Reincarnation Of The Strongest Spirit Master-Chapter 1436: The Mythic Tale of Spirit Masters’ Origin!

William mentally scoured every shelf of the Mystic Arts headquarters library he had visited, every ancient scroll and dusty record he had ever decoded. There had been nothing—not a single whisper of a monstrous origin for their power. "How is that possible? How could such a thing have happened?"

"The true, ancient story isn’t widely known," she sighed, turning back to follow his path toward the inner sanctum. Her three shadow-bound servants trailed behind like silent statues.

"But from what I was taught, the monsters were intervening in the world long before we had a name for it. They were manipulating the fate of every living thing to suit their gains. They wanted something—something that could only be harvested at the cost of countless human lives. And so..."

"And so, a fight was inevitable," William guessed, his eyes narrowing. "We had to learn their secrets, their Mystic powers, just to have a chance at competing with them. Is that it?"

"That’s partially true," she said, falling silent for a moment as she attempted to summarise a tale that spanned aeons. "But what the oral traditions say is that some form of help was given to humanity. A spark was ignited that allowed us to finally grasp and utilise these arts for ourselves."

"You mean all the Mystic Arts masters?" William asked. He thought she had made a slip of the tongue, a generalisation of their specific order.

But it was William who had made the mistake.

"I mean all of us," she said, pausing at the threshold of the command room. She turned to him, a sudden realisation dawning on her face as she saw the sheer incomprehension in his eyes. "Wait... William, you really don’t know the Foundation Truth?"

"Don’t know what exactly?!" At this point, William’s entire focus was a laser-like beam directed at Becky. Every other distraction—the construction of the city, the threat of the Northern kingdoms, even the Fox—faded into the background.

Becky took a deep breath, her expression turning solemn. "All of this... the masters, the spirit powers, the spiritual seas, the elements, and every single cultivation technique in existence... all of it originated from the Mystic Arts. The ’Being’ that helped humanity in ancient times knew that not everyone was talented or spiritually sturdy enough to handle the raw, unadulterated power of the Mystic Arts. So, the human body began to express ’diluted’ or ’weaker’ forms of that power. What you call cultivation and spirit power are just the fragmented, simplified ripples of the Mystic Arts. I thought this was basic knowledge that would be preserved in the records of even a lower realm. It’s... weird that it’s missing."

"..."

William stood in a silence so profound it felt heavy. Since the first moment he had met Becky, he felt as though he had learned nothing truly new—just fragments of a map he already possessed.

He had assumed that the masters of the Upper Realm were simply stronger, not fundamentally different. But this changed everything. He hadn’t learned anything from anyone he had met from the Upper Realm so far because they all took this truth for granted.

The three Dark Masters who had surrendered were the catalyst.

The information they provided was not merely new; it was foundational, a paradigm shift that reordered William’s entire understanding of the cosmos.

He sat in the silence of the command room, the weight of their words settling over him like a physical shroud.

He had spent two lifetimes perfecting his cultivation, believing he was climbing a ladder designed by human ingenuity. Now, he was being told that he was merely playing with the diluted runoff of a monstrous source.

"Are you telling me that spirits are the ones who taught us Mystic Arts?" After several minutes of heavy silence, William finally spoke. He had been meticulously linking the fragments of his knowledge—the strange, autonomous nature of spirits he had encountered and the hidden depths of the spiritual sea—and had arrived at this startling conclusion.

"Spirits? Hmm, I honestly don’t know," Becky replied, her voice tinged with a rare moment of hesitation. She leaned back against a stone pillar, crossing her arms.

"But perhaps what you say is true. After all, the ancient being who supposedly taught us the Mystic Arts eventually branched out, teaching the majority of humanity the path of cultivation. Since cultivation is entirely dependent on the spirit, spirits would indeed be the perfect candidate for that intermediary role."

"Are you aware that spirits live? I mean, like really live?" William decided to push the boundary of the conversation, testing a theory that had been gnawing at his mind since his rebirth.

The question hit a semantic wall.

"What are you blabbering about?!!" Becky stared at him as if he had just sprouted a second head. She was momentarily speechless, her face a mask of doubt and utter confusion. To her, a spirit was a tool, an elemental force, a manifestation of power—not a sentient entity with a life of its own.

William watched her reaction closely. He realised she truly didn’t know. To her, the idea was as absurd as suggesting that a sword had a favourite colour. However, as he would later recall, this wasn’t a joke to him.

He was seriously probing the limits of her awareness. When she would recall this "casual" question years later, she would finally realise that William had been revealing a terrifying truth about the nature of their existence.

"Forget it," he said, rolling his eyes with a dismissive wave. "Can’t you take a joke? You’re far too serious today."

"Silly you," Becky breathed out a sigh of relief, taking his words as a playful jab. She didn’t think much more of it, her mind already pivoting back to the main topic.

"Anyway, back to what we were speaking about. Those monsters... They are considered the real masters. The rumours in the Upper Realm say they never needed a teacher. They didn’t have a ’Being’ to guide them. They learned the Mystic Arts by themselves, as if it were an innate talent—an ability they were born with, like breathing or hunting."