Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Several auras surged over at once. They didn't seem to have expected one another and could only meet one another's gaze with a sneer.

The first to arrive was a group of three. They came from three different directions, but they landed at the same place. However, they were all oblivious to this oddity. Each one of them believed that they had simply landed here together in a common coincidence. It only made sense considering their cultivation level.

All three of them were the Cosmic Seed Realm, however their auras seemed to carry wisps of the World Sea Realm. When they looked toward one another, despite their sneers, the wariness in their eyes were exceedingly obvious as well.

In reality, the three of them should not have been here at this time. Not a single one of them was a genius of the Heavenly Dew Pavilion. The experts of the Pavilion would still take some time to reach this location. This was in the outskirts of their territory, and for obvious reasons, there were no teleportation platforms to this place. It would usually take several days' journey to reach this point.

Of course, Sky Gods would be much faster. If a Transcended Sky God made a move, something that was a very real possibility, half a day was within an expected range.

These three geniuses, however, had been making their way to the Heavenly Dew Pavilion for an upcoming event and just happened to be nearby. As a result, they had surged to this location in just under an hour, expecting to be the lucky one to claim this treasure for themselves. But as luck would have it, there were three others.

And unfortunately, because they recognized one another, they also knew that the others weren't so simple to handle.

Zovaes. A handsome young man with skin as pale as ice and eyes as red as the hues of dusk and dawn. His sneer was the deepest of the three, his black robes corroding the beautiful wheat in the surroundings. From beneath his robes, black fog would emit from time to time, forming the shape of howling souls before vanishing in the next instant, however he seemed completely unmoved by this.

This was an Inner Disciple of the Howling Shadow Sect. Standing just a measure away from becoming a Core Disciple, he was already well known across the Sixth Heaven. Interestingly enough, he didn't have much of a cruel reputation, but that was because no one had ever seen him kill before. However, if one were to believe that he was truly so innocent... well, naivete killed.

Iroh. A big bellied, bronze skinned cultivator. He stood shirtless and wore a beast skin shirt that was difficult to even see through his big belly. On his back, there were two war hammers with polearms of exaggerated length and thickness. The teeth of the hammers faced forward with his body, looming tall over his shoulders like a twin head of menacing dragons.

This was an Inner Disciple of the Twin Earth Dragon Sect, one of the very few organizations to dare to truly hold the title of Dragon, very much unlike Akura's Clan who only dared to name their techniques after vague representations.

Juno. If Ryu was still paying attention to this region, he would have immediately recognized the marker of the Shadowless Sect hanging from a badge on this young man's waist. He was the most normal of the three, but he was almost exaggeratedly so, so normal that he was difficult to pick out in a crowd, so normal that it was easy to forget his face after looking away just once.

The principles of his technique seemed to work differently from Shadowlight, but the end results were exceedingly similar.

All three of these Sects were without a doubt True Six Star Sects, three of the nine on the whole of the Sixth Heaven. Each one was a monstrous existence in their own right.

The three stood in a stalemate for a long while before Juno frowned, his gaze flickering as he looked around. Suddenly, his brows jumped and his heart skipped a beat. For him to have such a change in expression given his normal baseline was something even Iroh and Zovaes took note of. The moment the latter two realized that something was wrong, they too began to look through the surroundings.

"A formation... A powerful one..." Zovaes muttered.

If one were to compare sensory abilities, he and Juno were probably about on par with Iroh being the dunce among them. However, even with that being the case, one couldn't be a top class genius with glaring deficiencies, so while Iroh was a bit slower, it wasn't by a large extent.

They didn't even realize when they had walked into such a thing, something that left the three of them sweating. If none of them even noticed, then how powerful was the person who laid it?

"This kind of formation is a quicksand type. The harder we try to leave, the fiercer we'll fall into the trap," Zovaes continued. "Only a Sky God would be able to find a way out forcefully, but even then it would take time. We can likely only wait for the experts of the Heavenly Dew Sect to arrive and help us leave. There is also the possibility that it was them who set up such a formation to begin with, in which case we'll just have to wait for them to finish..."

Suddenly...

BOOM!

A second eruption of qi caught the three off guard and they turned toward the same direction simultaneously.

...

The aura of Favor surged from Ryu. He didn't stand far from the three geniuses that had just come. Ideally, no one would have come in time, but things like this couldn't be helped. As all things went, this wasn't the end of the world.

Seeing the Legacy World slowly opened, Ryu dropped another formation flag and set yet another Sightless Eyes formation. With the two of them stacked on top of one another like this, Ryu was even more confident that a normal Sky God wouldn't be able to see through his formation with any sort of ease.

This was the power of unconventional formations.

Under normal circumstances, it was impossible for a Dao Pedestal Realm expert to set a formation that could fool a Sky God no matter how much preparation they had. Even for Ryu, who had a Mental Realm that dwarfed most Cosmic Seed Realm experts of the Sixth Heaven, it was an impossibility...

But so was breaking into the void as a Dao Pedestal Realm expert.

The strength of the Unbalance Art Sect was in their unorthodoxy. Others were simply not prepared to deal with it, and now that Ryu had layered two, it should give him enough time to do what he needed to do.

The only unfortunate part was that three had entered the first formation while he was setting up the second. The slight delay in the two formations syncing would allow them to see through the formation and make it to his location. However, given that they weren't Sky Gods, Ryu felt that it was a worthy enough tradeoff.

Without hesitation, he jumped into the portal, not even looking back toward the three who were no doubt rushing toward him right this moment.

...

The three geniuses, while being caught off guard, rushed forward with great speed. They didn't waste time to inform the others. If they were foolish enough to miss this opportunity, that would be their own fault.

In a flash, they appeared before the portal, exhaling a breath. Juno was, without a doubt, the first to reach it, but he didn't step forward immediately, sensing his surroundings and checking for a trap. Given the importance of the event they were heading to, they couldn't rule out the possibility that others were trying to deal with them ahead of time.

However, when Juno sensed that it was actually a legacy world, his indifferent gaze lit up like a blaze. A Sky God's Legacy World!

He rushed in soon afterward, no longer hesitating.

...

The first thing Ryu saw was an expanse of whiteness. Below him was a jet black pillar wrapped by white clouds.

In his opinion, the odds that young men heading into this Legacy World were alchemists was probably high considering the region they were in. But after having actually laid eyes on them, he didn't sense as much, which made him feel more confident.

If they blindly entered an alchemist's Legacy World without alchemy skill, it could be guessed how that would go.

But Ryu didn't get ahead of himself. There was no telling if the Favor Alchemy Sky God would find other ways to test them outside of alchemy. He chose to remain cautious in the end.

Ryu looked up and saw an endless sea of black pillars identical to his own. However, to his back, there was an equally large expanse... and the same to his right... and his left...

Ryu suddenly realized that there was no obvious direction he should be heading in.

...

At that moment, the other three geniuses found themselves in the same situation. All of them looked around in confusion...

Where was the challenge?