Chapter 1493: Two peas in a pod
Chapter 1493: Two peas in a pod
Even though it was not what he had expected to be asked... what had he expected to be asked? Chen Yu took the question in stride and smiled. "The Dao of Formations," he said dreamily, his eyes falling on the behemoth Dawn Cloud Tree, as though the tree itself were about to undergo a session of appraisal.
"What do I think about the Dao of Formations?" Chen Yu sighed wistfully. "I find it fascinating," he said, deep fascination blooming in his expression as he both admired and examined the Dawn Cloud Tree. "Alchemy. Formations. Swords. Sabers. Spears. Pen. Paper. Paint. Tea. Musical instruments... all of them, wonderful keys that open a door to a section of the Great Dao," he said passionately.
"Even within one Dao, that single key can lead to so many doors—just like this one." Chen Yu sighed emotionally, imprinting every swaying leaf, every cloud that brushed against those leaves, and every branch that fell under his sight. "The Dao of Alchemy meets the Dao of Formation. What a beautiful sight."
Sucked in by his passion, Yang Qing’s gaze also fell on the Dawn Cloud Tree, and he found himself sighing emotionally as he said, "It is."
The beauty they admired wasn’t the external appearance of the Dawn Cloud Tree, even though it was actually quite aesthetically pleasing, pleasing enough that even a blind villager might turn into quite the silver-tongued poet scholar if he caught sight of it. Yes, the tree was magnificently beautiful, but what Yang Qing and Chen Yu were admiring was the corner of the Grand Dao being manifested from the tree.
The door that tree led to. It was a beautiful sight. If one looked close enough, they could even feel the presence of those whose hands had crafted that key. Their excitement. Their frustration. Their blood, sweat, and tears. And their exhilaration when they succeeded. It was like a door to the past, to the era of the Dawn Cloud Pill Array Pavilion, had been opened.
Both Yang Qing and Chen Yu, absorbed and moved by the sight, ended up sighing.
"I can’t wait to see more sights," Chen Yu murmured.
"Mmh," Yang Qing nodded.
What felt like hours but was in fact just three minutes passed in silence, the two of them admiring the Dawn Cloud Tree, before the moment was broken by Li Gang.
"I am done, we can leave," Li Gang said to Yang Qing, before his attention shifted respectfully to Chen Yu. "Appraiser Chen Yu," he said, his surprise at finding the man here showing in his tone.
"You’re leaving?" he followed.
Hands clasped behind his back, Chen Yu turned to face him, smiling warmly as he nodded. "Yes. I appreciate your hospitality and accommodation," he said.
"It is us who should be thanking you," Li Gang said hurriedly. "Your presence and assistance honored us greatly," he added, cupping his fists and lowering his head slightly.
Chen Yu reciprocated the gesture in kind.
"If you’re leaving, I could ask one of the founders to escort you," Li Gang carefully suggested, casting Yang Qing an apologetic look, since he’d have to go inform one of the founders in person, leaving Yang Qing to wait yet again.
Luckily, Chen Yu spared him from that awkwardness.
"There’s no need for that," he said casually, his eyes twinkling as they fell on Yang Qing. "Fellow Daoist Yang Qing and I happen to be headed to the same place. We can just use the same ferry. Gives us time to continue our conversation. If you don’t mind, Fellow Daoist?"
"I don’t mind at all," Yang Qing said eagerly. He wasn’t even faking it. The trip would more than give him the chance to build rapport with Chen Yu and maybe uncover some of the latter’s secrets, such as his mythical race bloodline and his thoughts and inclinations toward the Dao of kidnapping.
As absorbed as Yang Qing had been in admiring the Dawn Cloud Tree with Chen Yu, to the point of even slightly forgetting his earlier intentions with the formation array probe, he hadn’t forgotten his goals.
"Mao Mao would be proud," Yang Qing thought proudly. His judge counterpart was like a mole with a hole when it came to any story that managed to capture her attention. She’d dig and dig into every branching thread tied to the main story. The story could be about some young master from a prominent clan having his marriage arrangement annulled because his betrothed, equally from a prominent clan, decided to elope with a guard of hers she’d known since childhood.
