New Shoots Beneath the White Funeral Banners

Inside the Black Tortoise Hall, white funeral banners hung low.

From the beams and pillars to the corridor eaves, layers of white mourning drapes hung one behind another. Flickering candlelight shifted between them, casting the hall in black and white.

At the center, an eternal lamp burned on the altar. Its flame leaped without going out, tracing the dark coffin behind it in interwoven light and shadow.

A hundred white candles stood in rows on either side. Their flames lit the entire hall, but could not pierce the deep grief within it.

Shi Jian lay quietly in the coffin.

His face had been tended by a specialist. By candlelight, its gaunt contours looked sharper than they had in life.

The masters of all three halls had arrived, their faces unable to hide their gloom.

Fu Chongshan was there, as was the elder who had spent years guarding the Four Symbols Origin-Returning Array. Even he had left the array and now gazed silently at Shi Jian in his coffin.

Ye An had put on the white mourning robe Zhou Zhong had handed him.

He knelt and struck his forehead against the floor three times. Each heavy knock rang through the silence of the Black Tortoise Hall.

Ye An straightened, raised the incense above his head, and bowed three times before placing it in the burner.

Thin blue smoke curled upward.

Every Gathered Origin Martial Artist present looked at Ye An, their eyes full of sympathy for his loss.

None of them noticed the change in his cultivation.

To them, Ye An was still the Qi Condensation Realm martial artist who had outshone Yun Province's prodigies at the Open Palace Celebration.

Only Zhao Xuanji noticed something different about him.

As his gaze fell on Ye An, he caught the faintest hint that