Daily life of a cultivation judge - #632 - 632 Blood pond

“Silver cloud fire boar..Zodiac dawn eagle..Twilight ivy bull.. Silver ray rabbit..Ruby thunderhead serpent…glittering sungrass stag..”

With every whiff he took, Yang Qing would ecstatically close his eyes as he named a spirit beast.

By the time he reached the pond, he had named at least twenty spirit beast names. His eyes glittered like a child’s when he finally reached the pond.

“The blood wine and soup that could made from this..” he muttered greedily as he put his hand into the blood pond.

The lightning produced by the gypsum instantly attacked his hand when he brought his hand over, but whether it was his hands or his robes, both were left unscathed.

The lightning produced by the gypsum was no more potent to him than a calm breeze brushing up against his skin.

He carefully scooped up the boiling blood like it was something precious as he sifted through it with his fingers, forming a small waterfall as it poured back into the pond.

“I don’t know how long it has been here, but the potency and the richness don’t seem to have waned one bit..” muttered Yang Qing.

After admiring the contents of the blood pond for a bit, Yang Qing focused on what had brought him here which was the investigation of the traces of the daughter of the obsidian.

He already had a register of her aura that he picked up at the battleground. Using it as a reference, he searched for similar traces in the area.

It wasn’t a surprise when he found the majority of her trace wafting in and around the blood pond.

A little study of the blood pond, Yang Qing had confirmed more or less what he suspected. The blood pond seemed to be a refining pond just like the one he had at his clan. They used it on them during the body refining phase of their cultivation, except the blood pond before him was much larger in scale and sophistication.

Had he been dunked into the contents of the pool when he was in the body-refining stage, his body would have instantly exploded from the potency of the energy within the pond. Yang Qing judged he could barely handle it if he was in the late stages of the foundation realm.

The blood used was of powerful spirit beasts each having reached different stages of the core formation realm. Yang Qing even detected one that had already reached the peak stage of the core formation realm, though, from the vibrancy of its energy, he felt it was put in recent in comparison to the rest, at least not more than 100 years ago. 

He could feel some sort of latent spirituality that was absent from the rest.

The more he studied the blood pond, the wonderous it was in his eyes. It was perfectly positioned above a high-grade spirit vein, and the geomancy also put it above the zone that was rich in Yang energy which would help in the breaking down and the mixing of the blood of the spirit beasts.

The pond was like one big cauldron. As for the lightning gypsum, the lightning had assimilative properties to it. It was more than likely used to strike apart the body of whoever was soaked in the blood pond and then help them slowly assimilate the blood contained within it.

Yang Qing even detected some mysterious glyphs that seemed more natural than made and seemed to aid in the process.

“Did the fire adler bear do this or was this something his master had left him and he decided to use it on the obsidian serpents’ daughter?” muttered Yang Qing.

The level of sophistication employed in the pond left him wondering. Whether it was the fire adler bear’s doing or its master, whoever built the blood pond had exceptional skills.

They managed to mix the blood of the different spirit beasts into a homogenous mixture. Despite it having different properties, it didn’t clash and seemed to blend seamlessly with each other. The level of difficulty of pulling such a feat wasn’t to be underestimated considering the blood used came from 27 different spirit beasts all at the core formation realm.

This was like dealing with extremely potent and volatile ingredients in alchemy and blending them in the pond made the difficulty no different than brewing a high-tier complex blue grade potion.

Then there was the geomancy abilities shown by the positioning of the pond, the glyphs that seemed more natural than man-made, and how everything was combined to work so seamlessly together.

Such a feat was worthy of praise even by the standards of the Order. Yang Qing couldn’t help but wonder where they learned it all.

“Was it him?” muttered Yang Qing as he recalled the middle-aged man, however, immediately dismissed that thought as it didn’t fit the timeline.

Yang Qing roamed around the pond expending his spiritual essence and using every art in his arsenal to try and glean anything from the area.

His efforts were somewhat rewarded when he detected a faint savage aura floating around that mixed in with the pond.

The aura answered the question as to why the area seemed like it had been given a wide berth by other spirit beasts. The savage aura seemed to act like a fearsome deterrent to them. It was innocuous to humans which was why Yang Qing missed it the first time he looked around, but to spirit beasts, it was a glaring sign of terror for them to keep off this place.

Yang Qing spent close to an hour trying to see if he could detect traces of anything and anyone else, and when he didn’t, he decided to move on, but not before scooping a few cup fulls of the blood pond and storing them into one of his empty wine jars.

“Consider this payment for the amount I’ve taken..” said Yang Qing as he dropped a feather of the celestial nesting weaver into the blood pond.

The blood pond seemed to quiver with an almost lifelike excitement when Yang Qing produced the colorful ethereal looking feather of the celestial nesting weaver, and when it gently fell into the blood pond, it was like pandemonium broke and a ravenous beast had been woken from slumber.

The primeval agitated roar was instantly quelled when the feather touched the pond. It was like that of a master silencing his subjects. 

“So pretentious..” Yang Qing muttered in disgusted envy as he produced his golden flames whose terrifying heat made the air tremble.

He doused the feather in the flames turning it into golden starry ash that dissolved into the pond. Without his flames, the celestial nesting weaver’s feather would have swallowed the pond dry.

Every part of the bird was greedy like that. With the feather completely broken down by Yang Qing’s flames, it easily dissolved into the blood pond adding a sense of celestial mystique to the pond. The blood exuded an air of nobility.

Yang Qing unable to stand the showiness of the feather quickly left for the next location.