Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

BANG!

It felt like a world of gold and black collided. The colors swirled and intertwined around one another, the figures responsible for their sharpness vanishing. Their movements were so fast that the eye could only possibly track the arcs of light and dark they left in the air.

These sweeping arches filled the skies, leveling trees and splitting the clouds.

The sound they produced seemed far more muffled than it should have been, as though their control superseded the laws of sound themselves, suppressing them to the level they so chose.

They blazed trails through the skies, their movements sharp and agile, then becoming languid and exaggerated. They shifted between the two styles of light and dark with practiced ease, competing to see which of them had the edge in comprehension.

The answer was obvious.

Ryu's golden blades were just a little bit sharper, just a little bit quicker, just a little bit more agile.

His black blades were just a little bit more imposing, more all-encompassing, more suffocating.

A dichotomy of light and quick versus dark and heavy weaved between his arms, and the gap between the Ice Jade Crystal Body in dual wielding and anyone else reared its head.

While he…

Had no such weakness.

CHI. CHI. CHI.

BANG!

Yeger retreated a step and heavily dropped a foot to the ground. His toes sank into the winds as though pressing into soft soil before he accelerated forward once again, appearing to slash at Ryu's neck in a brief instant of time.

Ryu flipped his dark great swordstaff in his hand, piercing its blade toward the ground and aiming the large flat of its body at Yeger as though to use it like a shield.

Yeger's expression flickered, but it was too late. His blade slipped right into the empty spine of the swordstaff just as Ryu twisted his wrist.

Yeger's scimitar was caught in the torsion, his wrist nearly snapping beneath the strain. But worse than that, his blow missed, piercing just under Ryu's armpit in time for him to press the blade to his body with an elbow.

Ryu slashed out with his second great swordstaff and kicked in the same motion. His body should have been off balance, especially since he was sending both attacks from the same half of his body, but he did it so fluidly and suddenly that it was hard to pick out the fault until it was too late.

Yeger was forced to block the blade, only to suffer a foot right in the gut.

Despite his attempts to summon spatial qi, it was bent and suppressed beneath Ryu's calculations, canceling them out perfectly.

The young Fiend Childe was sent flying, crashing into one ancient tree after another and ripping them out from their very roots as he continued to fly.

Chi.

One of his scimitars fell to the ground by Ryu's side, piercing so deeply that even its hilt almost disappeared.

Ryu carelessly pressed his own great swordstaff into the ground, reaching down and picking the scimitar up. He looked at it as though he was trying to see through something curious.

"You're not much of a warrior, losing your weapon like that," Ryu said lightly.

Ryu pierced his second great swordstaff into the ground and flicked a finger out at the scimitar. A resonant hum filled the air, and leaves in all directions were suddenly sliced in two, then three, then four.

"Hm…"

Yeger slowly stood in the far-off distance, wiping blood from his lips with a forearm. Looking at Ryu, there was a slight hint of gloominess between his brows—not out of rage or unwillingness, but dissatisfaction.

Part of that dissatisfaction was toward his own performance, and the second part was that he didn't want to be fighting this battle in the first place.

"I do find it fascinating. I wonder why the Ruin Master Guild and the Fiends are so close."

Ryu looked up from the blade and toward Yeger. "I've been trying to understand your relationship for a long while now, but in a rare showing by me, it still confuses me. Then there's the relation of all of that to the Fey.

"Well, I assume that you and the Fey are actually two sides of the same coin. The roots of your two Races are far too similar to be ignored, but therein lies a question… why be separated in the first place?"

Ryu flicked a finger at the scimitar again, a smile beginning to play on his once dull features.

"Honestly speaking, right now, you're too weak to be interesting. I was expecting a great battle, but your comprehension is lacking, your body is weak, and if I wanted to, I could have killed you just now.

"That said… unlike a certain Young Mistress Nightly, you haven't reached a bottleneck. You're rapidly growing every day, and you're probably only, what… 5% of the way through to your peak potential? Let's hope it's more than that."

Ryu waved an arm, and the scimitar soared through the skies, piercing into a tree right by Yeger's cheek.

"You can go. You bore me. Why don't you go reach that full potential of yours and then come back?"

Ryu's smile became a dark grin.

Yeger could feel his Dao Heart twitching. This sort of open scheme, the kind that targeted his Heart for cultivation, made him feel inferior and insignificant… it was the most effective kind against a genius like him.

"… You will…" Yeger paused and then sealed his mouth shut tightly with a press of his jaw and a purse of his lips.

He was Yeger Sun. He had no need to leave behind such threatening words. When the time came, he would make Ryu regret today.

He pulled his scimitar out from the tree, shattering its enormous form to pieces. Then, he turned and left.

Ryu was true to his word, just standing there as Yeger vanished, his thoughts unknown to all but himself.

Did he actually just want Yeger to get stronger? Maybe in part, but it was only in part.

The things he had said about the Ruin Master Guild and the Fiends were what truly interested him the most.

There was a reason Yeger, of all people, had appeared when Ryu had only been targeting the Ruin Master Guild all this time.

They were connected in some way, and that much had been obvious ever since he had returned from the Fiend World. It wasn't a coincidence that the Ruin Master Guild had appeared there as well.

But why?

Ryu was actually fairly certain that Sarriel would know more.

Sarriel only had one goal in life, and that was to rebuild her Fey Clan. Because of this, she wanted to find a powerful husband who she could have equally powerful children with.

But if one thought about it… why would she then choose to suppress herself?

She was obviously so much stronger than those Blue Moon and Falling Snow characters—at least back then—so why bother to treat them like real candidates?

Logically speaking, if she was just going to suppress herself, then she might as well just pluck out any random man with decent looks and have children with him. It would probably be easier too, considering his talent would tip the odds of pregnancy in their favor so long as he was weaker.

So why not?

The obvious answer was that she had learned of something that changed her approach. Maybe she hadn't given up on finding a husband, but she had certainly placed the matter on the back burner for now.

And the only thing that would make Sarriel do such a thing was if she had found new information about why her Fey Clan was destroyed in the first place.

As far as Ryu knew, the destruction of the Fey of Sacrum was related to the Ancient Beasts. This was part of the rivalry between the two races, and eventually, in their battle, it was the Ancient Beasts that came out on top to become the dominant and most favored Race of the Heavens.

This battle played out countless times in countless worlds, and sometimes the Ancient Beasts would win, while sometimes the Fey would win.

There was obviously something about this battle across worlds, across space, across time, that held a secret to it that shook the foundation of Sarriel's belief.

And now, Ryu was suddenly very curious about it all.

Letting Yeger go now was in part to satisfy his desire to beat him at his very best, and another to figure out what role he had to play in all of this as well. Because something told him, given the Fate swirling around him, this Tri Elemental Fiend Childe was quite the pawn piece.

Hm…

Ryu's lip quirked.

Maybe he should put a little more effort into finding a certain pointy-eared beauty with violent eyes.

He was sure that she was missing him by now.

If she couldn't give him the information he wanted, he would just have to spank it out of her.

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