Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

This rainbow coloured wind elemental was something that Ryu didn't recognize. He hadn't known that such an existence could flourish until the Heavens pointed him in this direction.

This rainbow wind was known as True Heavenly Wind, and it was a point upon which all four Heavenly Winds converged. However, it wasn't as simple as just taking up this wind and suddenly gaining four Heavenly Winds.

Each of the Heavenly Winds embodied their own path, whether that be of storm, of natural wind, of sharpness or of healing. The True Heavenly Wind, though, embodied the chaos of wind and focused on one word: Change.

In the real world, wind was unpredictable and it was at the centre of weather being so unpredictable. Even a Dao God could likely not predict the weather more than a set time ahead without risking being entirely wrong. This was simply the way of wind.

Ryu found this curious, though. The Northern Heavenly Wind was known as the King of Wind, it could help its owner to meld into the tides of wind and become akin to a blowing leaf in the air or akin to an ancient, unmoving tree even in the midst of a storm.

What he wasn't to understand was which of these would win out?

The rainbow wind seemed to have the obvious advantage, but honestly, Ryu wasn't so sure. He didn't know where this feeling was coming from, as it mostly stemmed from his intuition. But something about this rainbow wind felt... unnatural.

Days later, when he finally closed in the distance, he realized how right he was.

From a distance, it looked as though the wind was fused into one. But when one got close, the true spectacle was a lot different.

Northern Heavenly Wind formed the centre of the formation, Southern Heavenly Wind formed the exterior almost like a motherly embrace holding everything together, and Western and Eastern Heavenly Wind bounced within the two like rampaging children.

As expected, they were never one to begin with. This was a natural formation created by serendipity. Four Heavenly Winds managed to manifest in this place and they formed an odd balance between themselves.

However, due to this, they sat at the extreme of the extreme of the wind element. It seemed as though they were just moments away from taking that final step and going beyond the extreme, and yet it was Northern Heavenly Wind that kept them in check.

Ryu sighed.

He had thought that this would be a great opportunity. The chance to absorb the strength of all four Heavenly Winds at once sounded absolutely amazing. But if it was a perfectly balanced formation like this one, he could only take them on one at a time, and if he chose one, then the others would completely lose their balance.

The destruction that would be wrought here would be impossibly far beyond what he had experienced in the judgment valley.

Ryu had already made his choice. He had chosen the Northern Heavenly Wind every step of the way and nothing would stop him from doing it again. However, the Northern Heavenly Wind was also the hardest to take in this situation.

If he took one of the others, the arrangement would at least stay stable for a short enough while that he might be able to escape. But the Northern Heavenly Wind was the very core of the formation. There was no going back if it suddenly vanished.

'Hm... because it's a formation, though, I think I can...'

Ryu observed the formation, the winds buffeting him from all sides. Much like every time he had done this, he didn't have much time, and what he wanted to do in the time was quite ambitious.

First he wanted to understand the formation. If he did so, he would be able to gauge how it would react if changed some aspects of it or tipped the balance.

The ideal situation was if he could use the Eastern Heavenly Wind, the Wind of Sharpness, to split space in several locations. Then, instead of using the next Legacy World to arrive in the Abyssal Plane, he could do so directly from here and avoid danger.

What he was thinking sounded simple, but it was practically suicide. Just trying to understand a chaotic arrangement like this one was begging for death. But Ryu's gaze had already begun to glow.

At that moment, a pair of Divine Wings appeared to his back. The winds shredded them to pieces a moment later, but Ryu kept reforming them, his face growing paler and paler.

'Got it.'

Ryu shot forward, knifing through a section of the formation as though he was throwing himself at death. A scythe of wind shimmered through the air, appearing before him in an instant. It was the kind of wind that could split apart even a Dao Lord, let alone Ryu. And yet, he continued to rush forward, unfazed.

In the last moment, the wind, as chaotic as it was, oddly split and then shot off in seven different directions, not of which were toward Ryu.

This was the easy part. Natural formations, ones constructed by chance and at the hands of the Heavens were extremely powerful, but they were powerful in their simplicity.

Humanoids and intelligent creations often complicated formation and formation runes because they couldn't match the easy elegance of the Heavens. As such, even formations as potent as this one were relatively easy to understand so long as one wasn't distracted by the pomp and circumstance on the surface and delved saw through to the very core.

Even so, predicting how Heaven itself would react to a change in equilibrium of this arrangement would be as difficult as forming such a natural formation yourself. Something that was nigh impossible for most.

BANG!

Ryu pushed on a side of the Northern Heavenly Wind, tipping its structure to one side by just three degrees.

And then all hell broke loose.

Winds rampaged, lightning began to crackle as other elements seeped in, and soon it felt like the powder keg would explode.

It was in this situation that Ryu absorbed.