Ryu's thought problem was actually quite complex, and it was related to what he knew about the Martial God Bloodlines. As Elena had told him, unlike others where the Bloodline would just be one of the Six Pillars, for the Martial Gods, the Bloodline decided almost everything about their talents, save their Dao. Although their Spiritual Foundation was also said to not quite fall into this category, from what Ryu could gather from Elena's explanation, it wasn't so cut and dry.
It could be said, then, that four and a half of Elena's talents were decided by her Bloodline. In this way, the Martial Gods were a lot closer to beasts than they were to humans. It almost made sense that they wanted to carve out a new Race for themselves rather than sticking it out with their heritage.
However, what Ryu found more interesting than all of this was how one Bloodline accomplished this. It didn't seem to make sense.
Unless you were aware of the existence of the Corporeal Souls.
Obviously, the mechanism through which the coopting of talent worked was through this system, and it was because of this connection that during the process of gestation, a Martial God newborn was practically able to reformulate their own bodies based on their Bloodlines.
As for their Spiritual Foundations, it was likely that because they were located in the Abyssal Plane, during the gestation period, they were only able to influence it to a limited extent.
But what did all of this have in common?
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtOnce again, this was something that most wouldn't be able to grasp, but to Ryu... the answer was all too obvious.
All of this happened in the stage of development... no, the only stage of development where Embryonic Qi was available. Only during the birth of a cultivation would the Heavens bestow Embryonic Qi, and it was only during this stage that Elena's Bloodline could accomplish what it had.
Was it a coincidence? Ryu didn't think so.
However, that didn't mean that Ryu's plan was to start messing around with Elena's body and try to mutate her body again.
For one, it wasn't possible. While it was true that this stage relied heavily on Embryonic Qi, it also relied on the unique state of the body as well. During gestation, a fetus would be highly receptive to change and any of the smallest changes could influence them, whether that was external or internal pressure.
What Ryu was more interested in was the fact that the Elena's Bloodline, or rather Martial God Bloodlines in general, should have a hidden mechanism within them that allowed them to trigger change and fuel themselves with Embryonic Qi.
As a result of that, much of Elena's sudden rise in cultivation wasn't just due to the fact she had a lot of accumulated experience, but also because the rush of Embryonic Qi that Ryu had given her had allowed her Spiritual Foundation to complete its full conversion and become subservient to her Bloodline as well.
Obviously, while the body wasn't receptive to changes as much, the Spiritual Foundation was a completely different matter. Its entire reason for existing was to adapt to a cultivator's path of cultivation.
When Ryu began connecting these dots and understanding these changes, he grasped something all too obvious.
Could Elena's Spiritual Foundation be counted as separate from herself?
Because Elena's Bloodline hadn't managed to convert Elena's Spiritual Foundation earlier on, the failsafes put in place to stop her Bloodline talents from working on her didn't work perfectly on her Spiritual Foundation.
And that was when it clicked for Ryu, and funny enough, the idea came from something that he had seen in Sacrum.
Because it was a smaller world, in Sacrum, people spent a great deal of time in the Mortal and Immortal Realms, and most would never even touch the God Realms.
Due to that, there was a lot of effort put into excavating the full potential of these smaller worlds.
In Sacrum, for example, Ryu had seen all sorts of different Immortal Rings and Immortal Ring types, but in the True Martial World, he had hardly seen any.
And that made him recall something related to the Dao Pedestal Realm.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmFor normal cultivators, the Dao Pedestal Realm was just about expanding the size of your Spiritual Foundation and preparing it to be able to take your Cosmic Seeds in the next Realms.
However, in one technique, there was a man who Ryu read about who created a method that took the word Pedestal more literally, or ridiculously depending on your perspective.
In translation, the word Pedestal in Dao Pedestal Realm meant to refer to the word foundation. It was something that other things were built upon, and thus it was the perfect word for this Realm considering the purpose of its existence.
But in this man's interpretation, he instead wanted to build a separate foundation to help prop up the Spiritual Foundation, rather than the other way around.
It was a foolish thing to do in not only Ryu's opinion, but objectively as well. That was because the Realm was called the Dao Pedestal Realm, not the Spiritual Pedestal Realm. By definition, you were supposed to be creating a Pedestal for your Daos, not your Spiritual Foundation.
Unsurprisingly, because of his foolish interpretation of language, the man never managed to break into the World Sea Realm. But what was interesting was that he did break into the Cosmic Seed Realm. The fact he managed to complete the Dao Pedestal Realm at all was shocking, it was just that he could never find a way to translate that success for the World Sea Realm because he had already ruined his foundation, ironically.
So what had this man done?
Well, in his words, he built a Pedestal to the Heavens... In Ryu's, he built a staircase to nothing.
Essentially, he created Visualizations of his Spiritual Foundation, projecting them in his dantian and forming nine in total that rose into the skies.
He called this the True Dao Pedestal Realm.