Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 264: Burials & Tears

I was here.

I had finally returned to the Blazing Sun Sect.

But things had changed.

Gone was the pristine gleam of white marble walls that once stood as a symbol of pride and power, smooth and unblemished like the surface of spirit jade.

Now, long, jagged scratches ran down their sides like claw marks. Cracks split the stone in uneven lines, some stretching from base to top of the wall. In places, chunks had been torn away entirely, leaving jagged holes where sunlight streamed through wounds in what was once an unbreakable fortress.

It was still the Blazing Sun Sect… but something had happened. And whatever it was, it had left its mark.

The rest of the mountain was hidden behind an illusory array meant to obscure the truth from any outsider. But I was an Array Conjurer. At this distance, I could shape a small counter-array just around my head, peeling back the illusion to see what lay behind it.

I stared at the cracked walls one last time and looked up.

And what I saw made my heart drop.

Where once stood a majestic green mountain with its peak rising proudly above the clouds like a heavenly spear, there now remained only a scorched shadow of its former self. The lush canopy that once blanketed its slopes was gone, replaced by ash-streaked stone and lifeless dirt. Cracks webbed across the surface like dried clay splitting in the sun.

The mountaintop, once crowned with ancient trees and sacred pavilions, was now flattened and sunken, as if a titanic weight had crushed it from above. Its surface shimmered faintly, warped and melted like wax dripped from a candle. Faint wisps of smoke still rose from the fissures, carrying the scent of char and sulfur.

It no longer looked like a place of cultivation.

It looked like the aftermath of a war between giants.

My heart began beating faster. My thoughts short-circuited.

I wasn’t worried about the Sect grounds themselves; buildings could be rebuilt, and trees replanted. But the whole way here, I had operated under one fragile hope: that this might’ve been a battle against monstrous beasts. That the old man and the librarian, who had no place near the front lines, had survived.

No. I couldn’t let my thoughts spiral. I had to be calm.

As I approached the front gate, the changes became even more obvious.

The grand, towering gate that once stood as a monument to strength and legacy was gone. No polished marble. No inefficiently-placed carved reliefs of Sect history. No sweeping archway whispering of long-gone tradition.

In its place stood something simpler: a heavy wooden gate. Plain in shape, but not in design. Etched across its surface were delicate patterns of gold, arrays and formations etched with precision. Each line pulsed faintly with dormant power. Protective runes. Recognition seals. Defensive constructs.

This gate wasn’t ceremonial.

It was practical. freewebnσvel.cøm

It was built to hold. To withstand.

Whatever had destroyed the old gate, the Sect had made sure the next one would survive. The gold shimmered faintly beneath the overcast sky, like it was watching. Waiting.

Clearly, the Sect was trying to rebuild. But there hadn’t been enough time to restore both strength and the illusion of it.

The walls still stood in ruin.

Things were bad.

As I approached the front gate, the golden inscriptions shimmered, and a pulse of Qi washed over me. There was no pressure, no resistance, just a soft, sweeping presence that felt like an identification array checking for threats.

The gates creaked open, revealing the melted stone road beyond. The scent of ash and sulfur hit me stronger now, clinging to the air like smoke after a fire that had long burned out.

I stepped forward, and Wu Yan, Speedy, and Fu Yating followed.

Just inside stood two Qi Gathering disciples, each gripping a sword, eyes cautious, mostly toward Speedy. Their bodies were stiff, like they were still unsure whether to raise their weapons or bow.

“We welcome you, honorable senior,” said the one on the left with a respectful tilt of the head. The other quickly mimicked him.

They had likely sensed my cultivation level. I hadn’t gone out of my way to conceal it, nor to parade it around. Maybe the array at the gate had done the job for them.

“No need to bow,” I said absently. “The last time I left here, I was a Qi Gathering cultivator myself.”

I said it without thinking, my words habitual and hollow. My body moved on its own, walking and speaking, while my eyes drifted toward the horizon.

Toward a tower I wished I didn’t recognize.

The library pagoda.

It stood, or rather, slumped in the distance, like a memory that hadn’t finished fading.

