Am I the only one who didn't ascend?

Guan Tiejun's funeral should be kept simple according to his will.

However, the funeral of the Allied Marshal, even if it was simple, still had specifications beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

On this morning, hundreds of thousands of soldiers gathered in front of the mountain fortress west of Lingshan, where he finally fell.

In addition to the 100,000 people who were on the battlefield, there were also soldiers who fought in the rear and failed to witness the marshal's fight against the immortals, and they also tried their best to come. Almost all of the Dinghuang troops stationed in Nanxiang were present, and representatives of the coalition forces of other countries were also sent.

At first, Lu Youyou, who arranged the funeral, did not want the scene to be so grand, but it was difficult to go against the wishes of the soldiers. So after a simple negotiation, she temporarily changed her mind and allowed all those who volunteered to come to attend.

In the end, when the sun, which rose day after day, finally climbed slowly, passed over the top of Lingshan, and cast golden light on the earth, there were more than 300,000 soldiers dyed by the morning sun.

The coordination and dispatch of 300,000 people is an extremely complicated task, but the countries of the Immortal Alliance have shown great efficiency in this matter. In just two days, 300,000 troops stood in front of the fortress in an orderly manner, silently witnessing the last step of Marshal Guan Tiejun in the Immortal Alliance.

The funeral was presided over by Zhuwang State Lord Lu Youyou. She did not prepare any long speeches, nor did she deliberately create an atmosphere. Because when the ceremony began, she stood on the top of the fortress, overlooking the earth, and saw 300,000 faces that were either sad or ashamed... but all of them were full of fighting spirit.

There was no need for any verbal encouragement from the superiors, because the soldiers never wavered in their fighting spirit. There was no need to elaborate on Guan Tiejun's achievements during his lifetime, because as the marshal of the coalition, his achievements had long been known to everyone.

His fall was the heaviest blow suffered by the Immortal Alliance since its establishment, a completely unexpected blow.

Before Rongcheng set off to the west, the Hundred Countries of the Immortal Alliance had already convened experts many times to brainstorm and deduce the war situation. However, even in the most pessimistic deduction, the Immortal Alliance has never lost its own marshal in the first month of the war. Generally speaking, if the situation is so bad that the Immortal Alliance can't even keep its own marshal, then the existence of the entire Immortal Alliance will be in jeopardy.

In fact, the actual war damage suffered by the Immortal Alliance in the battle with the True Immortal Bai Cheng was not particularly tragic, and the casualties counted afterwards were almost negligible. Bai Cheng's parting wild poison is specifically designed to break emotional relationships, but it does not have much real lethality. And as the owner of the wild poison was killed by the Ningyuan Holy Sword early, the wild poison that permeated the front line naturally dissipated... If Guan Tiejun had not overdrawn and died helplessly, then this battle of Dinghuang by the Immortal Alliance could almost be said to have ended in a complete victory.

But in the end, the Immortal Alliance did not achieve a complete victory. The coalition lost its own marshal, and Ningyuan Pavilion lost its precious sword holder. Guan Tiejun's death was actually the sacrifice of hundreds of people on his own.

The price is really heavy. As a result, those who were too enthusiastic about the Rongcheng development were hit hard again and had to return to rationality.

Development is no joke. No matter how much manpower and material resources the Immortal Alliance invested in it, no matter how foolproof the situation was planned by those professors and staff, failure could come at any time. Just like the aftermath of the Rongcheng chaos more than two years ago, which has not been completely digested until now...

The True Immortal Bai Cheng is the most terrible opponent the Immortal Alliance has encountered since the development of the westward development. The cultivation of the True Immortal is only one of them... She regards the Dinghuang barrier as nothing, and can enter and exit freely with only an incarnation, and can spread the separation wasteland poison under the layers of the Great Law. These things that completely break common sense and rules almost destroyed the theoretical foundation of the Immortal Alliance's Dinghuang.

Fortunately, Bai Cheng is only a unique case in the four states of Tianzhizuo. Fortunately, this case died under the Marshal's sword before the wasteland poison broke out.

The most difficult stage of the westward development, the Immortal Alliance finally passed it without any danger.

This battle was undoubtedly a bitter victory, but a bitter victory is also a victory. Therefore, at Guan Tiejun's funeral, Lu Youyou also simply commended all those who participated in the siege of the True Immortal.

Ironically, Wang Luo was also among them.