And Mao Mao, with her naturally curious mind, wouldn’t only want to know how that love came about and a thorough, very descriptive record of the reaction of all immediate parties involved. She’d be heavily dedicated to unearthing tertiary matters related to the parties too, digging deep into that young master’s family to see if they had a history of being rejected. Did the annulment happen because that young master had bad luck, or was that bad luck something he’d inherited? Maybe the clan had a history of being rejected. Maybe the rejection wasn’t because they were lacking, and maybe the clan had been cursed by some powerful cultivator skilled in the Dao of Fate, who’d cursed the clan, for one reason or another, to always be rejected by their first loves in the most humiliating way possible.
Mao Yunru, with her dedicated and assiduous personality when it came to these types of stories, would dig into the history of that clan by at least a dozen generations, sparing no expense in the endeavor.
Ironically, that obsessive compulsive need to know everything was what made her so great at her job as a judge, though more than a few times, seeing how dedicated she was to unearthing gossip, to the point of going into debt and calling in who knew how many favors all so she could ’invest’ in information brokers and agencies, Yang Qing found himself wondering why she didn’t just join the Flying Shadow Hawks Division.
The two would have been a match made in heaven. The Flying Shadow Hawks dealt in uncovering secrets and gathering as much information on a target as they could, including even uncovering matters as inane as Sect Master Chen Yuan of the Green Fog Swamp Sect being a secretive fan of milk tea, which he drank every day at midnight in his quarters behind the sect guardian tree, all while outwardly pretending he hated anything to do with milk.
Having that information was irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, but it didn’t stop the Flying Shadow Hawks from digging up such kinds of information, and Mao Yunru lived for it. These were the kind of juicy details that got her eyes shining.
She should have been an agent of the Flying Shadow Hawks. She had a natural passion for the work. Not to mention, outside of her interests, her other "more normal" talents made her eminently suitable for the Flying Shadow Hawks. Take her Purple Cloud Natural Physique, for example. That physique made her excel in illusory and conciliatory techniques and spells. Her technique was so potent that even as a late-stage Core Formation expert, she could bypass the spiritual senses of certain first-stage Palace Realm experts and effortlessly slip through orange-grade formations.
She could fool the senses of animate and inanimate things in equal measure.
She’d have made a great agent, but alas, according to her, judges had better quarters, which offered a far greater ambience for enjoying gossip. Because to her, part of what carried the charm of a good story was not just the story itself, but also where you enjoyed it. For as good a story might be, you would not truly be able to enjoy it if your mind were constantly preoccupied with monitoring your surroundings to guard against attacks.
That was no way to enjoy a good story. A good story needed comfortable futons, good furniture, sweet-smelling incense sticks to set the mood, and a room filled with powerful arrays that guarded against intrusion, giving you the privacy needed and a sense of relaxation to properly indulge.
And the Judge’s private chamber more than met all those conditions.
She and Yang Qing were two peas in a pod, becoming judges to further their own agendas more than out of any belief in the Order’s cause. In truth, they’d done it more for their hobbies and for building a future around those hobbies than for anything else.
Yang Qing once tried to make that point, of how alike they were, when Mao Yunru saw fit to criticize him for resting his eyes for a few seconds between cases, or for casually admiring the formation arrays in his courtroom, more specifically the surveillance arrays, how beautifully arranged they were, and checking for any gaps, for security reasons, of course. Mao Yunru, having grossly misjudged his intentions, started talking about how he should quit his scheming and just do his job, to which Yang Qing rebutted by calling her his pot to her kettle, pointing out how alike they were. She didn’t talk to him for the entire day, and would have likely gone longer had Yang Qing not happened to have an ’excess’ (borrowed) of funds he used to buy juicy gossip from an information broker he knew.
Maybe I should introduce Chen Yu to Mao Mao and have her use her gifts on him. With her nose, she’s bound to dig out something, Yang Qing debated as he, Chen Yu, and Li Gang boarded the flying ferry.