Chapter 1940 Secrets?
"A request? What request?"
All of the elders in the room were curious to hear Alex.
"My friend that died earlier today, would it be alright if I take care of his funeral?" Alex asked. "He mentioned to me that his parents are buried in the east. If possible, I wish to bury him there as well, along with his parents."
Tai Guidao's last words and his feelings about visiting his parents kept recurring in Alex's mind.
"Oh, that's very kind of you," the young elder said.
"Very kind indeed," one of the sect masters said. "But that won't be possible. We handle all the funerals for the disciples who die in the sect. If you wish to, you may get his ashes at the end of it all."
"Ashes?" Alex asked. "I won't get to bury him?"
"No."
Alex didn't know how to feel about that. He wanted the poor man to be with his parents, at least in death.
"I see," Alex said. "Then would it be possible for me to be present during the funeral?"
"That's unlikely too," the sect master said. "But we'll have to see. Leave and let us make our decisions now."
Alex could only nod and walk away from the elders. Even as he left, the thought of not being able to bury Tai Guidao hurt him. Would he not even get to be at his funeral?
'I'm only going to get his ashes?' Alex thought. He was in the corridor, surrounded by the lingering Death aura when a thought struck him.
He had been on the opposite end in the past, giving ashes back to the family of the dead. That had been when he was experimenting on the recently dead.
'Shit!' Alex thought. 'Are they experimenting on the dead here too?'
That was certainly a possibility. Given the Death aura around him, Alex felt that if any sort of experiment happened, it would happen in this place.
'Are these bastards going to cut up brother Tai too?' Alex thought. He felt anger at the thought of that.
He now wanted to make sure that was not the case.
"I had done nothing wrong," Alex replied.
"So they let you go? How? They clearly saw that you cheated," the woman continued.
Alex sighed. "I never cheated."
Just to not have the same conversation over again, Alex explained how his body was capable of consuming poison and destroying it. Of course, he made it sound as though that was the main special thing that his body was capable of.
Elder Lan and Elder Ming were understandably surprised, with the two looking at each other, saying something through their spiritual sense that Alex couldn't hear.
"So you could've become the first-ranking disciple right from the start?" Elder Ming asked. "Why did you wait until now to show off?"
"I didn't," Alex grumbled. "They forced me to. They were going to give me that poison whether I wanted to or not."
"How do you know that?" Elder Lan asked.
"Because they did so last time," Alex said. "That First Elder, she tried to kill me because she still believes I was responsible for her son's death. If I wasn't able to handle the poison, I would've died on last year's Assembly."
Those words seemed to shock the two elders as they looked at each other again.
"Only, she found out I could survive it somehow, so this year around, she went for my friend instead. Brother Tai Guidao did not deserve to die today at all," Alex said. His mood once again began going downhill.
Elder Lan seemed to have thought something and asked, "Did the First Elder claim that she tried to poison you? Or did you just assume that?"
Alex looked up, confused. "Why would she claim anything? It's obvious she did it," he said.
Elder Lan nodded. "And this friend of yours that died today, do you know much about him?" he asked.
Alex frowned. What sort of questions were these?
"Not a lot, but he had told me a few things," Alex said.
"Does he have a family outside?" Elder Lan asked.
Alex's eyes narrowed. "No, his parents were long dead. He was a rogue cultivator. Why do you ask that?"
Both Elder Lan's and Elder Ming's faces changed upon hearing the answer. They seemed to be privy to some information that Alex didn't know about.