Chapter 546 - Funeral

Alex couldn't accept that his master was dead. He just couldn't. He believed it all to be a dream, but the reality was often disappointing. 

He cried along with the other elders for some time after she passed away. 

Afterward, he explained what had happened. He told everyone how the attack on the city was a distraction for the old man to enter the sect and look for him. 

If not for him being in the Tiger sect instead of here, he would've likely died at the start of the night.

The elders went up the mountain and saw the bloody scene of the stabbed Second elder and the beheaded Third elder, lying dead on the floor together.

The tragedy felt unending for them.

Wen Cheng too was quite bloody, but he would survive. The elders immediately got to treating him under Alex's request. 

Alex had stopped crying by now, but then the tears started falling once more when he heard someone else crying. 

Zhou Mei was down on the ground, next to both of her master's dead bodies. Alex had only lost a single master tonight, but she had lost two. 

Even more so, she had been with her masters for a long time longer than Alex had. Surely, she was in much more pain than he was. Still, he couldn't imagine anyone feeling as much pain as he was.

Was it even possible to feel this much pain? 

He would rather go through Body cultivation all over again, have his skin burned alive by the formation, or eat a thousand yang jades and feel his stomach burn to cinders than feel what he was feeling at the moment. 

The elders ran up the mountain to check for the old man, but apparently, he wasn't there any longer. 

'He must've gone to the Forbidden Fields,' Alex thought. After all, that was what he had been saying the whole time.

"Dammit! I could've got him if I had run after him!" Alex said as he slammed his own thighs. The regret was starting to get to him. 

"Don't beat yourself up for what happened, Nephew. None of this was your fault, and you did the best you could," Lang Shun said with red eyes. "Be thankful that your master at least got to see you during the last few moments."

"If you had run after him, sister would've likely been alone during the last moments, with no one else by her side," he said. 

Alex couldn't help but start crying when he heard that. 

The elders started preparations for the funeral. It wasn't just Ma Rong or the Second elder who had died tonight. There were other elders too that had perished in the fight against the bandits. 

They needed a funeral as well. Just as they were planning for the funeral, Alex made a request to them. 

. . . .

An hour passed since Ma Rong's death and finally, people could feel a hint of Qi in the air again.

Alex tried to use his spiritual sense and saw that he could spread it up to about 5 meters now. If only he could do that an hour earlier. Would that have helped his master in any way?

The yang in the air was subsiding, and Alex could feel the chill return back to the air. 

He was standing on top of the alchemy mountain where the Yin gathering Tree was planted. Next to him were a few other elders, all of whom had come for his Master's funeral.

He had requested that she be buried here, given how much she cared for the plant. Surprisingly, none of the elders protested, as it seemed that they knew it too.

They dug a hole next to the decrepit tree. Alex and Lang Shun helped carry her corpse into the hole. 

Once that was done, everyone started walking forward, throwing something of theirs into the grave. 

"What is everyone doing?" Alex asked. 

"They say after someone dies, they go to the afterlife. We are sending her anything that could be of help to her there to live a happy life after death," Grand Elder said with tears streaming down his eyes.

Alex felt sad. There was nothing of value he could give her. 

The Grand Elder noticed this and added, "You don't really have to put in anything. I'm sure just seeing you stand here is already making her afterlife easier."

Everyone put in something, most of them putting in some spirit stones. When it was time for Alex, he took out a single pill. 

He looked at the pill for a moment and tossed it down below.

"What is that?" Lang Shun asked. 

"It's a pill I made," Alex said. "I never got to tell master how much progress I had made for the last 2 months. I hope she learns about it in the afterlife and knows that she does not have to worry about me."

"What pill was that? I didn't recognize it," Lang Shun asked.

"It's a common ranked pill, but it's one I came up with on my own," Alex said.

"I see," Lang Shun said. "Sister will be happy certainly. I remember when she said that just a few months after reaching the True realms, you will beat me in Alchemy."

Lang Shun chuckled when he remembered that day as tears pooled up in his eyes again. He wiped the tears and said, "I hope to see you reach that level someday."

The elders started pouring the dirt back onto the grave and filling it. Once they were done, they said a small prayer and moved on to the other funerals.

The rest of the funerals were taking place somewhere else. They went behind the elder residence area and to a graveyard that Alex didn't know about previously. 

There weren't many gravestones in the place anyway. With only having been formed 50 or so years ago, the Hong Wu sect didn't really have many deaths that required burying here.

They buried the Second Elder and also the third Elder. Despite being a traitor, she was also an elder and had helped them quite a lot. 

Alex once more saw Zhou Mei crying with her sister and Fan Ruogang consoling her. Kong Yuhan walked up to him and gave him his condolences. 

The other elders were buried as well and the same ritual of passing something along took place once more. 

Alex dropped his other best common pill he had been holding onto the second elder's grave. If not for him, he would have likely lost his life as well as his other master in the mountain tonight. 

He thanked him for everything he did and walked away. 

By the time the funeral was over, the Qi had returned a great amount. By thing time, Alex could feel himself having a cultivation base equivalent to that of a Muscle Tempering realm. 

While the suppression was still there, it wasn't as bad as the ones in the Forbidden Fields.

He wondered why the yang in the air was going away, and where. 

After everything was done, the Grand Elder told everyone, including Alex to go and get some rest.. It had been a truly long and tragic night, and people needed their rest.