Yang Qing’s thoughts soon shifted from the token back to the matter at hand—or rather, the person at hand: Bai Chen’s kidnapper.
Of everything he had gathered so far, the most important discovery—though still shallow compared to the others—was one he held onto dearly: whoever had kidnapped Bai Chen and his disciple did not seem like a mindless killer, or soone who took life easily.
From the evidence presented, whether it was Wenling or Xie Han, any cultivator intent on keeping their actions secret would have killed them after extracting whatever they needed. Yet both were still alive. Not only that, it even seed as though Bai Chen’s kidnapper had gone to great lengths to preserve their lives, despite having every reason not to. In a certain sense, they had even been rewarded instead.
Xie Han had been given a life-changing opportunity, having been assisted in his breakthrough to the palace realm. As for Wenling, while she had that rune and spiritual imprint embedded in her without her consent, the tradeoff wasn’t bad at all, at least when weighed against what had been done to her. The nebulous yin qi in her body had been slowly strengthening her soul, and given enough ti, Yang Qing had no doubt that absorbing it all would have granted her just the opportunity she needed to finally make that leap into the palace realm.
In addition, aside from the benefits, even the rune design embedded in her pointed at soone who was going to great lengths not to endanger her. Whether it be its functionality and source of power, it all ca from an external source, i.e., the spiritual imprint and the nebulous yin qi, respectively. Wenling herself was nothing more than a canvas on which it was inscribed.
A different cultivator—a more ruthless and pragmatic one—would have had the rune siphon part of the energy it needed from Wenling’s very soul. In doing so, they would have hit two birds with one stone: first, they’d reduce the cost required to power the rune, and second, by drawing from her soul, they’d effectively silence their unwitting accomplice through overdrawing it.
Powerful as her soul was, Wenling was ill-suited to bear that burden. Doing so would have caused irreparable damage to her soul, which would no doubt have ended in her death. And yet... here she was, chipper and as healthy as she could be. Not only that, her soul was even stronger thanks to the nebulous yin qi.
All of this—Xie Han, who not only received a chance to break through to the palace realm but wasn’t hard or coerced even after admitting he’d sell the person out if his life was at risk, and Wenling, who profited from sothing that could have easily been disastrous—pointed to soone conscientious in their conduct.
And if that were the case, then it was good news for Yang Qing. It ant the odds of Bai Chen and Jiang Hao being alive and intact had just gone up.
Of course, there was also the slight possibility that he was completely off base in his assumptions, and that the only reason Wenling and Xie Han were still alive was because the kidnapper had been pressed for ti and couldn’t deal with them in the mont. Whatever they needed Bai Chen for might have been so urgent that tying up loose ends beca an impossible task.
Though the possibility was still there, Yang Qing very much preferred to ignore it and focus on the forr—that the kidnapper was soone with a conscience.
Now, all that remained was the hope that there would be another clue to uncover at the Velvet Orchid Teahouse regarding the kidnapper’s whereabouts. And if that wasn’t possible, given that he was already three weeks behind, he at least hoped to find sothing that confird his preferred assumption about the kidnapper’s character. Considering the kingdom he was heading into, he felt the odds weren’t too bad.
From the recording, the Velvet Orchid Teahouse was located in Yunnan Province, within the Hebei Kingdom. Hebei was a rank two kingdom with a rich and storied history, having existed for close to 100,000 years, cycling between destruction and restoration due to its ’nature.’
Hebei Kingdom was better known by another na—a na more familiar to most than "Hebei Kingdom." That na was the Scholars’ Nation, and the reason for it lay precisely in the na itself.
Its founder had been a scholar, and it was rumored that despite his brilliance in scholarly pursuits, he lacked even the slightest trace of talent when it ca to cultivation. And yet, that very sa man—soone without the ability to cultivate—had sohow managed to reach the domain realm. It was with that strength that he founded the Hebei Kingdom.
The stories claid he reached the domain realm in a single bound, ascending from mortal to domain expert in one step. And unlike the usual tales where so legendary heavenly treasure was the cause behind such a leap, his transformation was credited entirely to his accomplishnts as a scholar.
It was said that his deeds moved the sages of the past, whose spirits were enshrined and intertwined with the Heavenly Dao. In admiration of the founder’s breadth of spirit, those sages pleaded his case before the Heavenly Dao, which then responded by touching his body and turning stone into gold, allowing him to leap directly from an ordinary mortal into a domain expert.
As with most stories of that nature, not many believed it. So thought it was a tale concocted by the Hebei Kingdom to glorify their founder. After all, it was a nation built for and by scholars, and when it ca to scholars, words and imagination were the two things they had an abundance of.
Of course, it also went without saying that there were those who believed the story, unbelievable as it sounded. Yang Qing was among them.
While he didn’t believe the Hebei Kingdom’s founder had gained cultivation through a group of sage spirits interceding with the Heavenly Dao on his behalf, he did, however, find it plausible that the founder could have leapt from mortal to domain expert in a single bound. After all, he had seen and read of cases that, while not entirely the sa, bore certain similarities. And one of those cases was even close to him.
That case was Chief Song Chuanli.
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