The Desert Emperor felt as though something was wrong.
The woman before him was too powerful to be an Ascendant yet this was not possible since beyond Ascendants, there were only three possibilities.
The first was to become an Imperfect Emperor but this was not the case since he could see that she was looking at by the Heavenly Dao indicating that he had not created a new dai path that goes against Heaven.
The second possibility was that she became a pseudo-emperor. This was also not possible without the world knowing about it since this was the only possibility where the person had to face Heavenly tribulation to become an emperor.
There was no way so e could have hidden such a matter so thoroughly.