After finishing the inventory of Mo Ye's storage ring,Xia Li turned to sorting through the xiao demon's storage vessel as well.There were more than eight hundred thousand spirit stones inside.No pills.No treasures.No books whatsoever.What there was, however, was pile upon pile of spiritual ore, precious herbs and dicines, beast hides, and beast bones.But the thing that left Xia Li most speechless of all...was the corpse of a gray-white tiger,its abdon torn open, its body long since gone cold.Xia Li rembered what the fox chieftain had said:Qiu Fu had been born by tearing her way out through her dead mother's belly."Qiu Fu, I have sothing to give you. No... not a thing. A presence."Xia Li looked up at Qiu Fu.He felt it was far too disrespectful to call the remains of her mother "a thing.""What is it? Why are you suddenly acting so serious?""See for yourself."Xia Li took out the remains of Qiu Fu's mother.The mont Qiu Fu saw them, her eyes went blank.She stood rooted in place for a very long ti.Only after quite a while...did she walk over and gently hold her mother's body in her arms,burying her face in the fur and letting out faint sobbing sounds.The xiao demon had actually preserved Qiu Fu's mother's remains.Of course, in Xia Li's eyes, that could not possibly have been out of kindness.Far more likely, he had simply not yet found a use for them,or had intended so other use.But whatever the reason,the body had been preserved.That alone gave Qiu Fu sothing left to hold onto."So you knew who this was."Qiu Fu could have no mory of the mont of her own birth.She had been rescued imdiately by the fox chieftain.And yet, after seeing the corpse, she had recognized it instantly."Even if... the blood has gone cold, the bond of blood cannot be mistaken...""My condolences."Xia Li stepped closer and rested a hand on Qiu Fu's shoulder.Demons bore the bodies of beasts, and so of the wildness of beasts in their ways,but never the mindless cold-heartedness of beasts.A long ti later...Qiu Fu finally raised her head slowly.Her eyes were red and swollen.She stood up and looked at her mother's remains.After hesitating for a long while, she finally spoke:"I can't go back to demonkind for now. I can't bury my mother in human territory either. And I can't bear to leave her remains shut away in so cold storage ring...""Xia Li, cremate my mother according to the Buddhist way."Qiu Fu had made her decision.Both humans and demons practiced burial,though humans built tombs and followed more elaborate procedures, with coffins and ritual structure.Demons generally buried the whole body directly in the earth, believing in the natural cycle of heaven and earth.So demon tribes did not bury the body at all,instead leaving it to be eaten by lesser beasts and birds that had not attained sentience."All right."Xia Li nodded.But he did not act imdiately.There was still sothing else that needed to be done first."Qiu Fu, turn around for a mont.""Okay."Qiu Fu did not ask what he was doing.She turned around directly,because she had seen the trace of gentleness in Xia Li's eyes.He would never do anything disrespectful to her mother's body.And what Xia Li intended to do was simple.Laying the body to rest.Nothing more than that.After Qiu Fu turned away, Xia Li pulled a few strands of her hair.Using those strands, he carefully sewed shut the wound in her mother's abdon.Then, drawing water through spiritual energy, he washed away the dried blood and gri from the body.A light wind combed the fur smooth again.Xia Li did everything with great care.His movents were gentle.He did not hesitate to use spirit herbs to temporarily restore the look of living vitality and mask the grayness of death.With the help of the herbs, even if only for a little while...Qiu Fu's mother's fur returned to how it must have looked in life:glorious,vigorous,and bright.Xia Li trimd away the extra fur.He repaired the missing parts of the body.Where flesh had caved inward, he packed fragrant spirit herbs to restore the proper fullness,so that the sunken corpse once again took on the shape of living strength.Xia Li could not bring Qiu Fu's mother back to life.But he could, for a little while, return her to how she had once looked when she was still alive.Precisely because Qiu Fu had no mory of her mother,Xia Li did not want the image she carried in her heart forever to be one of such misery.
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That was the greatest aning of preparing a body for its final rest:to let the living rember the dead in the beauty of who they once were.The dead had already passed on.Only the mories left behind in the hearts of the living ought to remain in the most beautiful form of life."It's done."Xia Li told Qiu Fu she could turn back now.The mont Qiu Fu looked,her eyes fixed to her mother's body and would not move.Her mother looked as though she were rely asleep.As though, if called gently,she might wake,greet her,perhaps call her by na in a soft voice,or perhaps ask in a proud and powerful tone how her cultivation had been going.The gray-white fur moved gently with the wind.Inside the windless gourd-space, a soft breeze began to blow,and even the sound of that wind seed to shape itself into a tender little lody.It felt like resting under the sun in rolling fields,as though this were no more than a perfectly ordinary afternoon.No slaughter.No war.No hatred.Only a fleeting mont of comfort and drowsy peace.Tears stread down Qiu Fu's face without stop.So this was what her mother had looked like when she was alive.Beautiful.Powerful.Majestic.Her mother now looked as though she were sleeping in absolute peace.So much so that Qiu Fu did not even dare draw closer, afraid she might wake her from that sleep.She stared without moving,as though she ant to engrave every detail forever into mory.Only after a full half hour passed did Qiu Fu finally smile in satisfaction.Her tear-filled eyes turned toward Xia Li."Send my mother on her way."She felt she had no regrets left now.Though Xia Li's golden core was currently dormant, the firepower stored within the Spirit Core was still enough to give Qiu Fu's mother a proper final sendoff.Beautiful azure flas rose.Xia Li deliberately increased the brightness of the fire so that Qiu Fu would not be able to see too clearly.A little over ten minutes later...the flas died out.Xia Li stepped over to the circle of grass that had been reduced to ash and, from the ashes, picked up a white gem.He had compressed the remains into it using telekinetic force."This is...? A Buddhist relic, the thing from the legends? But my mother, she...""Not a relic. Just the crystallization left by a body that once existed. It may not be eternal, but ten thousand years from now it will still shine with the sa luster."Xia Li stepped forward and placed the gem into Qiu Fu's hand.She accepted it solemnly.Though she did not know much about the human race, she had never heard of this kind of funeral before.But she would rember it for the rest of her life.It was Xia Li who had taken the cold mory of her dead mother and made it warm.It was the most precious gift possible:a mory warm enough to carry her through the rest of her life.Her tears fell onto the gem.She clasped it tightly in both hands.Then, for no clear reason, the gem suddenly flashed with an intense light...The brightness was so strong that even Xia Li had to shut his eyes for a mont.By the ti the light faded,Qiu Fu stood there blankly,staring at her now-empty palm,while long hair white as snow fluttered in the wind.Qiu Fu had been gray-haired before.Short gray hair.Now, with that flowing snow-white hair,she was so breathtakingly beautiful that even Xia Li froze in amazent."Qiu Fu, your hair..."Xia Li called out to her,but Qiu Fu seed unable to hear him at all.She only lifted her head and closed her eyes."Mother, I would rather have kept the final proof that you once existed. But if this is what you wished...""Then as the last White Tiger, I will wage endless pursuit against every wicked demon that dares violate the laws of heaven and earth."The mont the words left her mouth, Qiu Fu's aura destabilized.She could no longer maintain human form.In front of Xia Li appeared a tiger pure white from head to tail, its body striped with gold.Brilliant white fur.Golden markings blazing across it.This was precisely the form recorded in the ancient books:the form of the sacred beast White Tiger.In that instant, Xia Li understood why demonkind had wanted Qiu Fu dead,why the xiao demon had preserved the corpse of her mother,and why Mo Ye too had wanted to capture her.There were still many things he did not know.And this ti, by pure accident,he had stumbled right into the heart of one of them.
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