Once, it had been a proud tower of dark lacquered wood and jade-green eaves. A place of peace. I’d spent hours there: poring over scrolls, sharing silent nods with the librarian, enduring the old man’s dry commentary over tea. Those moments had felt timeless.

But now…

It was barely a ruin.

The structure had melted inward on itself, warped and hunched like a candle left too close to the flame. The upper floors had collapsed into a spiral of charred wood and stone. Its roof, once sharp and symmetrical, had fused into a crooked mound of blackened wreckage. Faint smoke still rose from its remains.

Even from here, I could smell scorched paper.

It felt like looking at the grave of something sacred. A grave no one had mourned properly. Not even me.

I took a slow, steadying breath, my chest tight. My eyes didn’t blink. Couldn’t. If I blinked, the tower might vanish altogether. Like it had never stood there at all.

“What happened here?” I asked, though my voice didn’t sound like mine. Detached. Quiet. Like I was narrating someone else’s dream.

“We were stationed in the nearby town when it happened, honorable seniors,” said the disciple on the right. “We were lucky to be far away. Some kind of… molten ball fell from the sky. Like a star. Crashed right into the mountain.”

His voice kept going, a dull noise in my ears.

I listened, but I wasn’t really hearing.

The other guard joined in, recounting where they had been and what they’d seen.

But I’d already walked past them, my eyes fixed on the melted tower in the distance.

Some part of me still expected to see the librarian standing there, brushing ash off his sleeves, complaining about misplaced scrolls. As if time had paused only for me, and I’d just stepped out for a moment too long. Maybe the old man would be frowning at the rubble and grumbling about how long it would take to clean it up.

How was he even supposed to clean a library that had melted?

My thoughts were interrupted when one of the guards reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

“Sorry, honorable senior, but you’ll have to identify yourself,” he said.

“His name is Liu Feng,” Fu Yating said before I could respond. “He’s nineteen and joined the Blazing Sun Sect nearly four years ago. He was on leave, sanctioned by the elders, and had permission.”

The guard blinked, then quickly removed his hand from my shoulder.

Fu Yating gave me a small nod. “Don’t worry about us. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Thanks,” I murmured.

Despite my usual suspicion, I decided to trust her. This time, I’d let her carry the conversation.

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“Just like when I got the news about my clan…” she began, her voice soft, “you acted like you didn’t notice my moment of weakness. I’ll return the favor now.” She hesitated. “I never thanked you properly… not just for that, but for everything. So, after this, let’s just go back to our usual banter. And forget this ever happened.”

I nodded, only half-hearing her as my legs carried me up the slope, toward the scorched library tower.

The stairs were melted, but still held their shape, barely. My fingers twitched unconsciously, remembering the smooth ceramic cups I’d carried to the old man. The warmth they used to hold. The kind of warmth you didn’t know you missed until you reached for it, and found your hands empty.

Despite my cultivation, the climb felt heavier than ever. With each step, something weighed me down. Not fatigue. Not Qi depletion.

Grief.

At the top, I stopped. For a moment, just one, I thought I smelled the old scent of parchment and ink. It was so vivid I almost turned, expecting to see the librarian hunched over a scroll, or Shan Sha muttering about ash between the floorboards.

But the tower was dark. Blackened. Warped.

The inside was layered in soot. Ash clung to the melted walls like it was baked in. It looked less like a ruin and more like the inside of a crematorium.

Nobody was there. No rustling pages. No muttered complaints. No tea cups left too close to scrolls. Just silence... thick, absolute, final.

I stared at the wreckage for a long time. Then, finally, I turned and walked outside.

This wasn’t the place I remembered. The books were gone. The people were gone. All that remained was memory and ash.

At the base of the stairs, someone was waiting for me.

He looked about fifty, with graying hair, a well-trimmed beard, and quiet composure. His presence marked him immediately as a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

“So,” he said, “you’re Liu Feng. You’ve changed quite a bit since the last time I saw you. We were… understandably tense when we sensed a Foundation Establishment entering from outside.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been on the road. I came back to see what had happened.”

I glanced over my shoulder, back at the warped shell of the library.

