sorry?

Yao De shrunk back slightly with clear trepidation showing on him. Lin Guiren’s voice was low and soft. It contained neither anger nor disappointment. It was just a voice that contained no emotion, but Yao De, felt as if he was receiving admonishment from the heavens itself, and that pressure bore on his very soul, which was further amplified as he stared into Lin Guiren’s golden eyes that contained the same presence and weight of a galaxy of stars.

Amid the overwhelming fear, a voice echoed from his soul which seemed to dissolve the weight of that fear.

It’s already out. What is there to be afraid of? Whether you die now or in 600 years when your lifespan runs out, what does it matter? You will still die. At least if it happens now, you will be freed from the torment of the passage of days, knowing that with each day that passes, you get that much closer to your death.

With a bit of renewed strength, Yao De sighed slightly, as he bowed.

"I am sorry.."

"Are you?" asked Lin Guiren in the same low soft tone that was devoid of emotions.

Yao De raised his head, looking at the figure he revered. Lin Guiren wasn’t the only one he grew to respect during his time at the pavilion, he felt the same way about the remaining two founders, and some of the executives who had risen from unassuming individuals into who they were right now, and were still growing.

He couldn’t help but sigh when he compared his life to theirs. Anyone who could reach the palace realm was someone with talent. They were the ones who in the lower realms managed to steal the show in the display of their talent and aptitudes and that was the same for Yao De.

His starting wasn’t a pitiful one. He was born to a merchant family which by today’s method of evaluation had been a rank-four merchant family with a pretty decent background and influence for its rank.

His family was small, with both his parents spearheading the family business as the two people with the highest cultivation base in the organization. They were both core formation experts. His father riding his devilish looks and charisma was the face of the operation, while his mother was the brains, but also the logistics behind it as she was also an established top-tier orange-grade alchemist.

Together, they had Yao De and two sisters with Yao De being the youngest of the three. His father wanted to groom him to take over from them when the time came due to the wisdom, and talent he showed, but Yao De’s interests lined more on the alchemy side of things. With the talent he showed in that regard, his father had no other choice but to acquiesce to it.

With his path already decided, his family poured considerable resources into him and it wasn’t long before he had caught up to his mother, becoming a top-tier orange-grade alchemist himself at just 73 years old.

With nothing left to learn from her, and nothing to challenge himself with at where their headquarters were, Yao De decided to leave and explore new horizons.

He had ambitions, and one of those ambitions was to be a gold-tier alchemist, and the other was to be a domain expert, though, to an alchemist like him, both were usually not mutually exclusive. A gold-grade alchemist was almost always someone in the domain realm and even if they weren’t, reaching the gold grade already gave them the qualifications and foundation to become one.

He knew he couldn’t reach both those achievements if he remained and he also had no one he could compare his talent with. Any self-respecting genius deep down would want to test their mettle against other geniuses to see how they fair, to show up who was the true genius, and Yao De wasn’t any different, thus he left.

The journey wasn’t easy as he transitioned from a pampered young lord to someone who had to rely on himself against the tumultuous waves of the world. Even though it was hard at first, it was nonetheless exhilarating for him as it gave him exactly what he needed, pressure and excitement for his genius to shine through.

His journey eventually led him to the doors of the Golden Bamboo Pavilion, specifically one of its founders, Liang Zian, a gold-grade alchemist and a domain expert. That founder was the personification of his ambitions, and the sweetener on top, the person actually belonged to a merchant company.

Driven by the poetry and fate of it all, Yao De decided to join the Golden Bamboo Pavilion, however, because he was only a core formation expert at the time with no background to speak of, and an orange-grade alchemist, he could only get in as a subsidiary owner and slowly work his way up.

He didn’t mind it and his competitive spirit was even stirred because of it. Thus his journey started and in two hundred years he had risen from just one of the thousands of subsidiary owners, into a seedling that the pavilion actually paid attention to.

It took him three hundred years to become a blue grade alchemist and with it, his path into the palace realm and the Golden Bamboo Pavilion had opened up. When he was good and ready to breakthrough to the palace realm he was brought into the fold, and after his breakthrough he was transferred to one of their largest branches to be one of its vice heads, with the head being one of the high-ranking executives that was a quasi domain exert.

He still wasn’t under the tutelage of Liang Zian, nor had he met the person, only having interacted with Lin Guiren during his promotion, but by becoming a vice head of a major branch, he was well on his way to achieving his dreams.

