At the head to the table, Patriarch Mu could be seen standing with a pale face and trembling shoulders. Both his fists were tightly balled shut. Some of the family members with sharper eyesight noticed a thin line of crimson liquid dropping from his fists and into the white tablecloth.

This scene, and especially his reaction, was totally strange. And every gathered member understood so.

Patriarch Mu stared at Wuzhi with an intense gaze. The emotions behind his eyes were so complex and full of turmoil that it was impossible to identify what he was feeling.

Whatever it was, it definitely was not good.

"Speak. What do you mean that you are unable to cultivate?"

Wuzhi, who was the subject of this question, looked fairly calm. His face was a little pale from bearing the pressure given off by Patriarch Mu and his lips remained straight and composed.

Wuzhi's argent eyes, however, were extremely strange. For some reason, both his eyes were shockingly still, resembling two limpid pools of water.

"Replying to Sovereign Mu." Wuzhi began speaking with an even tone. Maybe even a little too evenly. "Wuzhi does not have a Core or a Dantain in his body. It was destroyed during my birth. As you should know, without a Core to harness and refine Energy, it is impossible for this one to step into the world of cultivation."

It felt like a bomb had gone off inside Patriarch Mu's head. His two eyes widened and his body unconsciously stumbled back.

To start cultivating, a person had to first 'awaken' their Core, which was located at three fingers' width below the navel.

Awakening the Core was simple. Even a three-year-old child could do it. One simply had to feel for a strange 'muscle' within their lower body and try to 'start' it.

Once this process was complete, the Core would awaken and begin to passively operate within the body. This milestone marked the entry of a mortal into the world of cultivation and was the start of the First Phase of the 'Foundation Stages': the Body Phase.

While the rest of the members were still reeling from shock, Wuzhi continued to calmly speak. "When Wuzhi's mother was giving birth to Wuzhi, she was all alone. There were no doctors, no midwives, no family members to assuage her fears, and no husband to share her pain. She was completely and utterly alone in a cold, dark cave."

Holding a small dessert spoon in his hand, Wuzhi calmly cut through the dessert on his plate. It was a piece of red velvet cake. After putting a piece of it into his mouth and relishing its taste, he continued.

"Her labour lasted for six hours during which she lost a sizeable amount of blood. For six hours she toiled, lying on a pool of her own blood and filth, as she gave birth to her child. To this point, it was unknown whether the mother and child would survive this endeavour. But still! She toiled."

"Six hours later, when the round body of the cold moon reached its zenith within the heavens, she gave birth. It was a boy. He was as still and quiet as a corpse, but fortunately, he was still alive."

"By a divine miracle, both mother and son survived. The boy suffered injuries to his Core while the mother contracted a chronic illness. She would live past the terrible ordeal, but not for long and certainly, not too well."

A content smile occupied Wuzhi's face as he finished his dessert. He could now say with certainty; this was the best meal that he had ever eaten in his entire life.

Wiping the crumbs off the edges of his mouth with a small towel, Wuzhi turned to look at a small, cute little boy busily engorging himself on his dessert. "That reminds Wuzhi of Little Master Che's question from earlier. Wuzhi does not have a surname because he never had a father to impart it to him."

"However," he turned his smile towards Patriarch Mu. "If he were to follow his mother's surname, he would be named 'Chu Wuzhi.'"

A buzzing sound echoed within Patriarch Mu's head. His vision whitened as his body powerlessly collapsed onto a chair.

Pin-drop silence enveloped the Dining Hall.

"It's getting late." Wuzhi suddenly stood up. He then gazed at every member of the Mu Household and smilingly said, "Wuzhi greatly appreciates the hospitality and care shown by the Mu Household towards this lowly scholar. Wuzhi vows to etch this meal and today's experience in his memories so that I may never forget it for the rest of my life."

Retrieving the old, worn-out pendant from his pocket, he spoke. "My mother instructed me to personally deliver this pendant to Sovereign Mu. Here." He threw the pendant towards Patriarch Mu.

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The pendant arced through the air, wading across the still space. Just as it was about to land on Patriarch Mu's head, it was caught by the Eldest Madam, Bai Xiulan, who then proceeded to gaze at the pendant and then at Wuzhi with a complicated gaze.

"Un!" Wuzhi nodded his head. "Wuzhi will not overstay his welcome and shall leave now." He then directly walked off.

Just as he was about to completely leave the Dining Hall, Wuzhi suddenly stopped. He then slapped his head, turned around, and spoke with an apologetic smile. "I almost forgot. Wuzhi's mother had also asked me to deliver a few words to Sovereign Mu. I shall recite them now."

Taking a deep breath, Wuzhi suddenly became expressionless and stared directly at Patriarch Mu before speaking.

"'Why did you never come for me?'"

His sonorous words caused Patriarch Mu to intensely tremble. A deep-rooted feeling of shame overcame his expression while tears started streaming down his eyes.

"Un! Errand complete." Wuzhi did not seem to pay any attention to his reaction and simply recited to himself. He then turned around and walked off without any hesitation.

