Yang Qing was in his room with a pile of robes thrown haphazardly on the floor. Ordinarily, he would have just used his issued judge robes that had a customized feature that let it transform into any type of robe he wished but he didn't want to do that.
It was a mental thing since he would feel off going to a party with his work clothes. After mulling over what to wear he finally settled on wearing white inner robes with a green coat. He even tied his hair for once into a tiny half ponytail.
"Now what should I bring? The party will definitely mostly have big shots at the domain realm, nothing I have will catch their eye."
Another dilemma soon presented itself. Almost every decent thing he had, either went to his stomach, work-related fines, and the huge nesting project courtesy of the celestial nesting weaver. Even if it didn't he didn't think he had any treasures that would catch the eyes of a domain expert like Zhu Lao who wasn't just any domain expert but a dean at the institute of the Order.
Every dean at the minimum was required to have a cultivation base that was at least in the ninth stage of the domain realm and their understanding of the dao needed to be a cut above the rest. They also needed to be skilled in multiple areas. Dean Zhu Lao's expertise lay in dissecting cultivation arts and the study of different languages that extended even to sacred spirit beast languages like the ones dragons, phoenixes, Kun pengs, and other top-tier spirit beasts used.
To these spirit beasts, part of their powers lay in their tongue. They could move oceans, split mountains, and cause a torrential of stars to fall with particular cries.
It was due to the insights he gained from researching their language that Dean Zhu Lao was even able to dissect some of the spirit beast's innate traits and abilities and modify them into cultivation arts that could be used by people.
His breadth of knowledge was sufficient to cover a 100-foot dome library. It was because of this that Yang Qing was apprehensive about what gift to give.
On one hand, Dean Zhu Lao was an expert in the domain realm so the resources he got from the Order weren't small either in quantity or quality and to top it all he was also a dean which meant he had additional resources that came with the post.
Whereas Yang Qing was just a salary man surviving on the meager salary of a core court judge and leaving way beyond his means, especially with the expensive celestial nesting weaver.
"I guess I'll just have to pick something from my unknown collection," Yang Qing said as he made his way to a room that seemed like it was a storage room. It was filled with all sorts of trinkets from weird-looking broken mirrors to pebbles, old torn book covers with strange symbols and no pages, weird dried-up plants, scrolls in the shape of wine gourds, broken weapons, etc.
The room seemed to be more like a place where people dumped the things they didn't need or things that got damaged. However, in Yang Qing's eyes the most valuable thing in his abode other than the green flame tree, the purple lightning bamboo forest, and the eclipse tree, was this storage room and the things in it. He had even used a bulk of his merit points to have this room retrofitted with over ten top rank blue grade formation arrays just to guard the things in it.
Due to his deep interest in archeology and how far deep he went down that rabbit hole, he ended up gaining a hoarder habit of collecting strange things he came across whether they had any value or not. As long as it caught his eye he bought it. He was a regular frequenter of auction houses and open-air markets where cultivators put any goods they had on their stalls.
Most cultivators preferred going to auction houses as you would know exactly what you were buying thanks to the efforts of the auction house's own appraisers but in exchange, the prices for the goods were high whereas buying from the open air market was different. The goods were much cheaper however there were no appraisal notes attached to the good you bought. So half the time neither the buyer nor the seller knew the true value of the object of trade especially the more bizarre the object seemed.
The trade usually went either way. Sometimes the seller would make a steal and sell a useless item whose only worth is its strange look for a hefty sum and other times it's the buyer who ends up buying a precious artifact, or high-grade cultivation art hidden somewhere within the strange for cheap. It usually went either way.
Yang Qing got a few steals from these open-air market sales. On more than one occasion he has found a few incomplete blue-grade arts, random historical records of a particular time, strange techniques such as alchemical techniques that had disappeared into obscurity with the passage of time, part of a bestiary record e.t.c and other times it was a burst. He'd end up with cursed weapons, normal objects that just looked strange, and even on one occasion he thought he had stumbled to some sort of celestial rock only for it to end up being dung of a mutated spirit beast that had likely ingested something it should not have. Then there were those objects whose origins he could not yet decipher with his current skills, knowledge or the objects were too degraded to glean anything from them.
