Chapter 852 Sentence given (29)
Shen Mu felt a shiver travel up his spine when he saw that smile.
"Is there really something wrong with that river?" he wondered.
Even though he asked himself that, the warning from his mother and Song Ba's reaction already answered the question.
There was no way the Order would be so lenient as to let go of cultivators who engaged in taboo matters. If they did, they would be drowned with criticism and public outcry for being corrupt or inept in their duties.
Cultivating pill slaves and human cauldrons was considered a sinful act, commonly associated with fiendish cultivators. Even before the Order was created, those harboring human cauldrons were considered a public enemy to the entire continent.
If it was known that the Order was letting go of those found guilty of such acts, what would the continent's reaction be like?
As it stood, the Order was already on thin ice on the continent, add a scandal like this, and that ice would quickly melt bringing a fierce storm to the Order's doorstep. Even if the Order was powerful enough to wade through all kinds of storms, they would not willingly invite one if they could avoid it.
Once his thoughts reached that far, Shen Mu's eyes widened. If the Order made that offer, then that meant they had confidence that no one would be able to survive the Chaos yang river of redemption.
Yang Qing had heard that a few of the higher-ups of the Order cultivated there, especially those looking to break through to the soul formation realm and it wasn't only them, even those looking to break through to the domain realm would have a chance to cultivate there under the protection of a soul formation expert to be tempered and reforged by the flames of that river.
The reason why the Order had a lot of domain experts was rumored to be because of the river's effects.
But, even with the apparent benefits, no one ever stays there for more than a year. Only those in the soul formation realm could push to double digits, but even they would not dare hit triple digits, especially when one considered a thousand years in that place was enough to kill any peak stage soul formation expert, despite their foundations and accumulations.
The river's ability to refine one's entire essence from their body to their soul, to their mind was second to none, but that was only if you could survive it.
Per Yang Qing's estimation, when it came to the Chen Clan elders before him, it was in doubt whether they would be able to survive six months let alone 247 years. A peak stage domain expert would not be able to endure those flames let alone some late-stage core formation experts, but if by some chance one of them endured it, they would be released, not because the Order honors its promises, but because of the Chaos Yang River.
A core formation expert enduring its flames that long could only happen if they gained the river's recognition, and if they did, killing them would prove difficult bordering on impossible, after all, it was rumored that the river shared the same source as the phoenix's flame of rebirth and those who gained its recognition, received the same favor as the phoenix did.
Anyone outside the Order would believe such a thing to be false, after all how unique were the phoenix's flames, its rebirth ability was something born of the supreme dao, making a replication of its ability nigh impossible but within the Order, there was a record of one person surviving its flames well beyond what should have been their ability to survive it.
Four years old that person was when he came across the river. Starving and dehydrated, that child made his way to the river and survived for eleven years as he drank the yang water from that river, as his body was broken and reformed several times over during that period until finally, the river acknowledged that child.
All this time, only that person has ever been acknowledged by it and is the reason the Order got to have that river in the first place. That person was none other than the Chief Justice of the Order, Lai Ning, the immortal child.