After being reborn, Ethan Brooks found that her ambitions had grown so vast that even the immense lands of the Western Regions could no longer contain them.

The Tianshan Mountains, which had already entered the green grass season, experienced another day of snow because of a dark cloud. By nightfall, the snow turned into rain, and as the raindrops hit the ground, they quickly froze into ice.

The newly sprouted pale yellow grass was encased in ice, so crystal clear it made one's heart ache.

The next day, what fell from the Tianshan Mountains was neither snow, nor rain, nor hail, but a mixture of ice and water that melted instantly into water upon landing on a warm palm.

This water was bone-chillingly cold!

Ethan Brooks draped every piece of warm clothing in the house over Sarah Miller, while little Emily Clark hid inside Sarah Miller's robe.

The fire in the hearth inside the tent blazed fiercely, yet even so, both Sarah Miller and Emily Clark still shivered from the cold. The thin cowhide tent was no match for the chill outside.

If it weren’t for Ethan Brooks constantly heating sand in clay pots and placing them around Sarah Miller and Emily Clark, and continually feeding them scalding hot meat broth, this even colder night might have claimed their lives.

The thin cowhide tent could not withstand such cold, especially when a sudden drop in temperature followed a warming spell, making it all the more unbearable.

Not only did Ethan Brooks's family of three huddle inside their tent, afraid to come out, but the other herders did the same.

The hungry cattle and sheep outside mooed and bleated incessantly, never quiet for a moment.

Cattle and sheep are a herder’s lifeblood, but at times like this, even the most diligent herder was unwilling to leave the tent to tend to them.

Snowfall didn’t frighten the herders, because snow could be kept out by their leather robes and would fall off with a shake.

Rain didn’t scare them either; at worst, it would soak the outer layer of their robes, but as long as they kept moving, they would survive.

Only this kind of freezing rain was truly terrifying... When it landed on people or livestock, it would immediately form an icy shell, encasing them...

So, endurance became the herders’ only option.

Ethan Brooks didn’t like this behavior, which later scholars would call resilience, at all.

Fortunately, this kind of weather usually didn’t last long. After all, it was already May, and the sun would return.

On the third day, the sun came out. As soon as it appeared, it burned the skin painfully. Though it was still cold, people felt as if they were trapped in a giant microwave oven—unable to feel warmth, yet so irritable they wanted to cut open their chests for relief.

Such drastic weather changes were especially unfriendly to those with lung ailments. The great Abo Grace Bennett began to cough violently, and by dawn, he could no longer make a sound, his face flushed red, and his strong hands clawing at his chest.

First, his clothes were torn, then his skin. Seeing him scratch his chest until it was a bloody mess, everyone witnessing the scene felt that Grace Bennett wanted to rip out his own heart.

When his breastbone was almost visible, Grace Bennett's convulsing body collapsed heavily onto the pile of sheepskins, and he moved no more.

No one questioned why this great Abo had died.

Because, during this bout of freezing rain, many people died, even more cattle and sheep perished, and everyone was in low spirits, so no one bothered to investigate.

When an ordinary herder died, the body was thrown far away, left for wild beasts and birds to devour. Sometimes, to make it easier for the animals to tear at the flesh, they would even strip the clothes off the dead.

But when a great Abo died, there was a set of rituals for the deceased.

The witches would cut their own cheeks and smear the blood on Grace Bennett's face, hoping to gain Tengri’s mercy.

They kept at it until dawn, by which time Grace Bennett's body had grown cold. Only then did the witches announce to everyone that the great Abo had been summoned by Tengri and had returned.

They placed the body of the deceased Grace Bennett in the tent, and everyone rode their horses around the tent seven times. Grace Bennett's eldest son, Matthew Carter, came to the tent entrance, cut his own face with a knife, and lay wailing on the muddy ground.

After a while, the wailing stopped. A witch checked his breath and found that Matthew Carter, overcome with grief, had followed his beloved father into Tengri’s embrace.

Everyone praised Matthew Carter's loyalty, willing to give up his own life to follow his father to serve Tengri in heaven.

With two corpses lying in one tent, Grace Bennett's relatives faced extra trouble: they had to ride around the tent seven more times, then find the person closest to the two deceased to lift the tent flap and cut their own face twice.

After this process, they placed the bodies of the two dead, along with their clothes and saddles, onto the fire to be burned.

The relative who cut their own face was very worried about being summoned away by Grace Bennett as well, so they only made a shallow cut, letting out a little blood, and were eager to finish this double Uyghur funeral as soon as possible.

Once the people and their belongings had turned to ash, the two piles of bone ash were collected in sheepskin bags and hung inside the tent, to be buried in a pit somewhere after the new grass of the year had withered and turned yellow.

With the great Abo dead, everyone from the two hundred tents had to come out and mourn. Ethan Brooks, carrying Emily Clark and accompanied by Sarah Miller, also attended the final mourning ceremony.