Without exception, whether useful or not, known or unknown every trinket he got was stored here even the celestial dung. He had a look of gratification as he admired his collection. Half of the objects stored here, he couldn't decipher their true origins or worth. He decided to pick something from the undeciphered pile and use it as a gift.
Dean Zhu Lao was an archeological nerd just like he was. Yang Qing was willing to take a gamble that one of the objects in the unknown pile may end up catching his eye. With that, he would have opened up a connection with a fellow kindred spirit whom he would shamelessly consult for free from time to time.
pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ Yang Qing couldn't help but snicker once he thought of the potential free appraisal labor from a seasoned expert like dean Zhu Lao.
"I guess you will have to do," said Yang Qing as he picked up an arc-shaped tablet made from clay-like material. The tablet was dark grey and time had left its mark on it as the bottom right corner was filled with cracks.
There were weird logo syllabic scripts on the old worn-out tablet. Just as Yang Qing was holding it the scripts started to interchange and transform into images of waves, sand dunes, flowing rivers, and strange animals Yang Qing had never seen before among other things. The strange transformation was not an uncommon occurrence as it happened once a day at different times. The irregular intervals made it difficult for Yang Qing to gain any clue about the trigger for its transformations. About the only thing that was consistent was the transformations happened only once a year.
Despite using all resources available he still had no clue what those syllables meant or what the tablet held. Even the material used to make the tablet was a mystery.
That tablet was among the top strangest objects he had in his collection and despite its current look, it was also one of the scariest. When Yang Qing bought it, the owner almost seemed relieved to get rid of it. At the time Yang Qing didn't understand why as he didn't detect anything dangerous from it even when he scanned it with his spiritual sense.
It was only later after fiddling around with it that he realized why the seller seemed thin, haggard like he had just survived a drought and a storm at the same time.
Once every year on a full moon the tablet would release sounds that mimic ocean waves and from that wave came a sound that was gentle as a calm wind and at times as ferocious as thunder that it would even shake your soul.
Luckily for Yang Qing either because he was stronger than the seller and always slept in the celestial nesting weaver's nest or the tablet was drained of energy due to the passage of time but those sounds had little effect on him in fact they helped him sleep well on occasion and even freshened his soul. He would have slept with it in the nest if he wasn't afraid the celestial nesting weaver would steal it and transform it into part of its nest.
However, there was one aspect of the tablet that made Yang Qing cautious with it. When he bought it after making no heads or tails on the logo syllables he decided to transfer some of his qi into it to see if he would get any reaction. It turned out to be a fatal mistake as the tablet ended up sucking all his qi and only stopped when it somehow detected there was no more qi to drain. It was from that moment on that the symbols started to transform into images of waves, sand dunes, etc.
At the time Yang Qing was still in the middle stages of the core formation realm however he knew his qi reserves well. Due to his flawless jade physique and the innate attribute that came along with it plus his cultivation art, his qi volume was enough to rival those in the peak of the core formation realm. That level of qi reserve was sufficient to power a few top-rank sky-grade formation arrays but when it came to the tablet it was only enough to invoke the symbol transformation feature that happened once a year.
Once Yang Qing reached the palace realm he did try to feed the tablet his qi and just like before, it drained him completely and only stopped when there was no more qi to drain. This time the only thing that changed was a few luminescent dots that appeared on the curved edges of the tablet. They were so tiny that one would overlook them and they seem to have no effect. But the ocean noises the tablet produced seemed to have stopped the moment the dots appeared.
Yang Qing figured he would at least have to be in the later stages of the palace realm or the domain stage before he could gain anything from the tablet. Who knew how long it might take, he might as well give it to Dean Zhu Lao and score a favor with him and find out what mysteries the tablet held with his assistance.
He had this knacky feeling the secrets the tablet hid would be enormous and if they were he would soon be swimming in merit points and maybe just maybe decide his own work schedule.
Yang Qing lightly chuckled once his thoughts reached there as he made his way out of his courtyard carefully holding the tablet.
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