GRAND ANCESTRAL BLOODLINES

Space was entirely locked down. Beneath this control, it was like even Ryu’s third eye was being suffocated.

Chains rotated through the air and oppressed the wind itself.

BANG!

Ryu’s body was smashed into the ground, flattened as though a pancake. Then, like he was some sort of rubber ball, he was bounced out of the air, the elasticity of the black tar-like flames covering his body making it look as though he had no bones at all.

But he felt every single inch of it all. His body fragmented to pieces once again, his mind blurring.

The pain was unbearable. Until now, he had been able to ignore it, but there was something about Silent Quibus’ control that seemed to snap him back to reality… as though to remind him that his Control was far from the pinnacle.

How could he dare to Control the Heavens and become the sky itself if he wasn’t even capable of controlling the space around a Sovereign that had regressed back to Lordhood?

He was entirely unworthy, too obsessed with his sense of self and carrying a lofty image of what he could be as though he was already it.

Once again, he was too arrogant for what his strength bore out, too self-interested to realize that there were more geniuses in this world aside from just him alone, too ignorant of just how truly weak he was.

The one setback was like an avalanche of suffocating thoughts running through his mind. Every victory was another sharpening at the whetstone. Every failure was like a grinding mass that dulled his blade once more.

And then there was the Corpse Poison itself, the antithesis of Embryonic Qi, the kernel of all that was bad and terrible.

Facing this sort of energy now while his Dao Heart was teetering and a Heart Demon was threatening to consume him was worse than walking on a razor’s edge.

And then he laughed.

Ryu’s laughter peeled across the skies.

“Is that what you think of me?”

Ryu seemed to be speaking to no one other than himself… because he was.

His words weren’t directed at anyone else, and as he was bombarded from all sides by a control he couldn’t fathom as a mere Quasi Lord, he felt every aspect of it.

From the beginning, he had only judged himself based on his own standards. He wanted to climb to the top of the world, but that wasn’t for the sake of measuring up to others. If that was the case, he would just aim to match the strongest cultivator there was.

No, his goal was very different. His aim was to crush the world, to grind it into submission.

He had wanted to do it ever since before his father handed him his first spear.

And it was that spear that showed him how before it was ripped from him.

Ryu allowed the Corpse Poison to seep into him. He knew that this was the last piece he needed long ago. He could have turned to Old Wan’s Corpse Puppet anytime he wanted to pull it out.

But he had promised himself from the start that he would do this by himself.

No Corpse Puppets, no external items, nothing but himself and his fists.

He would prove to himself that he was worthy, and that he could stand at the top of the world, that no matter what odds he faced…

He could overcome them.

As the pain wrecked his body, he remembered those past lives once again. Every humiliating moment, every slash at his morale, every time he lowered his head.

The swirling emotions filled the Rage Flames that pumped through his body, the black tar only growing darker and darker, more suffocating, more unforgiving.

At some unknown point, the slashes against his body began to rebound back harsher than they sent him flying. Every whip might have echoed with a louder and louder boom, but it was only Iam whose eyes seemed to sharpen in time to realize what was happening.

Just as Ryu was about to pierce through that thinnest of thin veils, Iam shifted from his position.

There was a large gap between every Royal Cultivation Realm. Every one carried a completely different sort of weight.

Silent Quibus had already made Ryu feel like he couldn’t react well. The gap in power was one thing, the gap in control was another, the sense of timing and ability to grasp opportunities yet another.

For Iam, it was on an even higher level.

Ryu had been ready for a counterattack.

He had still underestimated the sort he would receive, though.

Iam seemed to slip through all of his countermeasures, appearing before Ryu in a blink and punching out with a fist that seemed almost… foreign to him.

Ryu could feel the difference. The difference between a technique that had just been picked up and one that had been honed and mastered over years.

It wasn’t just a matter of skill gap, but he could quite literally feel the gap in Fate as though it wasn’t truly tied to the man.

So this was how Iam had hidden himself… he had masked his Dao with others, picking them up and incorporating them into himself until he managed to maintain his God Control while the likes of Silent Quibus had to suppress themselves.

A claw was ripped through Ryu’s chest.

For the first time, the tar-like flames couldn’t maintain themselves, and Iam’s qi poured into Ryu’s true body, tearing him to pieces and ripping out everything that it could find.

It was relentless and didn’t carry the slightest hint of mercy.

The principle that Ryu had felt so intimately while scanning his lives played out once again. The butterfly effect… just the slightest hint of a change could blow everything off course… it could shatter what it meant to be you…

So the question was, how was it that he had managed to remain himself during the Phoenix Sky God’s trial? How was that one of the only lives which, despite the humiliation, he could be proud to say was him?

Well, did the answer matter?

It seemed that today… would be his death date.

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