“So what really happened here?” I asked. My voice caught. “Did the... librarian and the others make it out?”

I’d warned them. They should have had time to leave. They should have listened.

The elder’s expression tightened slightly. “Anyone below Core Formation who was present during the attack… didn’t make it.”

I closed my eyes, my fists clenching tight.

“Elder Xin Ma?” I asked. “The librarian. And Shan Sha. He always wandered the back halls and second floor of the library.”

“Xin Ma is dead,” the elder said gently. “His body was almost completely melted. But we buried what we could. There’s a mass grave on the north face of the mountain.”

His words struck harder than I’d expected. A punch to the heart I hadn’t braced for.

“As for Shan Sha…” The elder frowned. “I’m sorry. That name doesn’t ring any bells.”

“He was just... a cleaner,” I said, the words catching on my tongue. “Old. Mortal, most likely. Maybe Body Tempering, at best.”

The elder nodded solemnly. “Then he would’ve died instantly. Disintegrated in the blast.”

He studied me for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry for your loss. I know what that feels like.”

The way he said it made it clear. He’d lost people too. Probably many.

And now we were both standing in the ruins, breathing in the same ash, remembering names that would never be spoken again.

“Where are the graves exactly, and can I go there?” I asked.

“Of course,” the elder replied. “But… while we made graves for the Foundation Establishment elders, the servants didn’t get their own. Most of their bodies were disintegrated. As for the disciples, we notified their families, declared them dead, and sent back the bodies we could identify.”

So the old man wasn’t even given a grave. Just… dust in the wind.

A bubbling heat rose in my throat, like acid. I knew it was irrational. Hundreds, maybe thousands, had died. But knowing Shan Sha had been deemed too insignificant to remember left a bitter taste I couldn’t swallow.

I didn’t say anything else. Just, “I’m going to visit the graveyard.”

Then I wrapped myself in a layer of translucent jade armor. The material responded like liquid light, folding over me silently, snugly. A faint green shimmer enveloped my limbs, light yet solid.

With a single thought, I activated the float array within its core.

There was no Qi flare. No gust of wind. Just the barest hum as I rose from the ground like gravity had quietly given up on me.

I floated forward with steady grace, gaining speed as I shot toward the back of the mountain.

The wind brushed my face like cold silk. No one stopped me. No one even noticed.

And then… I arrived.

The mountain’s shadow was no longer a sanctuary. It was a cemetery.

Graves filled the entire slope, row after row, stone markers scattered like memories. Some were simple, bare slabs. Others were elaborately carved. But all were new. The earth around them was freshly turned, and the faint dry autumn grass was only just beginning to grow.

Half a dozen people stood among some of the graves, loved ones, maybe. Fellow disciples. Survivors. Each lost in silence.

I hovered above them for a moment, letting the weight of it settle in. Once proud and unshakable, the Blazing Sun Sect now wore grief like a second robe.

As I floated down and was about to search for Xin Ma’s grave, I noticed a familiar face among the grieving. Someone I hadn’t seen in a while.

His dark hair hung in greasy strands, and his beard was a tangled mess. He looked less like a cultivator and more like a ghost of a man who’d forgotten what it meant to live.

It was Cao Ruogang, Cao Wu’s father. She was the girl I’d saved, back when everything was different. That felt like a lifetime ago. Ye An had been her usual unhinged self back then.

Cao Ruogang used to dread the thought of outliving his daughter… Who would’ve thought he’d experience that much sooner?

Cao Wu had been kind. Sometimes to the point of naivety. She didn’t deserve an end like this. No one that gentle ever does.

I was about to walk away, but the sight of that grieving man reminded me of a softer version of myself. Someone who would risk their life to save someone they barely knew.

Cao Ruogang took something out of his storage ring. A bottle of strong liquor, judging by the smell. Then he began drinking and crying.

I approached him on silent steps, trying not to startle him.

“I don’t think your daughter would want to see you like this,” I said. “She never liked you drinking.”

Cao Ruogang looked my way, narrowed his eyes, and sighed as he sat down next to her grave.

