Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

It didn't take Ryu long to find the information he needed. He looked like a noble young man, and he had apparently come at a time where people of this 'small' city were quite willing to accept tourists.

This place was known as Cloudy City, surprisingly not named after the environment, but rather the cloudy Beast Cores they were known to have an excess of. It seemed that those stone-like beasts tended to have Beast Cores that looked like that as Beast Core reflected their affinities. It was actually a cloud that made the Beast Cores of this region act like this, though. It was rather a plume of dust.

Regardless, this place was still known as Cloudy City and it was located within the Stone Prefecture, headed by the Stone Edge Sect and within the Southern Region.

First Heaven was divided into twelve Regions, each of which had dozens of Prefectures. There were eight Regions in the outer ring and four that split the central pie. The Southern Region was actually one of the four central pies.

Realizing this, Ryu realized that he had gotten very lucky.

Cloudy City was near the very edge of the Southern Region and was near the no-man's land between the Southern Region and the two outer Regions that were attached to it.

The fact that Ryu had only landed a day away from Cloudy City was exactly the reason why he hadn't run into beasts too much more powerful than he could handle. If he was even an extra half day further away, he might not have made it here without being torn to pieces.

Even with this luck, Ryu had run into a Ninth Order Beast he had to rush for his life from. He kicked himself for having stored the cloak within his inner world, or else it wouldn't have been nearly as difficult for him to cross that distance. Though, he had no way of being sure if the cloak would be just as effective in this place.

Luckily, Ryu had managed to keep his life and make it all the way here. While he didn't allow himself to freely use his Chaos Qi, when it came to stamina, no one could match him. He could simply pull in qi from an entire Plane of Existence whenever he wanted. He had that to thank for his survival, not to mention his ability to avoid danger before it came.

Once Ryu had oriented himself, he realized that he had a lot of options before him.

He had a few goals. The first was to unshackle his Bloodlines completely and the second was to fix the imperfections in his Dao.

In order to do both things, he needed resources and time.

The best choice was to join a Sect. The Stone Edge Sect didn't seem to be in line with Ryu's needs, so he would probably have to travel to another Prefecture after finding a list of suitable Sects. Then, he would need to test them to see if they were worthy of his time.

Ryu wasn't exactly eager to join a Sect. If it was up to him, he would just do things on his own like he usually did. But, he knew that he would be making a mistake if he didn't take this route. The reality was that Ryu wasn't sure he could become a Throne in this place without showing off talent he knew he should keep under wraps. And, even if he could, it wouldn't be smart to take that route unless he didn't have another choice.

Thrones didn't receive the same reception in the True Martial World that they did in Sacrum, not unless you had the backing of an already powerful existence, something Ryu obviously didn't have.

In this place, no one hesitated to kill Thrones.

Ryu also thought about just using skill as a Ruin Master, but there were multiple problems with this.

For one, he no longer had his eyes. He had never tried to clear a Ruin without the help of his eyes.

Though he was willing to try, he didn't have a suitable Matrix, something he would need if he didn't have his eyes to complete the necessary calculations. Though he had gained a Tenth Order Matrix during his adventure on the Pedestal Plane, it had quickly become useless.

Plus, that Matrix was Tenth Order to the standards of Sacrum, who knew if it would even be useful here?

And, lastly, even if Ryu could fix these issues, he didn't have the understanding of True Martial World history that he did of Sacrum's history. Without such a foundation, let alone safely clearing Ruins, he wouldn't even be able to find them!

If he wanted to fix that, he would need to join a Ruin Guild. But, he still had a bad taste in his mouth from what he had learned about the Ruin Guild from his home world, and if he was correct, that Ruin Guild had ties to this world.

Ryu had to be cautious going anywhere near Ruin Guilds in this place, then. If he wanted to learn about True Martial World history and clear Ruins, he would need a different method entirely.

'In that case…'

Ryu quickly found information about the Prefectures of the Southern region. There were a total of 64, each controlled by either a powerful Sect or Family, all of which had at least one Sky God.

The rating system of Sects and Clans in the True Martial World only started once you had a Sky God, everything beneath that Realm was disregarded.

One Star Clans and Sects had at least one Fragmented Sky God, Two Star had at least one False Sky God, so on and so forth.

Within these there was a further division of True. True One Star Clans and Sects had not only at least one Fragmented Sky God, but they either had a second, or at least ten Half-Step Fragmented Sky Gods.

In the First Heaven, there were only two Two Star Clans. Well, there was one Sect and the other was a Clan.

The Clan was the Iunae Clan and the Sect… Well, it was the Hidden Blade Sect.

Ryu shook his head at his bad luck. He refused to join a cowardly Sect like the Hidden Blade Sect, and he also had no intention of going to Galemar's Iunae Clan.

'It doesn't seem like that man's Radiant Star Sect is listed here, could it be that the Radiant Star Sect is a Second Heaven Sect?'

Ryu's gaze narrowed. For Galemar to offer for him to join a Second Heaven Sect, it seemed that he was more interested than Ryu had originally thought he was.

'Wait…'

Ryu's expression became weird. The Radiant Star Sect wasn't a Second Heaven Sect, it was in the First Heaven. It was just that Ryu had gone straight from checking the Southern Region Sects and Clans to looking at the only two Two Star powers.

However, he hadn't checked the other regions.

It turned out that the Radiant Star Sect was a True One Star Sect of the Western Region.

It was odd. Galemar was from a Two Star Clan, but he joined a One Star power? Though it was a True One Star Sect, it was still a bit odd. Ryu's Ruin Master mind felt that there was an oddity here that should be explored.

The Iunae Clan should have had everything that Galemar needed, it didn't make sense for him to join another Sect.

Suddenly, Ryu wanted to go there.

"Alright, let's go play in this Radiant Star Sect."

Ryu's lip curled.

He had just gone through so much trouble to get away from Galemar, but now he was going back into the tiger's den. Maybe he really was a madman.

However, once Ryu made a decision, he wouldn't change it. He bought himself another ticket, this one to the Western Region.