Daily life of a cultivation judge

"When do you intend to meet with members of your network?" asked Mei Cheng once the matter of Jiang Xiang had been settled.

"In the next few days, I hope.." answered Yang Qing.

While he didn't want to leave and hoped to make the most of his month-long vacation, he was already long overdue from meeting with his network which was something that was meant to be handled in the early days after his ceremony, but due to unforeseeable circumstances, a couple of months quickly went by and he still hadn't met with a single member. He could not keep pushing it, especially, with how the waves of the continent seemed to be constantly churning.

The intelligence network was a way for the Order to spread the burden that the Shadow Hawks already had on them. Judges upon reaching the palace court would handle an intricate network of agents who could be considered students and members of the Order who lacked the necessary talent to be fully absorbed in the various departments of the Order but instead chose an alternative route through which they could serve.

Even if their talent was found lacking, the Order still supported them in their current roles, which were collectors and sources of information. Just like Mei Cheng who was a shadow hawk and at the same time was a diligent member of the external logistics division, each of these agents had a role assigned to them, but unlike Mei Cheng who had a cover, theirs wasn't necessarily a cover.

Before becoming a palace court judge, while Yang Qing knew the intelligence network existed, he did not know much else about it, that was until he became a palace court judge himself and got in-depth guidance on it, and he couldn't help but admire the Order's ingenuity.

With the means the Order had at its disposal, it wasn't hard for them to deduce someone's history going back several thousands of years or even more than that provided their history wasn't obstructed through artificial means for example through treasures and artifacts powerful enough to isolate someone's life from being deduced.

Most top-tier organizations employ several antiscrying measures to prevent such deductions, they either do it through treasures and artifacts, or in the case of clans, if one of their members has reached the peak of the domain realm, by virtue of bloodline association, they can sense if one of their descendants is being deduced and cloak them through bloodline resonance.

The Order considering its line of work, protected its members against having their karma, history, and lifeline deduced even as students. The moment they passed the entrance test, they would be taken to a certain ground that had a natural dao treasure called the Waterfall of Obfuscation. They would soak for three days in the waterfall which would completely isolate their karma, fate, destiny, and their past from all prying eyes, of course with exceptions. They were told peak soul formation experts who had mastered the laws of karma and fate would be able to see through them, and with the way the saint-grade treasure, veiled destiny had acted when he met it for the first time, Yang Qing was inclined to believe so.

But for those without a powerful treasure or expert to shield them, their entire lives worth of history was open to anyone with the means to look through them, which was what the Order did. To all looking to join, they would deduce their entire past either through information already on hand, or through esoteric means that involved karmic deduction, and from it they could trace someone's entire past including their lineage, dating back several thousand to tens of thousands of years.

Candidates suitable for the intelligence network were chosen this way. Whatever hat they would don in the network was usually inextricably linked to their past so that their integration into their roles would not draw a lot of suspicion. It was one thing to throw someone into a completely fabricated story without history, and it was another if the story had a solid history and the person had genuine ties to it. If anyone were to look into it,it would not crumble, no matter the means they used. That person would not draw unnecessary suspicion that would make them seem like plants.

For example, Yang Qing's network had several clan leaders. Some of them when they came to the Order, they were all by themselves so destitute that even a street rat would disdain to be in their company. They had nothing to their name, even their names. Some had been orphans with others slaves, wearing names given to them by their slavers. They knew nothing of their past, but the Order upon deducing their past was able to tie them to clans that had once existed with a couple of them coming from lineages that had ancestors that had reached the palace realm, but none of them knew.

The Order would reveal their lineage to them, and they would be given the choice of whether they wished to serve as one of the agents in the network, with the only requirement being they share what they heard and saw, in exchange the Order would support them in the restoration of their lineages and if later they wished to stop the arrangement, they could freely do so without repercussions, though they would no longer receive the resource support of the Order.

If they agreed to the deal, they would be trained for a bit by the Order as it made arrangements on how to seamlessly integrate them into the continent and once the reintegration was done, how they ran their clans was entirely up to them. Though the Order did tier the amount of resources and support they would give which was correlated to how prosperous those clans were. The better positioned they were, the more information they could provide, and in return the more resources they would receive in kind from the Order.

The whole network was impeccably laid out, with the Order ensuring it would get its money's worth. Yang Qing couldn't help but admire their level of meticulousness.