“I’m a horrible father for not being there when she needed me most,” he said. “Even though I’d promised her I would put her above everything, even the Blazing Sun Sect. When this happened, I was away on a mission… So much for caring. I could’ve used my own body to protect her if I were here. At least we would have died together, and I would know I had done everything possible.”

Then he stood, straightened his back, and walked off, murmuring apologies to ghosts only he could see.

I stared at Cao Wu’s grave. It was just a marble stone slab with names engraved into it, the same as any other.

I bowed my head toward it. “Sorry things ended this way for you.”

Maybe if I hadn’t stepped in that day, her story would have gone differently. Maybe not longer, but cleaner. Gentler.

This was no way to go. I had only bought her a few more years by saving her from Ye An. Did she have a good life during that time? I had no idea… I could only hope she did.

But I didn’t linger long. I kept walking, searching for the librarian’s grave. With my sharp eyesight, it didn’t take long to find a stone with Xin Ma engraved on it.

I stood in front of the librarian’s grave, staring at the stone tablet that bore only his name and nothing else. The world would forget this guy even existed… and that was sad. If something happened to me, there’d be no one left to remember who he even was. As for the other elders, they didn’t even care to mention his name over a drink.

I crouched down, placed a hand on the head of the grave, and used my Eight Mind Phantoms Technique to send out a mental wave, trying to sense physical objects underground. It was like a sonar pulse.

A part of me still had hope. I’d long suspected that the old man might’ve been some kind of hidden master. Maybe he’d faked his death somehow…

I knew it was unrealistic and an idea I would’ve dismissed any other time.

But then I sensed the physical shape of the coffin… and the corpse inside it, wrapped in bandages.

Everything suddenly felt so real.

“Fuck,” I cursed as I sat down beside the grave, tears spilling from my eyes. “Why the hell did you decide to stay? To follow some stupid Sect rules? If the rules you followed brought you here, then what the hell were they worth?”

I wanted to blame him, or someone, or even the heavens for what had happened. But the truth was, no one expected things to spiral out of control the way they had.

I looked up at the sky as I lay back on the brittle autumn grass. The tears wouldn’t stop, but I couldn’t deny the reality anymore.

“I wish I’d heard your life story in more detail. Now nobody ever will,” I said.

I just stayed there, crouched beside the grave, sighing as my tears dried. I didn’t cry as much as I thought I would.

Then, after a while, I started talking. I told him about what I’d been up to while I was away from the Sect, and how I’d looked forward to seeing him and the old man again.

When the sun began to set and a veil of darkness covered the sky, I was sitting in silence, lost in memory.

It still felt surreal. A part of me imagined they were still around. That I could walk into the library and see them with Shan Sha teasing me, Xin Ma watching us with that usual confused expression, wondering how we got along so well.

But my thoughts were interrupted by a presence.

I sensed someone approaching. When I glanced toward the newcomer, I saw a tall, well-built old man with a monk-like bald head and a burn scar where his beard should’ve been. His hands bore burn scars too.

I almost didn’t recognize him without the lion’s mane of a beard.

But it was Zun Gon, the Core Elder who’d been close with Hu Jin. Many considered him second or third in command, just behind the Sect Leader and Song Song’s father.

“Sorry for your loss,” Zun Gon said. His voice was deep, like a talking bear. “But Xin Ma was a good man, who never abandoned his duty. He wouldn’t want you to wallow in grief.”

It seemed like he expected a response, but I just stared at the darkening sky and said nothing.

He didn’t take offense and continued, undeterred. “An emergency meeting is happening right now between all the elders of the Blazing Sun Sect. You can now be considered an elder yourself, and one of, if not the brightest talent the Sect currently has. We would be honored if you attended.”

I studied the man a moment longer. Seeing a Core Formation Cultivator being this polite to me was strange. If I remembered right, this guy was at the peak of Core Formation.

Eventually, I stood up and gave Xin Ma’s grave one last look before walking away.

I decided to see what this was all about.

While Zun Gon’s words felt like empty pleasantries, I knew that Xin Ma and the old man wouldn’t want me to drown in grief.