1292 Ashes



Alex stood up and looked at the old man's body in front of him. The old man had died, his spirit completely gone. 

However, his body was still alive. His blood still flowed, his heart still beat, and his dantian still held a golden core in it.

All that was different was that his consciousness no longer was present in his mind. It was like the body was in a coma, except for one which he had no chance of returning from.

'I wonder how long it will take for his body to die without a mind,' Alex thought. A life without an Intent, even an unconscious one would certainly not live for long.

Zexi had died by the time Alex had woken up after devouring him. As a saint realm, the old man's body would most likely stop functioning in just a few days as well.

He shook his head and sighed. He wasn't going to wait for that long. 

With a flick of his wrist, a small tongue of fire landed on the man's body and immediately started burning with a heat that could melt even the Starforged Tungsten easily.

The body turned into nothing in just a few seconds, leaving behind not even the ashes of the dead man. 

Once he was done, Alex turned around to leave the room.

Just before he left, however, Alex noticed the door to the side of the room and remembered something. He walked through the room, arriving on the other side.

There, he found a skeleton corpse that he had left behind all those years ago.

The corpse of the 8th Undying God.

Alex remembered the face of the illusory man that had helped him during the inheritance. He remembered the person whose memories he still held.

He couldn't help but bow to the corpse before walking into the room.

"I'm sorry I left you here like this, senior," he said softly and picked up the black-robed skeleton. "You must have known you were dying back then, didn't you? You wouldn't have left the inheritance behind otherwise given how much it harms one's spirit."

He carried the skeleton out of the cultivation room and into the main chamber. He used the script on the wall and teleported out of the Time Palace. 

He sensed Scarlet in the distance but didn't call for her. He wanted to give a small funeral to the 8th Undying God and he wanted to be alone while he did so.

He flew into the forest to gather up a few sticks and branches. Once he had enough, he arrived outside of the Undying Hall on top of the 5th mountain where he placed the many woods in a simple pyre and placed the Undying God's corpse on top.

Then, he burned one edge of the pyre and stepped back to watch it all catch fire. The black robe caught flame soon enough which burned away to reveal the skeleton inside.

Alex fed the flames his Qi so that it burned hotter and turned the skeleton into ash as well. 

After about half an hour, everything had burned to ash. Alex gathered up the ashes and spread them down the valley toward the forest in the distance.

He watched as the wind blew the ashes throughout the demon realm.

"Who was that?" Scarlet spoke from behind him.

"A senior," Alex said without explaining much about their relationship. "He died a long time ago when the Eternal War was still a thing. I decided to give him a funeral today."

"I see," she said. "And the other thing you wanted to do. Did you do it?" 

"Yeah, I took care of it," Alex said. "How is the secret realm? It's good, right?"

"It's alright," Scarlet said. "It could be better."

Alex couldn't help but smile. "It's hard to please someone that lived in the immortal lands, isn't it?" he asked.

"Whatever! Are we leaving now?" she asked.

"Uhh, sure," Alex said. "But, I have one more thing to check."

Alex quickly flew away with Scarlet following behind her. He arrived at the 6th mountain of the demon realm, the one known as the North Mountain.

This was the mountain that had allowed him to teleport away from this place and save his life, the mountain that sent him to the Northern Continent.

However, when he arrived at the location, his eyes went wide in surprise. The mountain was no longer there. Everything seemed to have been destroyed, most likely by some saints. 

Alex sent his spiritual sense and looked inside the rubble to check for the script inside. As he expected, the script had been completely destroyed.

"No wonder you can't teleport back," he spoke softly. "If this script was fine, I could've come back here a long time ago."

"Is that the teleportation script?" Scarlet asked. "Is there any way to fix it?"

"No, not without a ton of work," Alex said. "You will need to resonate the two scripts to link them, and without knowing the resonance of the script in the secret realm in the Northern Continent, it's impossible."

"I see," Scarlet said. "So, this place is bound to stay this way forever huh?" 

"I'm afraid so," Alex said. "At least it's bound to stay this way for the foreseeable future."

After roaming the secret realm around them a little more, Alex activated all the scripts he had shut down previously and let the teleportation aura send him out.

He arrived outside with Scarlet right next to him. He took off the medallion and stared at it for a few seconds.

"Do I need it?" he wondered himself. "There's little to no chance that I will ever be returning here, so I can't imagine needing this."

Still, in a way, Alex owned the demon realm, so he didn't want to give away the medallion just yet. If it was ever necessary for the future, he wouldn't want to regret having thrown it away.

"No point in caring right now," he thought and around. He brought out a boat from his storage ring and flew away with Scarlet, not even glancing at the things he had left behind.

He flew straight into the mainland, wasting absolutely no time anywhere. Looking at the sun, he could tell that it wasn't even noon right now.

He had been quite early with his work today, so he had enough time to do something else before he returned back to his mother.

"Let's take a little detour," Alex said and changed the direction of the boat. Scarlet wondered where they were going, not that she cared for any place specific. She was just here to roam,s o any place was a welcome one for her.

As for Alex, he had a destination in mind, one that apparently had weird things happening there. He was curious as to exactly what was happening, so he was going to have to check it out for himself.

As such, Alex and Scarlet arrived outside the Lightborn city, landing at the bottom of a massive span of mountains that spread far and wide.

This mountain range held one of the bigger sects of the Empire, the Broken Ravine sect. It had something weird happening recently, so, Alex was more than interested to see what was happening inside of this sect exactly.