Both Wang Luo and Lu Youyou had subtle thoughts about this... But the entire layout of the siege of Bai Cheng was known to the top leaders of the Immortal Alliance. In order to successfully mobilize the 100,000 coalition forces of the 100 countries of the Immortal Alliance to reach various key locations overnight, Lu Youyou naturally had to inform the leaders of the 100 countries of the overall plan and the results of the plan in a timely manner.

Therefore, Wang Luo's brilliant plan for the layout of Nanxiang was naturally known to people. As another great contributor to this battle, he had no reason not to attend the scene.

However, standing on the top floor of the high fortress, feeling the stinging of the cold light of the holy sword that had not yet dissipated in the air, Wang Luo's sense of irony was almost overflowing.

As the murderer who personally cut a hole in the perfect layout, Wang Luo was also bearing the admiration and gratitude of hundreds of thousands of people under his feet.

This sense of absurdity could not be endured alone, so Wang Luo quickly shared it.

"... Senior Sister, tell me what you think?"

However, in the conscious world, Bai Cheng did not say a word, as if she was disdainful and unable. It was obviously her who took the initiative to come to the ceremony, but when the time came, she seemed to back off.

Wang Luo did not urge her, but with irony in his heart, he let Lu Youyou push the process step by step.

After a brief opening speech and eulogy, it came to the key link of the funeral.

Lu Youyou personally buried Guan Tiejun's body in the Lingshan Mountain Guardian Paper Man... This was a very clever link in Wang Luo's opinion.

For those who know the inside story, the process of sending the soul and body of a living person into a paper man is actually a process of refining and sealing. In the old immortal calendar era, only those who committed heinous crimes would be tortured in this way... Although this was also Guan Tiejun's last wish, it was really inconvenient to make the truth public.

Therefore, Lu Youyou presided over the refining in a dazzling way. Not only did she modify the refining ceremony into Guan Tiejun's funeral, but she also used a lot of gorgeous and frivolous light and shadow performances during the refining process.

Guan Tiejun's already decayed body, under the effect of illusion, showed a look like he did before his death. His old-fashioned and scarred face even had a trace of red blood flowing, as if the old man might open his eyes at any time.

And the process of the body turning into a paper man was not only accompanied by the melodious fairy music coming from the sky, but also by the exotic flowers and plants blooming out of thin air, competing for beauty. In a short moment, the foot of Lingshan was filled with fragrance, making people intoxicated.

Then, under such bright and beautiful decoration, Lu Youyou, Song Hui... and Guan Tiejun's only two remaining relatives: Guan Dingnan and Guan Xiaohe, the four of them joined hands and put the dry body like a doll into the mountain-protecting paper man.

The paper man cut and drawn by Song Hui himself was originally just a piece of pure white, colorless, simple-outlined, roughly human-shaped paper. However, as Guan Tiejun's body gradually blended into it like an ice cube sinking into warm water... the white paper suddenly showed colorful colors, and the outline also gently squirmed, becoming more detailed and anthropomorphic little by little.

Not long after, Guan Tiejun's face was reflected on the paper man. At first glance, it looked as vivid as a living person, without the thin features of the old paper man. Obviously, Song Hui not only reproduced the technology of the old immortal calendar era, but also incorporated the immortal alliance's thousand-year immortal evolution into it.

In fact, only such a paper man can perfectly carry Guan Tiejun, who was born in the new immortal calendar era.

Then, Guan Tiejun on the paper opened his eyes. As his eyes lit up, his whole body became full and three-dimensional, almost like a living person, and it was impossible to tell that his body was just a piece of thin paper.

As the paper man Guan Tiejun woke up, the soldiers attending the funeral in front of the fortress suddenly burst into incredible exclamations and joy. Because people seemed to see the marshal's resurrection from the dead.

But in just a short moment, Guan Tiejun returned to his original state. His body, which was full of blood and qi, quickly shrank and eventually turned into a piece of thin paper. The delicate color on the paper also faded away in the blink of an eye and returned to a piece of snow-white.

After that, Lu Youyou, with a trace of reluctance, raised the paper man high and raised it all the way to the edge of the Gangfeng layer, so that it could look eastward in the face of the rising sun at the last moment, and deeply engrave the prosperity and splendor of the Immortal Alliance in its heart... Then, the paper man turned into rainbow light and flowed to the westernmost side of the Dinghuang barrier in an instant - the place once called Chilongdi.

With the death of Bai Cheng, the red ridge formed by coincidence no longer exists. The red mountain ridges that look like ugly wrinkles sink into the earth as Rongcheng moves westward, making the terrain return to a flat surface. But the invisible border still stands.

The fate of the paper man Guan Tiejun is on this invisible border line.

