Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1588

[ thanks to Chronotitan <3 1/6]

The change was qualitative and his Vital Qi was overflowing. With this kind of strength now, he could easily use his body alone to one-shot Seventh Heaven False Sky Gods. Trampling them beneath his feet wouldn't be an issue at all.

If he could progress his Bloodlines to the Sovereign Grade, he believed that he would finally catch up to the topmost standards of the Ninth Heaven.

But this still felt... lackluster.

Ryu looked down at his hands, the wave of pressure still coming off of him.

Honestly, maybe he was the only one who would ever have such a thought. Fading Star would have never guessed that her disciple would have already made such progress when she had only just left. It could be said that Ryu had already stepped into a level of comprehension of Bloodmancy that made little sense considering his lack of familiarity with the discipline.

But he wasn't satisfied. It felt like there was something missing, and he could somewhat tell what it was.

Selheira's Primordial Yin was guiding his Bloodlines and allowing them to fuse, but it was a roundabout method.

It couldn't be said that he was truly all of a Dragon, Qilin, and Phoenix. Instead, he was bits and pieces of each one, creating something new.

This seemed to be the point. Wasn't this what he was chasing after in the first place?

But honestly, the answer was no. He wanted it all. One Dragon genius alone was already standing at the top of the Ninth Heaven, so why were the combinations of his Bloodlines worth so little? It was unacceptable to him.

It wasn't Selheira's fault, obviously.

The Crystal Dragon was appeasing his Bloodlines. For the sake of the whole, she coaxed them into turning down some aspects so they would clash less. Ryu could even see some of that.

Much like everything else, he felt it would take time.

'Time, time, and more time...'

He needed to get a deeper grasp of Bloodmancy. Selheira's Primordial Yin was a cheat, an almost sentient existence that, under his control, gave his Bloodlines perpetual guidance it would have originally taken his full focus to achieve.

If he wanted to achieve deeper levels of mastery, it could only take him.

'If only...'

Unfortunately, after his eyes unsealed, the time distortion on his Inner World had vanished. He felt that he could apply it again, but it would actually take energy of his own.

And even if the time distortion hadn't vanished, it wouldn't help.

In that world, he could only bring his mind, not his body. How would he learn how to be a Bloodmancer if he couldn't practice on his body? Much like with Necromancy, he actually needed to puppeteer corpses to get a hang of it, and in this case, the "corpses" were obviously his Bloodlines.

'Where could all of that energy have gone, though...'

Ryu's eyes narrowed. Having thought about his Inner World, he was suddenly curious.

Well, the fact itself wasn't curious, it made sense. What fascinated him more was the mechanism by which it would have happened.

He absorbed the Silver Star, dissipating it into its energies and taking immediate strength in as potential instead.

The sealing of his eyes seemed to have trapped some of that energy. His eyes were the window to the soul, and a huge change in one impacted the other.

'But shouldn't that mean that my eyes absorbed a large portion of this energy, then...?'

Ryu knew that his eyes had mutated; that was the purpose of the Black Veined Spirit Seeking Lilies in the first place.

The trouble was that he never really imagined that the changes would be all that drastic, and it was for good reason.

He found those Spirit Seeking Lilies in the Sacrum. Not only in Sacrum, but on the Mortal Plane at that. It was the lowest of the low to even Sacrum itself, let alone the True Martial World.

The fact his eyes survived pushing Heaven Gate that far was something that Ryu mostly attributed to his Rebirth, not the Spirit Seeking Lilies. His point was only further bolstered by the fact it took so much effort to unseal them even after he awoke.

That said... what if his Rebirth wasn't the only thing to help his eyes survive?

Ryu frowned.

His Rebirth itself was a mutation. Phoenixes of exceptionally pure Bloodlines would have a chance at nine Rebirths, while he would only have one. However, his one Rebirth was long, continuous, and it opened up the path for him to finally step into the True Martial Realm. He owed it a lot.

But he never thought about if there was something else that helped his eyes out...

He couldn't sense anything either.

That led back to the first point. The fact his personal pocket of time distortion disappeared wasn't surprising; the fact that there had been one in the first place was.

Ryu wasn't a fool; if it would have obviously happened, he would have never made such a mistake.

He suddenly got the feeling that he was being toyed with again.

The Zu Ancestor was supposedly a man who could move backward and forwards through time, something that should be completely impossible. But if he didn't really believe it in the past, how could he not now? That wasn't because he had found some shocking detail, but rather because he didn't believe that Eska would lie to him. Their relationship had long since progressed beyond that point.

This meant that the things the Zu Ancestors had told him should be true, and that man should exist just like that... at least in their memories.

If he took a step back and asked himself another question, he shuddered...

A man who could move fluidly through time, how much power would he have? What wouldn't he be able to control?

But why was the Phoenix Sky God considered the most powerful Dao God, then?

Ryu's eyes flashed with a dangerous light.

Could they be the same person?