GRAND ANCESTRAL BLOODLINES

The wind shifted around them as Iam pulled his arm back.

Ryu’s corpse collapsed to the ground, tar-like flames sticking to the fluttering rainbow clouds.

A pair of silvery eyes looked up to the skies, but they seemed to be all that was left.

Iam looked down, and then reached to pluck Ryu’s eyeballs out for himself. He was a member of the Rune Master Guild, how could he not be fascinated by researching such special eyes?

But he hardly made a movement when everyone acted at once.

Their greed had already been boiling over, so how could they allow Iam to take hold of it without any pushback?

Iam’s eyes narrowed, but he suppressed his urges. His aura flared out and he struck out with several palms. However, it was Young Master Bright and Young Master Shade that suddenly appeared before him, a scythe and a fist pincering him from two sides.

Iam was forced to retreat.

Suddenly, the confidence everyone was feeling seemed to return. None of them had experienced anything like Ryu before, a man so weak and yet able to pressure so many to such a shocking degree.

Iam might be powerful, and his control was exceptional, but he was using techniques he wasn’t completely comfortable with, and they had a numbers advantage.

On top of this, they could all feel the Dao God aura. As such, unlike with Ryu, who was a Lord in most of their eyes and they couldn’t bring themselves to truly fight together against—Iam was free game.

The worst of it for Iam, though, was Silent Quibus, who was the only one that hadn’t moved. It felt like the eyes of a viper were behind him.

Now that Ryu was dead, there didn’t seem to be a need for their agreement to continue. Ultimately, they were also part of two different organizations with two vastly different plans for the future.

This restricted what Iam could do even more, and he was forced to slowly back away from Ryu’s corpse. However, he also didn’t allow anyone the chance to take it for themselves either.

Those eyes could be the breakthrough they all needed—it would certainly help him reach the next level. So how could he so easily let it slip?

…

Ailsa stood as though she had completely lost her soul. She stared ahead, not blinking once as though she was waiting for the illusion to fade, but it simply refused to.

It had looked like he was going to win; she had truly been hoping, even though the pit in her gut was only increasing again and again with every enemy he took down.

He was too injured, too broken… he had given up too much.

Maybe if he hadn’t had to save Sarriel, maybe if he wasn’t foolish enough to look at that Title, maybe if he wasn’t foolish enough to strip her of her own Heart Demon…

He could still be standing.

But right now, he wasn’t. He was like a broken mass in a sea of nothingness, and her heart felt so very empty, so very shattered.

And yet, as much as she willed it, to end this pain, to escape this misery, it refused.

And she knew why.

Ryu had already taken on her entire burden. Unless she self-destructed herself, she would likely never die in such a way.

He probably knew it. He probably knew that this would happen. He probably knew that because she knew he had sacrificed so much, she wouldn’t dare to do such a thing.

Wouldn’t that just mean that she had made his sacrifice worthless?

Ailsa sobbed, her shoulders quaking.

…

Ryu’s mind was blank, a canvas of nothingness. But there seemed to be something burning within.

He heard the sobs as though they were right by his ears, and he finally understood, and yet his life was simply slipping away faster and faster. There wasn’t anything that he could do about it.

‘Re… write… it…’

The echo of something in the deepest depths of his mind pulsed.

‘Re… write… it…’

It wasn’t enough.

All the will in the world wasn’t enough.

There were limits to what drive could do. It was why he had needed circumstance to push him part of the way to where he stood today.

He took hold of the reins himself afterward, but there was no denying this fact anymore.

It was a good thing, then…

That he had a plan.

He wasn’t the same Ryu of the past. He had once hated the Heavens with his very being for what it had done to him. But then he had grown to accept that the Heavens were just a mass of laws… it didn’t owe him anything. If anything, it had helped him a great deal.

However, it wasn’t until this moment that he fully embraced it. The butterfly effect, the circumstances of his life, the pieces that had to fall into place to allow him to be here.

He was always the same man, he would always be the same man.

He could only ever be one man and would always be one man.

And then Ryu’s voice echoed as though it descended from the Dome of the Heavens itself, the entire battlefield freezing over.

“I am…” Ryu’s voice rumbled. “The Sky above the Sky… The Dao above the Dao… The Heavens above the Heavens…

“I am… Omniscient… Omnipotent… Omnipresent.

“All Powerful and Eternal…

“I will have a name that resounds above All, looming like a Dome above Existence…”

The Title Stele rumbled, lines of gold and violet swirling as a name that had birthed its own humiliation was extricated, its power used to write a new name.

In a far-off place, the Nameless Immortal God sensed something and then scoffed. He didn’t seem to care enough, returning back to his wives.

The lines continued to morph and change, a new name being written.

“… I will be the Mountain Peak you all chase for the rest of your lives…”

The Title Stele suddenly fell into silence as though to ensure the rest of the world listened carefully.

“I am…”

The echo of Ryu’s voice peeled across the rumbling clouds like splitting strokes of thunder.

“Ryu Tatsuya.”

The final strokes of the Title were emboldened and the Dome of the Heavens shattered.

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