Bury Them All: A Cultivator's Path

Chapter 7

The next day, Silas found Bram's body not far from where the phoenix crown had been laid to rest.

He wasn't surprised. If anything, he'd half expected it.

Bram, in his final hours, had likely believed himself blessed convinced that a true disciple baring his soul to two strangers meant something like friendship.

Silas understood it differently. Evander hadn't wanted friends. He'd wanted someone, anyone, to unload thirty years of grief onto before it crushed him from the inside.

Had Bram been of equal standing, none of this would have mattered. But he wasn't, and he'd made the fatal mistake of believing a story like that came free of consequence.

Evander was a true disciple heir to the sect itself. Secrets belonging to men like that weren't meant for outer disciples to carry.

If Silas had lingered as long as Bram had, there would have been two bodies waiting for him this morning instead of one. That was precisely why he'd excused himself the moment the story began and, notably, why he'd still thrown in his one obligatory handful of dirt before leaving. The burial had gone through regardless.

He understood, better than most, exactly what that story meant to a man like Evander. Once the grief burned off and shame took its place, anyone who'd heard it firsthand was a liability walking. Bram had simply been unlucky enough to qualify.

Silas knelt briefly over his former colleague, retrieved a grey storage pouch from the body, tucked it away, and turned back toward the bridge.

Whatever happened between Evander and Bram wasn't his concern. What mattered now was reporting the death properly, in case anyone came asking questions later no sense rushing the burial before that was settled.

The report went smoothly. Steward Foster looked mildly surprised at first, but the moment Evander Lysander's name came up, he went quiet fast and promised a replacement would be sent within the day.

Burial successful.

Technique acquired.

Immortal experience gained. Spirit root fragment gained root has advanced into the mid-tier of the lower grade!

Silas stood over Bram's grave, eyes widening. His spirit root was tiered now capable of climbing in stages, same as his cultivation itself?

It made sense, in hindsight. Every fragment he absorbed stacked incrementally, nudging his talent ceiling higher one layer at a time.

Which meant he wasn't far now from a complete lower-grade root and beyond that, mid-grade. And beyond that, eventually, high-grade. And after that...

Buzzing with anticipation, he opened the storage pouch to inventory what he'd inherited.

Twelve hundred low-grade spirit stones. Fifteen Qi Gathering Pills. A scattering of other medicines besides.

Back at his hut, he replaced his worn belongings with the new supplies and settled in to cultivate.

He pulled one pill from the pouch — glossy brown, faintly fragrant. It dissolved on his tongue, and a thread of pure energy spread from his mouth down through his meridians and pooled in his dantian.

The fullness there told him a breakthrough wasn't far off. Between his borrowed experience and the past couple weeks of steady practice, he'd already reached the edge of the third stage's ceiling — a matter of days, if that.

He hadn't expected to inherit pills more valuable than raw spirit stones. It changed his timeline considerably.

He swallowed another, focus narrowing, and felt the energy in his body climb steadily higher.

Crack.

That night, with a sound like something breaking loose deep inside him, Silas shattered through into the mid-stage of Qi training.

The road ahead was long enough that he didn't waste time celebrating he simply kept refining his foundation, kept consuming pills, kept pushing.

By the following afternoon, more than a dozen pills gone, he stood at the threshold of the fourth stage's midpoint.

A few more days slipped by.

That morning

Ring. Ring.

Silas opened his eyes at the sound of the bell. Time to work.

Near the bridge, he found several disciples already waiting, along with a man dressed in scholar's robes, back turned to him.

At the sound of Silas's footsteps, the group looked up, and the scholar turned with an easy smile. "You'd be the little scholar, Silas Marrow?"

Caught slightly off guard, Silas offered a bow. "This one greets senior brother."

"Senior Brother Barrow, Senior Brother Marrow the bodies are here, the rest is yours to handle." The handyman disciples set down several corpses along with a bloodied bundle, and left without lingering.

Silas approached the bodies, eyeing the strange bundle with open curiosity.

Gus Barrow watched him for a moment, studying him carefully, then smiled. "Any guesses what's inside that one?"

"A corpse?" Silas offered, testing the water. Gus nodded, then pressed further. "And do you know whose?"

This time, Silas didn't ask. He simply bowed, hefted one corpse onto his shoulder, took the bloodied bundle in his free hand, and started back toward Skypillar Mountain.

"Started life as a scholar and turned out tougher than I expected," Gus said, watching him go, then flashed a knowing smile. "You're usually the cautious type never ask who these people were or how they died. This time, though, I think I'll tell you anyway."

Carrying the remaining two bodies with ease, he fell into step beside Silas. "The one on your shoulder is an inner disciple Desmond Rourke. The one in your hand is his older brother."

Silas's stride hitched, just slightly. Gus caught it and grinned wider. "So you *do* know them. In that case, I suppose I owe you the full story — everything that's shaken the inner sect these past few days."

"You already know what kind of man Rourke was," he went on, warming to the subject. Gus talked the way some men breathed constantly, and without much need for encouragement.

What followed was the sort of tale that had apparently set the entire inner sect buzzing.

Rourke had earned his place in the inner sect off the back of the Grand Tournament. It hadn't taken him long, once there, to run out of luck.

One night, wandering the inner grounds, he'd taken an interest in a serving girl and the encounter had ended with her dead.

If she'd belonged to some ordinary inner disciple, a handful of spirit stones might have settled the matter quietly. She didn't. She belonged, personally, to a true disciple — which made Rourke's crime a very different sort of problem.

The true disciple in question had been away on sect business at the time, which gave Rourke and his allies a narrow window to cover the whole thing up, dress it as an accident, bury the truth along with the girl.

Unfortunately for them, the true disciple wasn't just anyone. It was Seraphina Ash — widely regarded as the single most formidable young cultivator in the entire Sky Burial Sect.

Three days later, she returned to the sect and learned exactly what had happened. What followed wasn't subtle.

Rourke had assumed the truth would stay buried. He hadn't accounted for how many people were eager to hand it to her the moment she asked.

By that same afternoon, he'd been bound in the central square and executed by slow cutting in front of tens of thousands of witnesses. The customary sentence topped out around three thousand cuts. Rourke received thirty thousand, and screamed through nearly all of them.

Nobody intervened. Even his own brother could do nothing but watch, powerless.

Anyone hoping the matter would end there was disappointed. That same night, Seraphina cut her way into an elder's private residence with a single sword.

Rourke's brother, it turned out, had been hiding there a registered disciple under that elder's protection.

She broke the elder's arm in the process and opened his brother's throat without hesitation.

Word reached the sect's senior leadership almost immediately. Nobody so much as questioned her about it.