"Originally, I had hoped you would live out your life in peace. Ordinariness is a blessing."
"But I never expected you to be so consumed by the path of martial cultivation. Rather than letting you venture recklessly out there, I think it's better to tell you the truth," Song Xi's mother said.
At that moment, let alone Song Xi — whose eyes had gone wide — even Chu Feng, standing off to the side, felt his gaze shift.
Only now did Chu Feng realize that Song Xi's background was not as simple as he had previously assumed.
"Your father was originally just an ordinary man too. The year I met him, he was only a Half Ancestor. His talent for martial cultivation wasn't even as good as yours."
"But by chance, he saved someone. That person was no ordinary individual — he was a reclusive expert from beyond the mundane world."
"However, his injuries were far too severe to heal. His days were numbered."
"That expert didn't want his lifetime of cultivation to simply go to waste. In gratitude for your father's life-saving grace, he chose to forcibly pour a portion of his cultivation and power into your father's body."
"After receiving that expert's cultivation, your father's strength skyrocketed. The speed at which his cultivation grew was simply unbelievable — it was something that defied all reason, yet it truly happened."
"Not long after, your father advanced from the Half Ancestor realm into the True Immortal realm, and his cultivation continued to climb."
"But alas… your father could not withstand the cultivation and power that expert had forced into him."
"The expert wanted to save him — he wanted to extract the cultivation and power from your father's body."
"Yet your father stubbornly refused."
"The expert warned him that if this continued, he would fall into berserk cultivation, lose all reason and recognition of loved ones, slaughter the innocent — and most likely end up harming you and me, his own family."
"But even so, your father pressed on. He had already become somewhat possessed. After experiencing the power of a true expert, he refused to give it all up."
"In the end, the expert decided to construct a sealed space and lock your father inside it together with himself. If your father could ultimately endure the expert's inheritance, the expert would release him."
"If your father could not withstand the inheritance and truly descended into berserk cultivation beyond salvation, the expert would perish alongside him in that place."
"But the expert said that if it truly came to that, he would strip the inheritance from your father's body and set up an inheritance formation left behind in that space."
"And the expert entrusted the key leading to that great gate to me. He told me that if you ever wished to accept his inheritance, I was to bring you there," Song Xi's mother said.
"Mother, does that mean my father might still be alive?" Song Xi asked.
"That's impossible." Song Xi's mother shook her head. "That expert said that if your father did not emerge within one year, he would certainly be dead."
"So your father and that expert must have perished, after all so much time has passed," Song Xi's mother said.
"Mother, then are you saying you want me to accept that inheritance?" Song Xi asked.
"My days are numbered. I wish to be buried alongside your father, so I want to go to that place to find him."
"At the same time, I want to ask you — are you willing to accept that expert's inheritance?"
"If you accept, you will gain power and martial talent that do not rightfully belong to you, but it comes with enormous risk. If you cannot withstand that power, you will meet the same end as your father."
Song Xi's mother spoke, and as she said these words, a look of conflict never left her face.
After all, this was something dangerous. As Song Xi's mother, she truly did not want her son to attempt something so perilous.
Otherwise, she would have told him about this long ago, rather than waiting until today.
But since she had chosen to tell Song Xi today, it was clear she had come to recognize the dangers of the martial cultivation world.
Rather than letting her son scrape by at the very bottom of that world, it would be better to—