Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

'Shit.'

Ryu could feel what his mother had done immediately. He couldn't even divert his focus to deal with it either. Why would he have any defenses up against his own mother? He was entirely focused on the task at hand and he had no measures to deal with the situation.

It wasn't exactly dangerous, and Ryu had planned on doing something similar himself, but it was difficult to force it like this.

Whenever a Life Destruction was completed, in order for it to be a success, one needed a large amount of resources. These resources, while the body was in a Destruction State, would be absorbed and then used to reconstruct it. Obviously, this energy would likewise be used to strengthen the body.

This process of deconstruction into your smallest parts, followed by reconstruction with a larger amount of energy, was how Body Realm cultivators made the final steps toward the Sky God Realm.

The success of your Life Destruction, then counted on two factors.

The first was how thorough your Destruction was, that being how small you could blast the pieces of your body into. How well one did in this phase was essentially down to two factors: how strong you were in relation to your body and your will power.

The first factor decided how powerful the outward blast was initially. The more power you had in relation to your body, the more thorough the destruction would be.

The second factor, though, left those that didn't with a chance.

The first felt contradictory. The more powerful you managed to make your body, the more difficult it would be to complete a Destruction, and thus the less thorough your Destruction would be.

However, that was where the second factor came in.

If you had the will power, you could lengthen the Destruction process, sending out pulses of energy again and again until your body was thoroughly destroyed. Or, you could even use an external source to destroy yourself. This would make the process much harder on yourself, but it would be worthwhile in the end.

Ryu, obviously, didn't need to deal with this. He had more power within himself than he even knew what to do with. A single careless blast of Primordial Chaos Qi was enough to rip his body to shreds.

What was left, then, was the second phase. This phase was dictated by only one matter: how much energy could you withstand?

Ryu, obviously, as this was his Second Life Destruction of the Nine Pillar Flame Sect's Taboo Path, could consume a great deal of energy. In addition, his comprehension of the Nine Pillars, especially with the help of his Quasi Mature Dao, increased his capacity further.

His comprehension of the Nine Pillars was equivalent to a Fragmented Sky God of the Sect, but he was still firmly yet to enter the God Realms. On top of that, he had his Bloodlines that were quite difficult to satiate on top of his Bone Structure which felt like a bottomless abyss.

And yet, his mother brought him to his absolute limits instantly.

The beauty of Life Destructions was that improper or incomplete foundations could always be made up for in future Life Destructions, so long as your will was strong enough.

Ryu's mother had clearly seen through flaws that even he had, but he wasn't surprised by this in the slightest. Ryu knew from the beginning that his first Life Destruction wasn't perfect. After all, he had done it hastily and the treasure chosen weren't optimal either. The reason he had never panicked about it was because he knew what his mother was doing right now.

His foundation was imperfect? Fine, just fill it with energy until it had no choice but to become perfect.

Luckily, Ryu was prepared. Another reason he had insisted on breaking his soul through first was so that he could handle this situation with ease.

He was truly an anomaly. Not only did he have comprehension of the Nine Pillars beyond what even the Nine Pillar Flame Sect's experts would deem reasonable, he had a soul that was already comparable to a False Sky God even though it had only just broken into Realms that should have been equivalent to Fragmented Sky Gods.

This seemed like just a single level, but the gap between Sky God Realms was absolutely enormous. The fact Ryu was already at this stage when he had yet to even bring himself to the limit of Fragmented Soul Quintessence was unconscionable.

All of this made Life Destructions that should have put him on the edge of life and death, flow freely. Well... About as freely as you could hope for with his mother unleashing her sadistic tendencies upon him.

When Himari realized that Ryu could handle being pushed to his brink after his Second Life Destruction completed, when his Third began she pushed it just a little beyond.

Ryu felt like he was being suffocated from all sides. Under these conditions, usually the energy would be wasted and dispersed. But because it was under his mother's control, the energy only flowed in a single direction: toward him.

