Daily life of a cultivation judge

Technically they did have another foundation establishment cultivator within their ranks, their mother. She had been at the fourth stage, but the poisoning incapacitated her. She was no different than a newborn child with how weak she was.

This only left Li Fei as the person with the highest cultivation base in that household, as an eighth stage qi refinement cultivator. But with him crippled, he was essentially just another mortal, which now left the burden to his sisters who were both younger and weaker than him with the most powerful of the two, aged twelve, being a silver body refinement cultivator.

If the circumstances were normal, they could have maybe depended on their two aunts who had moderately higher strength. One of them was a first-stage foundation establishment cultivator and the other was the ninth stage of the qi refinement realm. It wasn't much, but it was better than what Li Fei had.

But after what Li Fei did, the gravity of it and his actions inadvertently implicating them, would they even want to associate with him? They were not related by blood, only by marriage, and now they were staring down the fangs of the Green Dragon General Store.

Them abandoning Li Fei and his siblings, and cutting any sort of ties between them would be a kindness. It wouldn't be strange if one of them got the idea of killing Li Fei, his sisters, and his mother and offering their heads as a token of apology to the store in the hopes of protecting their lives and their families.

After those events, Wu Mingli could imagine Li Fei and his sisters were more than likely on their own. And if they were, what were the odds that a team whose highest cultivator was a silver body cultivator managed to escape a behemoth like the Green Dragon General Store whose might shook the entire Spring Plum City?

Even if he assumed by some crazy luck they managed to escape the city, another obstacle waited for them ahead, in the name of the Red Maple Empire. As long as they remained, the store's tentacles that were deeply entrenched in every part of the empire would definitely find them provided they remained within its territories.

If they wanted to live, they only had one option, which was to flee the empire unnoticed. Would two teenagers, one a cripple, the other a silver-body cultivator, add to that a sick person and a nine-year-old really be able to pull that off?

While Wu Mingli may not know what was in the pouch his father handed to Li Fei, with his father's means, there was no way what was in there was capable enough to guarantee their safe passage out of the Empire.

But assuming by some heaven-tier luck they did make it out of the empire in one piece, was their strength sufficient to support their survival in the world outside?

Deep down he knew, the likelihood that Li Fei and his sisters survived the escape was slim to none. They were likely dead, and if he was a betting man he would likely bet that they died in Red Maple Empire. They likely didn't even get to make it past the city gates, and their deaths were likely gruesome ones done under the dark veil that shrouded the entire empire.

"All else aside, I really hope they made it out.." Wu Mingli wistfully thought.

"After Li Fei left, my father called me over to the same fireplace we always liked to sit at, and my mother made the same roasted potatoes and garlic-salted fish we liked to have when we were sitting there, and for the first time, he shared his potato wine with me.

That brew was a keepsake of his village. He always drank it himself but that night he shared it with me and my mother. What came next was nothing out of the ordinary. He regaled me with tales of his youth, dropping a few anecdotes and pearls of wisdom here and there that subtly helped guide me on the person I should be, by using some of the experiences, mistakes, regrets, and achievements he had in life.

Infected by the atmosphere that had the sense of normalcy it always had, I assumed everything was okay and that come tomorrow, everything would go back as it was. My father would resume his duties, patrolling the city, while I and my mother would resume our normal lives.

My father didn't seem worried, neither did my mother.." Wu Mingli said as he cast a gentle gaze on his mother.

It took tragedy to strike them for him to realize how strong his mother was. She may be in the early stages of the core formation realm and he was at the quasi-palace stage. He was miles ahead of her in terms of personal strength, but when it came to strength of spirit, he felt he paled to her.

In the storm that hit them, he would not have survived it as easily as he did, if it wasn't for her steadfastly facing it all on her own as she shielded him from it.

With how astute he came to discover her to be, she must have had an idea of what fate awaited his father, but that night, the last night that all three would ever spend together, she was as peaceful as his father had been.

Facing death with equanimity required a certain level of willpower as even the bravest might waver when that moment came. His father knew only death awaited him for what he did but despite it all, he was calm in the face of it, even sparing time to assist Li Fei and share a mundane moment with his family despite what awaited for him.

But to Wu Mingli, while he felt his father was brave, he felt his mother was braver. When death comes, for the person who dies, that would be the end of it, but for the living, the loved ones of the deceased, they would have to carry the burden of that death and whatever it brings, as the living.

The burden that comes, the storm that comes, it is all theirs to carry and shoulder as the living, and when it came to his mother, the burden that came was anything but light. Weathering through it as she did, for both of them at that, required strength that Wu Mingli didn't feel he had.

His mother looked gentle, with a frailty of fatigue to her, with a genial smile, she had an aura that was no different than a mortal grandmother, but beneath that exterior lay an invulnerable and unshakeable spirit that supported the path and growth of a quasi palace stage expert.

She gave him his life in more ways than one, and under impossible circumstances at that.