Chapter Seventy-Three: The Primal Legend

Chapter Seventy-Three: The Legend of Innate Power

“Heh! You rascal, your reputation these past two years has eclipsed even the most notorious villains of the martial world! Especially when it comes to your infamous lust!” The Old Man of Ten Thousand Poisons gazed at Wu Hong with increasing fondness, and without waiting for further questions, continued speaking to himself.

“It’s said that you, Wu Hong, are obsessed with women, yet you treat every woman you’ve hurt with great care. It’s also said you’re bold beyond compare, daring to pursue any woman, the more challenging the better—it excites you all the more!”

“Slipping into widows’ homes at night, stealing the hearts of young maidens! Even the new concubines chosen for the Emperor himself have become your targets! And inside the palace, guarded by thousands, you somehow managed to have affairs with two of the Emperor’s consorts…”

The more Wu Hong listened, the more shocked he became. This impostor Wu Hong was indeed licentious, but in the way of a so-called ‘romantic hero.’ Every woman he wronged was said to fall deeply in love with the fake Wu Hong—he could not fathom why.

“Now I finally understand why those women love you! You exude a unique aura, brimming with masculine energy. Any woman who sees you must lose her soul! You haven’t, by chance, practiced some art of absorbing yin to supplement yang, have you?” The Old Man of Ten Thousand Poisons looked at Wu Hong with a curious expression.

Such taboo terms in the martial world flowed from his lips without a care. Wu Hong’s expression grew awkward. “Sister Ruolan, this master of yours is truly eccentric! At his age, he speaks without filter!”

“Elder, Ruolan and I are just friends. As for the Wu Hong of these rumors, that’s not me.”

“What? You say it’s not you? Does my disciple have someone else in her heart? What a pity! Next time I see that girl, I must scold her. How could she do such a thing?” The old man regarded Wu Hong with surprise.

Wu Hong had no choice but to briefly recount his origins, the rumors about the impostor, and his own predicament.

After a moment, the old man pieced together Wu Hong’s words. “So you’re saying that the villain wreaking havoc across the land is a fake, and you are the real Wu Hong? But because he looks almost exactly like you used to, people mistake him for you? And you yourself have changed your appearance so much that no one knows who you are, believing you to be Hong Wu, the enemy of the impostor?”

After Wu Hong’s detailed explanation, the old man finally understood, though he still regarded Wu Hong with suspicion.

“Yes! I have no idea what grudge this impostor holds against me, to go about committing evil under my name! Since Sister Ruolan was captured this time, he surely won’t appear—I’ll be the one to take the blame!” Wu Hong sighed helplessly. At first, he believed that the impostor had used disguise techniques to take on his appearance—perhaps Lady Zhao or another enemy in disguise.

But after personally confronting the impostor and witnessing his strange abilities, Wu Hong overturned his earlier assumptions. The impostor genuinely looked almost exactly like him.

The old man hesitated for a moment. “Could it be that you and the impostor are twins?”

Wu Hong’s body jolted at these words, and he pondered, “Indeed! Such a close resemblance—if not for certain fateful encounters, my appearance wouldn’t have changed so much. If not for those, I would look just like the impostor terrorizing the land! Were I to travel the martial world, I would be unable to escape blame for all his crimes. Could we truly be twins?”

Wu Hong thought long and hard but could not unravel the mystery. He had observed his mother’s life through the Mirror of Worlds in the Small World, seeing all from the perspective of the King of Martial Might, but never had he seen any evidence of twins.

At the same time, a childhood memory surfaced: as a child, Wu Hong’s body was shrouded in black energy, plagued by illness, until a mass of glassy energy entered him and became entangled with the darkness. Eventually, the dark energy left his body, seized by two strange energies—one black, one white. This strange event occurred right before the King of Martial Might, who could not see the presence of those unique forces.

“Could it be…?” A thought flashed through Wu Hong’s mind, leaving him drenched in cold sweat.

“That’s impossible! Impossible!” Wu Hong was so lost in thought that he suddenly shouted aloud.

“What’s impossible?” The old man was puzzled by Wu Hong’s sudden outburst.