The Dining Hall held its silence.

The younger children, seated at the table, innocently blinked their eyes as they looked around in confusion. Seemingly sensing the tense atmosphere within the Dining Hall, they held their silence.

The teenage members of the family wore extremely confused expressions on their faces. The conversation and drama that had suddenly occurred had been utterly incomprehensible to them. Still, like their younger siblings, they held their silence in this tense atmosphere.

Yuelong, Xinyi, Third Brother, and a handful of 'older' members of the family wore ponderous expressions on their faces. It was unknown how much they understood from Wuzhi's monologue and their father's reactions, and their feelings towards it also remained unsaid.

Patriarch Mu's fifteen wives, who were present at the table, were the people who were most familiar with their husband's history and past. With that serving as their foundation, they more or less comprehended the drama that had just occurred and were utterly astonished, to say the least.

"It can't be…!" Even Fourth Sister, the green-robed fairy who was a little slow when it came to complex human emotions and relationships, understood the underlying meaning, and blame within Wuzhi's words.

Bai Xiulan, as Patriarch Mu's first and most senior wife, had the most acute understanding of the situation, no less than that of her husband's. She did, after all, have a direct and significant relationship with the owner of the pendant in her hand.

Fiddling with the worn but intimately familiar pendant, Bai Xiulan absentmindedly muttered. "Master…"

Wuzhi's mother, the owner of the worn-out pendant, had been the cultivation teacher of Bai Xiulan! They even had a master-disciple relationship between the two of them!!

Of course, all of this had been in the past before it had been severed when Wuzhi's mother went missing twenty-one years ago.

Snapping out of her reminiscent daze, she tried to open the locket on the pendant. The locket remained firmly shut, refusing to open in her hands.

"Give it… here…" Patriarch Mu reached for the pendant and asked with a hoarse gaze. His extremely handsome and radiant face seemed to have lost all its vigour and youth in a matter of minutes!

"Husband..." Bai Xiulan worriedly called his name. However, she obeyed his words and handed him the pendant.

This pendant had been the first clue regarding her disappeared master's whereabouts in twenty-one years! To say that she was anxious and curious would be a terrible understatement.

The instant Patriarch Mu received the pendant on his hand, it shone with dim, mystical light for a second. The light then quickly disappeared returning the pendant to its previous state.

Pressing on the little mechanism on the side of its locket, the locket opened with a 'clink' sound. Wordlessly, Patriarch Mu looked towards the left half of the open locket where he found a familiar inscription.

'To each other, we promise; never to abandon nor forget. Mu Wudi & Chu Y—'

The second half of the second name seemed to have been scratched off leaving it incomplete. Seeing this, an even greater pain crushed Patriarch Mu's heart.

Unable to bear it any longer, he quickly averted his eyes to the right half of the opened locket. If he remembered it correctly, it should contain a picture of his first love—

Patriarch Mu stopped breathing. His two eyes shrunk to resemble pinholes. His entire existence seemed to have stilled from extreme shock.

On the right side of the opened locket was no longer the beautiful portrait of his first lover and his life's greatest regret. Instead, occupying the right side, was the grotesque portrait of an intensely scarred woman.

Disgusting, vein-like scars occupied the woman's face. On her two eyes, one of her eyelids seemed to be missing while the other was badly scarred. Her nose was badly mutilated, leaving it upturned and incomplete. Her cheeks and lips looked obscenely bloated, concluding the haunting photograph.

However, looking at this portrait, Patriarch Mu knew. The woman in this photograph was none other than his first lover.

Patriarch Mu was no longer able to keep his eyes on the locket. He looked away and closed his eyes, hiding the pain within them. Soundlessly, tears began to drip out of the corners of his eyes and trace their way through his cheeks.

"Husband? Husband!?" The panicked, worried cries of his wives sounded extremely hollow and distant to him. Only pain and anguish wrecked his heart and extreme guilt crushed his mind.

Bai Xiulan tried to pry the pendant away from her husband's hands. However, he kept them firmly shut and refused to let her gain access to the object. The least he could do right now was to save her from the guilt.

Just as the atmosphere within the Dining Hall heated up as wives and children tried to understand and assuage their Patriarch's heart, a young servant arrived at the entrance.

"Masters. This servant has something to report. Esteemed Scholar Wuzhi seems to have left something behind in his departure," the female servant reported and presented the item to her esteemed masters. She then bowed and quickly hurried away.

Yuelong, having received the object from the maid, cautiously gazed at the urn in his hands. After deploying a few Path Techniques for the purpose of identification and protection, he carefully pried upon the animal hide, firmly covering the mouth of the urn.

Inside, a pile of grey-coloured ashes was revealed. Yuelong's face paled, and so did the faces of everyone else in the Dining Hall.

With a bestial roar that shook the very heavens, Patriarch Mu leapt towards Yuelong, blasted him away, and grabbed the urn within his grasp.

"LITTLE FAIRY!!!!"

Mu Wudi broke down crying.