On the seventeenth of October, at Chen Hour, in the West Suburbs of Abundance City.
Several ceremonial salutes rang out, followed by a deafening clamor of gongs and drums. When the bustle subsided, funeral music began, and a thousand members of the Jiang Clan of Abundance City wept together, their grief shared by the gathered multitude.
Led by Jiang Lin, Sun Zhuo, and Fang Qianyuan, eight pallbearers, including direct blood relatives of the Jiang Clan of Abundance City and envoys from the sect's Heavenly Observation Court, took their places around the blackwood coffin and its outer casket, which weighed over thirty thousand pounds. They slowly lifted it and carried it to the open ground outside the mourning hall, handing it over to the strongmen waiting there. After the rites of turning the coffin, burning the offerings, and smashing the basin, Jiang Lin led the way with the funeral banner, while Sun Zhuo and Fang Qianyuan followed carrying the spirit tablet and mourning staff respectively. Mourning lanterns, the inscribed banner, the incense pavilion, the spirit sedan, the musicians, the coffin, the bereaved family, and friends and relatives followed in orderly succession.
The various powers around Abundance City had already erected mourning pavilions along the route, and numerous envoys had come from far and wide to attend the ceremony. The honors paid to the deceased could hardly have been greater.
Yet everyone understood that the departed were gone, and this was now the age of the living.
No matter how legendary or inspiring a mighty expert of his generation had been, once he died, his path ended with him.
The Jiang Clan of Abundance City might enjoy a hundred years of blessings from his legacy, retaining the standing and stature of an aristocratic clan, but from this day onward, they no longer