Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu hopped out from behind the lion spirit after sliding out from underneath it. He hopped to his feet with a swift agility, his head bending backward to just dodge out of the way of its whipping tail. Even as he did so, he sensed the lion spirit's body leaning forward, pressing its great weight onto its front paws.

Ryu understood what it was trying to do immediately, it was a double kick with its hind legs. It flowed smoothly from one failed attack to the next, its attempt with its tail not having stopped its follow up strike.

This thought quickly buried itself into Ryu's psyche.

In the state that he was in, leaning back, his knees bent, and his momentum swinging strongly in one direction, it didn't seem like he had the time to dodge at all. In addition, because he was moving, even if it was only by gravity, the burden of speeding up time within himself was far greater.

Ryu nodded silently to himself. It seemed that his new combat method still had a great deal of weaknesses, and these weren't weaknesses that he could make up for by being more clever... Unless.

Ryu's gaze flashed and his Spatial Qi flared. The air around him solidified and his body came to a sudden and jarring stop. Just as the two hind legs were about to cave in his chest, his vital qi circulated with a huge surge, tearing a path toward the heels of his feet. His Northern Heavenly Wind took root and his power bubbled up.

He drove his heels into the ground, shooting backward with a great amount of speed, just dodging out of the way of the two hindleg kicks. However, he didn't move far, his body suddenly freezing in the air again just a centimeter out of the way.

His Vital Qi shifted from his legs to his arms, fueling a large amount of force in his torso as he landed heavily on the ground. With a furious intent, his Primordial Chaos Lightning surged and he swung down with all the effort and strength he could muster.

BANG!

The lion spirit beast was smashed into the ground, a long line of blood splitting its back in two and slicing into its spine. The earth beneath its feet shattered into a crater and its body curved as it was swallowed up by Ryu's force.

Ryu's feet flashed and he appeared above the lion spirit before it could move. The Mountain Character in his eyes lit up with a raging torrent of wind and his Spacetime Soul Nature surged, bending the world around them and increasing his weight by several times over.

He smashed down with a boom, his black lightning flickering as his two blades pierced into the shoulders of the lion beast. As it roared, he twisted. A shocking flood of black lightning and black flames poured into its body, and soon... its roars fainted into faint whispers and then nothing at all.

As Ryu inhaled, another surge of Golden Protector Spirit rushed into his body. Insights of bulldozing power and control flooded into his mind and he slowly began to refine his Martial Forms even more.

The lion spirit was a master of attacking even while preparing its next attack. Right now, Ryu's movements looked fluid, but that was an illusion. He was acutally starting and stopping a lot, reversing the flow of his Vital Qi using his Nine Pillars and then attacking again.

How much faster would he be if he prepared for his next attack before thinking about it?

But even though he thought this, it was easier said than done. For one, it required a method of Vital Qi utilization that was no less complex than the one the panther beast had used. That would take him quite a while to get used to, but that was just the first problem, and not even the largest in Ryu's opinion. In fact, if it was just this alone, he might even still consider it.

The true issue was the pre-preparation part. It required something beyond what he was doing now, which was just reading and reacting, whereas preparing the next combination of movements required prediction. The reason for this was because Ryu's body was currently his limiting factor. Being able to prepare your next movement, like the lion spirit did-without the need for prediction-necessitated a "force" of some sort.

This "force" referred to forcing your enemy into a passive position, or locking down their movements until there were only a small number of counters they could use to deal with you.

The problem, then, was obvious. Ryu was too weak to force these Golden Protector Spirits into a restricted number of counter moves. That meant that his "predictions" would need to be wide and variable, and mostly reliant on the opponent's skillset alone, a skillset that he wouldn't be fully intimate with until after several exchanges.

Even then, it might still not be possible. If his opponents were anything like himself, it would mean that he would need to account for hidden trump cards. He wasn't exactly a god, so how could he do that? Reading and reacting was the absolute safest thing for him.

This didn't mean that he had gained nothing from this battle. He realized that if he kept a small and limber domain of Spatial Qi around himself, it was even easier to come to a stop. In fact, when he needed to dodge, or even needed to accelerate his movements just a bit, he could use his Wind Qi.

However, this didn't feel good enough.

Using atmospheric qi like this was still good, but without a technique to direct it it was limited. In order to gather the control he needed, it required more focus than he was willing to give, so-

That's it. If I want to give it the proper control, I can adapt master's Elemental War God Visualization to it. I can adapt the Staff Stage, the Outline Stage and the Wheel Stage into a cloak, and then...!

Ryu's gaze flickered several times, deep in thought. Then, it clicked. He had already seen the Fundamental Runes he needed to do this, they were all on his God Treasure, the Spectral Wings. If he could adapt them, he could use some of the abilities of the Spectral Wings even without them. And, into the future, he might not need them at all as he improved beyond them.

He closed his eyes, falling into silence. The minutes ticked by, long and slow until...

WHOOSH.

A transparent cloak formed over Ryu's ragged white robes, making them perfect and whole. It looked as though he was dressed in the starry skies, almost like he had printed a star map onto himself.

Ryu shot into the air, came to an abrupt stop, went forward, then backward, then rushed down. Every time, the movement was abrupt and sudden. However, it was still quite jarring.

Using a Visualization, or a spell, as the proxy by which he controlled the elements made the process smoother, almost too much smoother. He felt like his inner organs were being rocked with every sudden movement. He realized that he would need to match the process with his Nine Pillars, at least slightly, jus to make sure his insides didn't rock too much.

Ryu's toes touched down on the ground and he shot off into the distance, looking for a new target, but his thoughts were still focused on the lion spirit. He wasn't quite satisfied just yet, even though he was improving by leaps and bounds with every battle.

It came down to one word: prediction.

Prediction should be what he's best at, and he truly used to be, before his eyes were sealed. By using [Lines of Fate], he could see the most likely outcomes even without understanding all the trump cards of the person he was facing. Of course, the longer he battled uttered individual, the better the predictions would become, but far beyond what he could do not for sure.

The only other way he could think of to close that gap aside from awakening his eyes was more battles, more experience, more life and death experiences. He felt like he had plenty, but it just wasn't enough, he needed his tactics to be in his very bones.

Ryu suddenly felt something rumble within him.

His eyes narrowed. His Bloodlines?

He thought back to the overly furred bear spirit he had faced before the lion spirit. There was something about that battle that he had missed, something that felt like it was on the tip of his tongue but didn't quite click. It felt like it was stirring again, but he still couldn't quite...

Ryu entered the territory of a new Golden Protector Spirit. He felt like his progress was far too slow, so even as he thought, he attacked, unleashing a furious barrage as his [Absolute Domain] formed once again.

In the not too far off distance, a recognizable team of three had gathered. Iroh of the Twin Earth Dragon Sect, Juno and Zovaes, three individuals that Ryu had entered the Favor Alchemy Sky God's Legacy World with. The density of Bronze and Silver on them suggested that they had each slain hundreds of each between them, and their strength was quite excellent as a result, Interestingly, though, Iroh was no longer with his senior brothers, seemingly having traded up for stronger teammates.

Unfortunately, this didn't seem to have helped. The three kneeled on the ground, defeated and bloodied.

But they had no idea where their opponent was.