Even after he formed the skeleton of his body, he was still being pumped with more energy than he could handle and it made him feel bloated, as though he was about to explode again, but this time toward death instead of a Life Destruction.

He grit his teeth inwardly.

If his potential wasn't enough to take on this energy, then he would just have to increase his potential. It had been a long time since he did any sort of masochistic training, or at the very least, it wasn't usually by choice. And though this wasn't exactly his choice either, he embraced it wholeheartedly.

This was the kind of cultivation he wanted.

At that moment, just when Ryu was at his limits, his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation trembled and a soft wisp of light was released. It enveloped Ryu's body and suddenly he absorbed all of the excess energy at once.

If Ryu's eyes had fully formed, they would have been wide open. Did what he think just happened actually happen?

His body snapped back into reality and he looked down seriously.

Just now, when he had been pushed to his absolute limits and refused to back down, his Spiritual foundation had...

Was that possible? Did he imagine that?

The Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation. Could it be that it could push more than just qi and Natural Treasures toward that extreme?

Ryu's gaze sharpened. Almost immediately, his body exploded for the third time as he began his Fourth Life Destruction.

Himari slowly shook her head. She could feel what happened just now as well, and she innately understood what Ryu wanted to do. But she was in awe nonetheless, not with her son's Spiritual Foundation, but just the fact he could push himself continuously like this.

Most took breaks between Life Destructions not just to solidify their foundations, but also to give their minds a break. Each Destruction was like experiencing death, and until your body came back together, you would be riding that edge.

She sighed. Her son, though, had already truly taken his life once before. And back then, he hadn't even been certain of what was on the other side. This time, he felt that his life was in both his hands and her own?

Compared to that, what fear should he have?

She gathered up far more energy than last time, paying close attention to see the changes.

As Ryu took step after step, he began to understand his Spiritual Foundation more and more.

It couldn't just limitlessly increase his potential. Or, more accurately, the method by which it did so was extremely important.

He could just overload himself with energy and wait for his Spiritual Base to do something. He had to really ride the edge of pain and agony, moving slowly as he approached his own "extreme" until that mysterious energy finally kicked in.

He had to imagine himself like a flame slowly approaching the extremes of heat, before it suddenly became the most piercing, biting cold. Or like Infinity Mist, he had to become an ice so bold and solid that it eventually was pushed beyond, becoming a mist that carried the weight of worlds in a single spritz.

When his Spiritual Base sensed Ryu riding that edge, it would help give him a little nudge to push himself over.

If Ryu went too far, he would die. If he didn't push himself enough, his Spiritual Base would ignore him and he would just be sitting in agonizing pain for no reason.

This was the perfect case to push himself to his limits. This wasn't only because his Life Destructions were the perfect conduit for pushing himself like this, but also because his mother was in control of how much energy was forced into him.

Thanks to this, he could focus entirely on maintaining his will power as he rode that edge.

And like this, he completed his Fourth Destruction, his Fifth, his Sixth.

His momentum didn't stop as his Bloodlines finally passed into the Omniscient barrier and inched toward Lordship.

His Seventh was completed, then his Eighth. On the ninth, even in a mist of blood, his Nine Pillars blinked boldly, making him look like a golden cloud rather than the cloud of blood and gore he truly was.

His strength was abundant and he felt like he could break the body of a Fragmented Sky God with a single fist.

Then, his body began to come together once more.

With every Destruction and Reconstruction, his understanding of his body deepened, especially that of his Bone Structure. He could truly feel its weight.

When his Bloodlines entered the Lord Grade, his entire attention moved to his Bone Structure.

It was already a talent of the highest order, there was nothing to improve in terms of talent.

In terms of strength, though, that was a different matter.

"Give me everything you have."

Ryu's will echoed and he poured all of his mother's Life Qi into his bones.

He wanted more.

The gate of the Body God Realm towered right before him.