“The idea of twins—it’s impossible!” Wu Hong replied offhandedly.

“Heh! Boy, your father was famed for his amorous ways—much like you! He may have had only three wives, but he had countless lovers. Everyone in the martial world knows this!” The old man teased.

“And besides, how could you be sure whether your mother bore twins?”

“Elder, you don’t know. In the Celestial Tome’s cavern, I found a Mirror of Worlds and witnessed my father’s past!” Wu Hong mused to himself that while he too once believed his father to be a philanderer, the scenes shown by the Mirror of Worlds revealed that his father had only ever shared something extraordinary with his mother. Wu Hong hadn’t wanted to see such things, but he was determined to uncover every detail about his father, so he watched closely.

“What? That mirror actually exists?” The old man was shocked. For years, rumors had swirled of the Mirror of Worlds hidden in the Celestial Tome’s cavern, but the first martial master to see it had vanished long ago, leaving nothing to confirm its reality.

Wu Hong, trusting the old man as Ruolan’s master, saw no reason to hide the truth. “And I discovered that after my father was poisoned with the Three Corpses Powder, he didn’t die!”

At these words, the old man’s expression changed drastically. “That’s impossible! Without an antidote, surviving the Three Corpses Powder is nearly impossible.”

“Unless, unless…” The old man repeated himself, but left the sentence unfinished.

“Elder, you’re killing me with suspense—unless what?” Wu Hong pressed anxiously, deeply concerned for the King of Martial Might.

Though he had seen his father alive in the Mirror of Worlds, Wu Hong couldn’t understand why he never reappeared.

“Unless the poisoned one reached the Innate Realm. But that realm is shrouded in mystery, like mortals’ awe of ghosts and spirits—no one knows if such beings truly exist.” The old man spoke with utmost gravity.

“Does the Innate Realm truly not exist? My father, after climbing out of his grave, was taken away by a man who rode a flying sword!” Wu Hong described the final scene he saw of his father.

“What? What did you say? Say that again!” The old man’s face turned ashen, unable to believe his ears, though he had heard clearly. He simply couldn’t accept it.

“I said, in the Mirror of Worlds, I saw my father being taken away by someone riding a flying sword!”

The old man stood rooted to the spot, as if struck by lightning, muttering to himself, “So the legends are true? Truly true? Can humans really achieve immortality and reach the Innate Realm?”

Deeply moved by Wu Hong’s account, the old man recalled all the rumors he had ever heard about the Innate Realm: how every fifty years, after the Celestial Tome’s cavern opened, numerous masters at the peak of the Bone Refinement Stage would vanish from the martial world.

Combining these stories with what Wu Hong had seen in the Mirror of Worlds, a shocking truth began to emerge.

Wu Hong, too, realized this, and his expression shifted several times. The old man grew even more astounded.

The two exchanged glances and spoke in unison, “Could it be that all these masters, who disappeared after reaching the pinnacle of the Acquired Realm, were taken away upon attaining the Innate Realm?”

They stared at each other, dumbfounded.

If this were true, there would finally be an explanation for why so many renowned masters vanished with each opening of the Celestial Tome’s cavern every fifty years.

If so, then the King of Martial Might had not died, but had been taken away by an Innate master.

If so, the newly ascended Innate masters must have been taken elsewhere for reasons preventing them from remaining in the mortal world.

The old man, thinking of all this, was overwhelmed with excitement, muttering like a madman, “It’s true! It’s true!”

His expression flickered between joy and anxiety, but his heart was filled with exhilaration. Twenty years ago, he had reached the peak of the Bone Refinement Stage, attaining mastery, but lacked further motivation, plagued by doubts about the existence of the Innate Realm—a demon in his heart, as was the case for all the martial world’s experts.

Upon reaching a certain stage, all questioned the existence of Innate masters, for there was not a single known precedent. No one had ever heard of a human ascending to the Innate and remaining in the mortal world.

So the legends were not empty after all. The newly ascended Innate masters had merely been taken to another place.

Yet in both their hearts now arose a new question: where exactly were these Innate masters taken? Why was it that no one in the martial world had ever encountered one?