But the problem was, he had a daughter, yet he had never known.
Su Shi'er knew Hou Sihai fairly well and did not believe he would deceive him over such a matter. But... he truly did not know how to believe it.
"Alas... it is a long story."
Hou Sihai let out a soft sigh. An air of weathered vicissitudes surrounded him, as though he had sunk into his memories.
After a brief silence, he began recounting slowly. "In my early years, when I had just entered the Cultivation World and was still at the Qi Refining Stage, I cultivated a pure-yang technique. So long as one did not lose one's primal yang, cultivation could advance a thousand miles in a single day, progressing at astonishing speed."
"However, while I was out seeking treasure, I was ambushed and plotted against. Fortunately, I carried a treasure that could save my life and managed to escape while grievously wounded and on the brink of death. Yet I never expected that enemy to be so sinister. Even after gaining absolute superiority, he secretly inflicted me with an aphrodisiac poison."
"I fled by sheer luck to a remote mountain village and was saved by a mortal woman. Before my injuries had healed, the poison flared up, and I lost my virginity with that woman."
As Su Shi'er listened to Hou Sihai's account, the image of a gifted young cultivator, fresh-faced and arrogant, immediately surfaced in his mind.
"In other words, that woman became pregnant afterward?"
"But given your temperament, Senior, once your injuries healed, you would either have taken that woman away or completely erased her, would you not?"
"Then how could..."
Su Shi'er did not continue.
Yet the meaning was obvious without being spoken.
Given Hou Sihai's status in the Great Zhao Dynasty,