CHAPTER 1262: BEWITCHED BY A TUNE

Yang Qing couldn’t quite believe it. His shock was so evident that even the beautiful lady playing the sanxian—professional as she was, immersed as she was in delivering her mesmerizing tunes—had a sliver of her attention break away from the instrument. No one could tell, of course; she could play it by heart.

She’d noticed him, just as she noticed everyone who was taken aback by her melody, not to mention, the young man before her with the cyan hair and an unfettered air about him wasn’t bad to look at either.

She saw the change in him when he heard her song, as many did. She half expected him to close his eyes and savor it ...again, as many did. Yet just when she thought things were going as expected, everything changed in the blink of an eye.

The look of melancholy or deep emotional realization she thought she’d see never fully formed. Instead, it was overtaken by a horror-stricken expression.

She was so taken aback by it(though the professional that she was, she didn’t let it show on her face) that she even gave her sanxian a quick once-over, wondering if maybe it was her doing. Maybe she was the one who had caused that reaction in the man.

But that didn’t seem to be the case.

She was playing the tune as she always had, and if she said so herself, she even felt tonight’s performance was one of her best yet. After all, there was an old man not too far from her, silently crying with deep emotion as he murmured about how he hadn’t made the most of his daughter’s childhood, and how he was going to give it another try.

That old man wasn’t the only one overtaken by emotion. There were a few others—some crying, some sighing, either in regret or in thanksgiving. One even seemed so enthralled by her music that he looked to be flowing into a state of epiphany.

And yet... despite all that, there was an anomaly before her—someone who looked like he’d just seen one of the scariest things in his life.

Surely her music hadn’t triggered his heart demons, had it? Surely not. It couldn’t be.

She’d trained with the sanxian for close to a century now. Her mastery of it was so refined that she could feel the doors of the palace realm beckoning her to step forward and taste the wonders that lay beyond. She’d earned its recognition. And yet...

It both bothered and unnerved her as she stared at Yang Qing’s paling face. Her melody was meant to gently pull at the heartstrings, bringing to surface what the listener held dear but had buried or forgotten, intentionally or unintentionally. It gave them the gentle courage to gaze upon it with fondness.

How was she to know that while her tune could make one man long to reconnect with his daughter, to the glutton before her it served only as a cruel reminder that he hadn’t eaten in eight hours?

What would she do if she ever found out that that was the reason behind the pale, horror-stricken face of the cyan-haired young man before her?

As for Yang Qing, the moment he realized he hadn’t eaten in eight hours, the color of the world seemed to drain away, fading into a dull backdrop of gray and black. The orchids no longer looked as vibrant as they once did. He couldn’t even hear the music.

A normal cultivator might have thought he was being overly dramatic. After all, he was a palace realm cultivator—what need did he have for food? At that stage, his body didn’t require it for survival.

There was no shortage of palace realm cultivators who went their entire lifespans without so much as a single meal. Some might indulge in wine now and then, but even that was only because, in their minds, wine was no different from a potion, given the level of care and quality ingredients that went into crafting it. To them, they drank for cultivation, and not just purely for leisure.

Eating and drinking for leisure was considered a waste—yet here was Yang Qing, currently panicking and strategizing how he was going to make it up.

There was a reason he was going hysterical.

Aside from the principle of it—his belief that cultivators should still maintain certain habits from before they became powerful, because those were the things that made life enjoyable, especially with the long lifespans cultivators had—there was another, more personal reason for his mortification.

Missing meals was an alarm bell for him, one that dug up more than a few buried traumas.

Back in his early days as a judge, so eager to impress, he’d skip meals without realizing he was sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, where an anglerfish waited, jaws wide, ready to swallow him whole.

Eight hours wasn’t even the longest he’d gone without eating. His longest record was 93 days, 24 minutes, and 7 seconds. But who was counting?

Well, he was. But that didn’t matter.

What did matter was that he’d gone three whole months without so much as a single drop of dew to parch his thirst.

And what was he doing that entire time, one might ask?

The answer was simple: he was doing cases. Cases, and cases, and more cases that never ended—because the Order, having found a diligent and impressionable young judge, was only too eager to hoist every single one of them onto said judge.

"Who were they to stand in the way of Yang Qing’s passion to mete out justice," they told him.

So, they did what any supportive organization would do—and fed him cases instead of dumplings.

It was during that time that the seed of rebellion was planted in Yang Qing. It was also when he realized just how dangerous the Order truly was.

From that moment on, he lived by a simple mantra: If the heavens demanded I skip lunch to hold court, I’d have to question their priorities.

To him, skipping a meal wasn’t just skipping a meal—it was opening the door and letting the Order’s sneaky hand slip through to exploit him again. That black hand was just that sneaky.

"Now that I think about it..." Yang Qing held his chin contemplatively as a shocking realization hit him. "I’ve been acting a bit out of character!" he muttered, as he looked back and examined his actions up to this point.