Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

1270 Incongruency

There was another thing that was greatly tied to Fate, and that was which Talents awakened and which ones didn't. Theoretically, now that Ryu had been freed from such chains, he should be able to more casually unlock the talents of his Bloodlines. Without the chains of karma deciding which talents were supremely powerful and which ones were more rare occurrences, they would all have the same difficulty of awakening.

This, of course, wasn't too huge a deal for Ryu. This was because of his most powerful talents, he had already awakened a large portion of them. What was holding him back was the bottleneck the strength of his Bloodlines placed on him a bottleneck that was still here even without these invisible chains.

Ryu's thought, though, was actually quite simple. While his Bone Structure erased chains, he also happened to have a method of adding them. That being, obviously, the chains that he had taken from the Martial Gods.

He wondered if he purposely chained his own Bloodlines, sealing away his own talents, and then attempted the fusion, if that would be able to limit the variables he had to account for at once.

This felt like taking two steps back for the sake of taking just one forward, but that wasn't the case at all. Despite the fact he had awakened so many powerful talents, they were useless without the backing of powerful Bloodlines, they were akin to a fancy car frame with an old and worn engine under the hood. It simply wasn't worth it.

By chaining his talents, it would be akin to forcing certain genes into dormancy and simplifying everything to the greatest extent. Then, after completing the initial fusion, he could slowly unfurl the rest, slowly pulling them together like a zipper, one step at a time.

The question was... how much did Ryu believe in this method?

If the end result was something worthwhile, even if the road was bumpy, he would take it. But what if it wasn't?

One had to understand that the chains were just a temporary measure. Just releasing them one by one would just be working Ryu toward the same inevitable result of the full brunt of his Bloodlines having to clash with one another.

There was a very real possibility that Ryu would reach a point where he couldn't unseal anymore of his talents for fear of regressing instead of advancing like he should. This was just reality. There was nothing in the cultivation world that came with great ease, even if you had a Founding Dao on your side.

But the real question was, even if he one day reached that point, would his fused Bloodline still be stronger than his current state? Or. more accurately. what he could have accomplished if he never fused them at all? Or not?

Unfortunately, Ryu didn't have the answer to that either.

'I'm treating this fusion as though it's irreversible, but I don't think it is...'

Ryu's eyes glowed. As long as he was willing to withstand some pain, something that he was never afraid to do, unfusing his Bloodlines could happen at any time. In fact, with as fast as his mind worked now, he could already figure out how.

He would have to extract his own Blood Essence, separate it from his Boundless Cosmos Bone Structure, and then infuse it into his body once more. It would be a long, drawn out and painful process. The more powerful he had become at the time, and the more fused his Bloodlines were, the harder it would be.

'Since there's a way back... Why hesitate?'

Ryu's gaze turned somewhat fierce. His aura shifted and a suffocating pressure came from him. It seemed to extend beyond what a human should have been capable, like chains of the Heavens descending to suffocate everything.

The images of chains descending filled his irises before flooding the corners of his body.

Ryu restrained his talents one after another, even the ones he had yet to awaken. Dragon Soul, Dragon Claw, Storm, Lightning God, Yin Water Seed, Ice Flame, Death Flame...

Counterintuitively, Ryu felt as though his body was getting lighter and more relaxed. He hadn't even realized the kind of pressure these talents had been forcing on him until this very moment. It was as though the Heavens had been punishing him for holding onto strength that was far beyond him. His blood flowed more freely, his breaths came with greater ease, and he could even feel the strength of his Bone Structure even more clearly than the past.

Ryu's gaze flashed and an incomparable comfort spread throughout his body. At that instant, he understood the incongruence within him.

He had awakened talents that only the greatest geniuses of the Phoenix, Dragon and Qilin race should have access to, but he had the Bloodline only the weakest of them would have.

This imbalance was caused by the fact he was born in Sacrum and as such, the standard he needed to reach to awaken these Talents was much lower. But the True Martial World obviously didn't care about that.

That was when it hit Ryu like a ton of bricks. It wasn't just the likes of Starlight who was facing suppression of the lower Heavens, so was he. The difference was that he didn't have a more powerful talent to offset it.

Of course, this suppression only impacted his Bloodlines and his Body Realm cultivation, which was probably why his body didn't feel as powerful as it should have been after he formed his Heavenly Chaos Bone Structure. But it all seemed to make sense now.

The suppression added with the weakness of his Bloodline in trying to support talents that were beyond it made his body sluggish and weak.

At that moment, the rush of silvery grey fog churning from Ryu's Bone Structure suddenly accelerated its movement speed and the strength of his Boundless Cosmos Bone Structure surged.

There was no doubt in Ryu's mind right then that the grade of his Bone Structure was no less than that of his Dao. This was the feeling of releasing an Origin Grade talent, a talent of the Dao God Grade.

He clenched his fists as his body trembled with ecstasy.

Without the slightest hesitation, he pushed his Bloodlines together the moment the last of his talents was fused.