Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu was very much used to pain. It was practically his way of cultivation. Any step he had taken forward at this point required at least a half step back, if not something far worse. He had experienced all sorts of things, whether that be trials of the heart, trials of the mind, and the most frequent of them all... Trials of the body.

He had been ready for this to happen to him once more, for a heart rending pain to shear his soul into two or for him to be forced to roar out in pain, or anything else on that spectrum of outcomes to occur to him.

But the truth was very much different. He felt at absolute peace, so much so, in fact, that it was as though his soul had been bathed in a warm spring, like he was a baby once more, being cradled in the arms of his mother.

It was gentle, subtle, and yet gorgeous all at the same time. He couldn't find even a single thing wrong, as though he was finally at peace, as though he had finally taken his final step toward the pinnacle of all that was.

And that was when he snapped out of it.

His gaze turned sharp as he looked around. All around him, the vast expanse of whiteness was still there, endless and without defined borders. Just what had that feeling been just now?

It was a lot of things. Calm, soothing, caring, gentle... but they boiled down to one preeminent emotion in Ryu's estimation...

Complacency.

That was the feeling that had been pumped into him just now.

He had already taken his final step toward the pinnacle? What kind of joke was that? He had just fought the Diamond Protector Spirit, and if it was just like the Gold and lower Protector Spirit before it, even it didn't represent the pinnacle. Instead, it represented what was average. The true geniuses of the Ninth Heaven were impossibly far beyond it, and yet he had no choice but to use tricks to defeat it even with the support of three sets of 999 Protector Spirits bolstering his strength.

The final step? No matter how arrogant he was, it was always toward the realization that he would one day reach that step, not that he was already there, not that he deserved that sort of adulation and praise just yet.

If he had allowed himself to sink into that feeling, his Dao Heart would have been destroyed, but in a different sort of way. Rather than shattering like it had in the past, it would have instead greatly weakened, being torn off its current path and thrown onto another.

"That was... dangerous!"

Ryu's frown deepened as he looked inside his body.

In this world, he had no way of telling if his eyes had grown sharper once again. How could he tell when there was nothing more than expanse of whiteness?

Within his Spiritual Sea, though, he could vaguely feel a hint of something new. That uncomfortable nudge within him had vanished and when he took a step forward again, the world changed.

Golden runes danced and a swirl of power surrounded him. When he walked, when he breathed, even when his heart beat just a single time, it was like a dense rhythm, pulsing and beautiful.

It was hard to tell just exactly how much more powerful he had become, and he was surprised to realize just how... uncomfortable it all was.

It wasn't his body that felt uncomfortable. Every movement he made was absolutely perfect and it didn't lack in any way. He had never felt more healthy in his life and the feeling of vertigo had vanished completely.

Instead, it was his mind that felt uncomfortable.

He could tell. The strength of this ability would be dependent on where he was.

If he was on the Ninth Heaven, of course the ability would be far stronger as there would be stronger laws to weave under his net of control. But, likewise, if he was on the First Heaven, it would weaken considerably.

This wasn't too bad, as this was what happened to all those that relied on their talents for their strength. The likes of Ramon and Adlael were most definitely far weaker in the Sixth Heaven than they would be on the Seventh, same went for Jojo or Selheira.

The main problem he had with this was that his Child of Chaos constitution didn't rely on his location, because the vessel was internal and the source of power for the vessel was the Chaos Plane itself which he could access directly through his Meridians.

This made him feel uncomfortable.

He no longer hated the Heavens, but he had come to like having the control of his abilities in the palm of his hands.

It wasn't just about satisfying his own vanity either. Once his Child of Chaos constitution grew to power, it would suppress his Child of Order constitution depending on the region. That would cause an imbalance, similar to what he was feeling now.

Of course, this wasn't the strongest his Child of Order constitution would be as it was reliant on his eyes and his cultivation level. But Ryu knew that there would only be so much he could mitigate this risk in the future.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a problem that Ryu had the ability to fix. He racked his brain for a moment, but eventually shook his head.

He was being too greedy, expecting everything to be perfect immediately. That was never how his path of cultivation had worked, so why would it start to work like that now?

Plus, this was far better than any gift he had ever been given before. Even under a soft estimate, his strength had increased by at least a hundredfold. Even when he stepped onto the Seventh Heaven, he shouldn't fall behind those that would regain the maximum access to their talents.

Now, he only had one task left.

He had to get out of here.