But life is forever unpredictable. He gravely injured his soul when he attempted to brew a particularly dangerous and difficult potion in the hopes of improving his abilities. His ambitions and impatience proved to be his undoing, as the injury he suffered to his soul, ended up affecting his foundations too, and with how grievous it was, only an ascendant-grade treasure, or potion could heal the injuries he suffered.

He had joined a merchant company and not a sect and it was not a family either, so it goes without saying the Golden Bamboo Pavilion did not see it beneficial to squander an ascendant-grade treasure or potion on him.

He may have been a blue-grade alchemist and palace realm expert but in the end, his talent wasn’t exactly at the level of a son of destiny level. The talent that would make even the truly powerful gasp in awe, or a talent that would make even using an ascendant grade potion and ingredients not seem like a waste, but a steal.

Yao De didn’t have that talent. His talent was one that the pavilion didn’t have a shortage of. He was expendable, a fact he soon realized. He was given a monarch-grade treasure in the ivy moonflower to help contain the extent of the damage so he could function, but the help stopped there.

His path forward was forever shut, not unless he stumbled onto an ascendant-grade treasure that could repair the damage to his soul. It wasn’t long before he was removed from his post as the vice head of that major branch, not a moment later, he became the branch manager in Red Maple Empire, where he was supposed to spend the remainder of his days until his last.

No matter how much from grace he had fallen, Yao De never held any resentment. He was born into a merchant family, and he knew, that merchants never engage in affairs they were bound to make a loss.

Knowing he had nothing to rely on but himself, he used whatever resources he had available to him to seek out any means of repairing the damage done to his soul and foundation. Luckily for him, he was still a palace realm expert, and though he wasn’t a vice head anymore, his rank still afforded him some privileges with the pavilion, one of which was access to tons of information about the continent itself.

That access gave him information on various treasures and means he could heal himself. He didn’t just stop there, but instead even formed a friendship with Duan Hu when he was but a young emperor, to the point of even becoming sworn brothers with him and exploited that relationship to gain access to some of the ancient tomes, scrolls, and jade slips they received from the Red Maple Spirit.

In his mind while the spirit may not have been a domain expert, or amassed the same amount of information as the Golden Bamboo Pavilion, its long life meant whatever wealth it accumulated couldn’t be overlooked. After all, even at the palace realm, it had the same life expectancy as a domain expert, who knows what it has collected in that amount of time?

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His assumption paid off as he found various scrolls and slips that pointed to certain treasures that could resolve the issue he had and lo and behold, one of those treasures mentioned was the very same one that Fu Yong brought to his doorstep, the legacy artifact of the Verdant Water Crane Sect.

He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw it. Centuries had gone by and none of the measures he found were things accessible to him, with his lifespan slowly waning away as days went by until Fu Yong walked in with that cauldron.

At first, he thought he had lost his mind, but then the longer he saw the cauldron, the more he knew it was a dream yes, but a dream come true up until he realized the cauldron was incomplete. But that didn’t phase him. After trudging in the dark for so long, he finally saw some light.

The legacy of the verdant water crane sect was an alchemy legacy that answered his prayers. The sect had created a brewing art that not only refined all manner of ingredients with extreme efficiency but also refined the brewer’s soul, in synchronicity with the quality of the potion they brewed.

It was an alchemist’s dream who needed a powerful soul to brew powerful potions, and the legacy provided just that. It wasn’t a surprise that the sect had produced several gold-grade alchemists and countless blue-grade alchemists.

Yao De didn’t think he’d ever find it and just assumed the legacy had been lost to obscurity or was being hoarded somewhere, up until it landed on his doorstep.

When it did all he wanted was to acquire it for himself but as a branch manager, he knew whatever business he conducted as long as it was within the premises of the branch, it all belonged to the pavilion. It was why he chose to go hide it and go to extreme lengths to hide it, he didn’t want to hand over the cauldron.

And as for stealing the cauldron from Fu Yong, he couldn’t only blame his paranoia. His obsession with being cursed left him using up a lot of his funds, to the point that whatever little he had left was for his treatment.

Since he didn’t want the pavilion involved in the deal, he couldn’t use their funds and could only use his, and for him, since he was short, though he could buy the price that Fu Yong wanted, said price would live him in a difficult position. He could only resort to bullying Fu Yong into making the deal with the amount offered.

So was he sorry?

Looking at Lin Guiren, Yao De answered,

"No I am not. I am a merchant after all. We put our needs before everything else.."