His father met his mother in 1748. That was over 200 years before he was born, which meant that at the time of his birth his mother needed to be at least a Golden Core cultivator at that point for her to have survived so long.

While such a thing was definitely not enough to go against a powerful family like the Williams family, Lex wondered if his parents had witnessed the chaos that Jeffery had been causing on Earth for so long. He wasn't sure when exactly Jeffery arrived on Earth, but he'd basically been causing wars and conflict from the shadows the entire time he was there.

It seemed neither the supervising authority that Williams' family had left behind on Earth, nor anyone else had tried to stop him. Or maybe they had just never noticed. But then he remembered that his beloved grandfather had been working alongside Jeffery all along, so maybe he had purposefully hidden him. That begged the question, what was the real reason Jeffery was on Earth? Surely he could have escaped that prison whenever he wanted with Damian on his side.

Lex wanted to ask Leon if he knew about Damian's association with Sanguis Pluvia, and everything that had happened later. But he decided to wait till the story was done before asking any questions.

At this point in the story, Serene took over from Leon.

"Unlike your father, I was born in a very regular family," she said. "My mom died giving birth to one of my sisters, and my father was one of the village lumberjacks. I had many siblings, but three of them died as babies. Oh died due to diarrhoea, and no one knew the kind of care she needed to recover from something so simple. Another died from pneumonia, and another died from food poisoning"

She spoke simply, as if recalling those times caused her no pain or misery. Maybe it didn't, or maybe she had long come to terms with it.

"Of my remaining siblings, most were boys and I only had a couple of sisters. As was the tradition back then, my sisters and I were to be wed once we hit puberty, but I was never interested in marriage. I wanted to study medicine, to study why humans got sick, and how I could heal them. Nobody, not my siblings, not my father, supported my studies. At least, until a sickness spread throughout the village, causing everyone to be bedridden."

Lex could understand why his parents were giving him all this extra background knowledge. They were trying to frame their actions and decisions against the backdrop of the circumstances of their lives. Or maybe they just wanted to give him context.

One of them was from a cultivation family where family ties weren't really important, and another was from the 18th century where practicality trumped emotions. An emotionally stable and nurturing environment was a privilege and luxury neither of them seemed to have enjoyed.

"As it happened, your father was passing through the village at that time. A mere mortal illness was nothing for him, so he healed them. Maybe it was a passing whim, maybe he had a kind heart. Whatever it is, that's how we met. I asked him to teach me how he cured everyone, but he told me it wasn't something I could do.

"As a girl, I was already used to hearing all the things I can't do, so I ignored him and kept asking. Thus, he introduced me to cultivation as if to prove to me that it wasn't that he didn't want to teach me, it was that I couldn't do what he did because I had no cultivation, and that I couldn't cultivate until I was fifteen, which I was still far away from."

Leon suddenly smirked, as if thinking back to a fond time.

"You should have seen her back then," he cut in. "So curious, so inquisitive. She actually wanted to study why cultivation raised people's power, and how. It was utterly ridiculous. This is a subject studied by immortals, by the leaders or empires and philosophers of old, with the best tools and technology the universe has to offer, and here Serene was, a young, teenage mortal with no cultivation or technology to speak of, trying to understand the secrets of the universe."

Then, the smile slowly faded.

"The thing was, she really did start to succeed, and even began to cultivate before the appropriate age without issue. That's when I realized there was something special about her, and so I began to teach her cultivation for real, answering all her questions, explaining everything she wanted to understand."

Upon reaching this part of the story, Leon paused, and shared a glance with Serene. It seemed that they had reached a critical part of the story.

Lex had, briefly, heard all of this before from Moon, and to some extent from Liz, though their answers left a lot of room for questions. He still did not ask, nor did he probe. He wanted to see what they would reveal on their own.

It was obvious that his mother had received some help, whether it was a system, or an artifact, or something else. How else could a random human gain the ability to produce over powered physiques on demand? If it was that easy, the Humanoid Alliance would have been doing that for all humans for countless years already, and they had Dao Lords.

Eventually, Serene nodded to Leon, and took over the story telling.

"It was when I reached Qi training that it happened. It seemed that, at some point in my life, I had inadvertently been connected to an ancient heritage that had appeared on Earth at some point. When I entered the Qi training realm, a small portal to the heritage opened and sucked me in. Since Leon was nearby when it happened, he was pulled in as well. We had entered the testing zone for the heritage. Either one of us needed to pass the tests, or we would be trapped within until we died."