When he stood on the border, an invisible rope slowly lit up, extending from his shoulder all the way to the distant Rongcheng Jianmu.

Then, Guan Tiejun carried the rope and walked towards the direction of the western wasteland. The footsteps of the paper man were thin and soft, but as the footsteps settled, everyone felt a silent sway in their hearts. It was as if the entire civilized territory of the Five States of Tianzhiyou was dragged forward by the paper man.

This was of course just an illusion. Guan Tiejun alone, no matter how many people's wills were placed on the thin paper man, could not drag the entire Rongcheng... But this was not an illusion, because what drove Rongcheng forward was actually the simplest and most honest steps of the trackers.

1,200 years ago, when the Immortal Alliance was first established, the Eight Directions of Dinghuang was only in its infancy, and each Dinghuang city was divided by the wasteland, the force that drove Dinghuang City forward and expanded the territory of civilization was the brave boatmen who walked at the forefront of the barrier. They dragged the entire city forward with their flesh and blood, facing the slaughter of the wild monsters and beasts, and never retreated. Most of them fell on the way forward, and their corpses became nutrients for the civilized territory, nourishing the prosperity of the next thousand years. Then, their will and their great achievements were included in the Ningyuan Map and became immortal magical powers.

Today, the Immortal Alliance no longer needs to recruit boatmen to pave the way for Dinghuang City with their flesh and blood. Because the Ningyuan Map can already extract endless power from the prosperous times to push the city forward. So that the rear of the Immortal Alliance can even celebrate the victory of pioneering in the midst of luxury.

However, Guan Tiejun's advance triggered the simplest resonance of the Ningyuan Map. His footsteps seemed to blend with the heartbeats of countless Immortal Alliance soldiers, and it would never end.

…The ceremony ended in silence. Hundreds of thousands of allied troops were silent, and gradually dispersed like a stream.

Guan Xiaohe supported his brother who was still injured and almost exhausted, and gave Wang Luo a complicated look, but finally nodded and thanked him silently.

Lu Youyou stayed until the end.

She was silent for a long time, then finally said: "The paper man protecting the mountain in Lingshan is essentially a kind of torture. Before completing the mission, a person's thinking, will, and actions will be tightly bound by the mission assigned to him, and he will live like a slave. Only by completing the mission can you gain freedom according to the size of your achievements. The Professor Song Hui you saw before became a completely free and independent person because of his great contributions to Lingshan. There are almost no traces of paper figures left on him. , I have no right to order him to do anything. This time, I asked him to take action purely out of favor... However, the other paper figures of his generation have all been worn out, except for Song Hui. , I have almost never heard of any paper man who can actually complete his mission of redemption and gain freedom."

After a pause, Lu Zhiyao said again.

"The mission assigned by Marshal Guan to himself is to complete the great cause of eradicating the wasteland and cover the entire nine states with civilized territory... Of course, each of us firmly believes that the day of recovering the wasteland will definitely come, but it will definitely not be thirty or fifty years ago. Within. It may take three to five hundred years, or even one thousand or two thousand years. When we first entered the wilderness, we were almost blocked by just one person, and no one dared to estimate the difficulties ahead. However, he still set up such unrealistic ambitions. Therefore, he did not expect freedom at all. It was the end he had designed for himself. We talked deeply, so I can't say why he was so decisive, but I think maybe in his view, the pioneering journey had just begun, and he, the marshal of the coalition, had no choice but to fall... This is not only not an achievement, but a great achievement for a commander. It was an oversight, so he had to use this extreme method to atone for his sins. The so-called "devoting one's best to one's own life" probably describes people like Marshal Guan..."

After saying that, Lu Youyou let out a long sigh and looked at Wang Luo with an extremely deep and distant gaze.

"Wang Luo, I'm not qualified to ask you for anything, and I don't want to ask you to do anything, because I know you must already have the answer deep in your heart. I just hope that you can follow that answer and not be swayed by temporary emotions... As for Another person who hopes we never meet again."

After saying that, Lu Youyou's figure dissipated like mist.

After Lu Youyou left, Bai Cheng's voice sounded in Wang Luo's conscious world.

"Now I finally know why my senior sister back then stood so decisively on the side of the ants... Unfortunately, I knew it was too late. I have always said that I trusted my senior sister back then, so much so that I resented her betrayal. So far. But in fact, if I had been more blindly trusting, maybe there wouldn't have been many of the things that happened later. By now, the resentment in my heart has disappeared, I have no hope for heaven, and my only concern is too empty. Therefore, I really have no reason to stay in this world. Wang Luo, please find a way for me to never see Lu Youyou again."