Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1840

1840 Or Not

Temperament was forged through cultivation. Cultivating was a process of going against the Heavens.

These words came to Ryu's mind at that moment. They were like a breeze that rolled in from the gentlest of springs. It smelled of nature and spring, but at the same time, it struck like a bolt of lightning.

It was as though it was the first breath he had had after minutes of suffocation, a true gust that filled his lungs and helped him to gasp.

Ryu looked forward with dim eyes, his thoughts circulating and his mind grasping onto something like a drowning man.

It was a simple thought, and yet right now, it meant more to Ryu than anything else in the world.

His thoughts hadn't changed, not at all. It felt like life was truly meaningless, as though they were just a set of souls on a conveyor belt, waiting to be recycled and reused by the universe.

But, right when he was about to collapse, he had an even more depressing thought, one that ironically came from the mortal worlds that he had seen.

Ryu had heard of extremes birthing their opposites. But he had never thought that an extreme of depression would crack open a door for him… or maybe it was because he had forced himself to make a choice, maybe he just didn't want to take that final step and destroy himself, so he had veered off the path before he could take that final step…

The thought was quite simple.

The energy in the universe was finite. The Heavens couldn't make more of what it already had. There was a reason that everything tended toward Chaos, and no matter how great a world started off as, it was inevitable that it would fall to the wayside.

But what exactly did that mean?

In Ryu's eyes, that meant that souls weren't the only things that were recycled. Everyone breathed the same exact air that had already circulated in the body of another. Everyone saw the same exact rays of sunlight.

The very cells in Ryu's body were constructed from atoms and particles that had maybe been part of a rock in the past.

If he was going so far as to say that life didn't matter, maybe he could go as far as to say that even life itself was just a facade, a fancy packaging of something that could easily become a rock, or a patch of dirt, or spittle from a baby's mouth in the next instant.

All of a world's energy, all of its molecules, all of its very essence and being was constantly being circulated and shared between everyone else.

At that point, you were just a collection of chemicals and chemical reactions that was slightly different from the man or woman standing next to you.

Even further, for cultivators, was there anything unique about their cultivation? They absorbed the exact same energy that had likely already circulated in the body of another, and after they died, their energy was returned to the Heavens.

The phenomena triggered by the death of Dao Sovereigns might have looked like the Heavens were weeping, but it was just another case of it taking back energy that it had just granted.

This was the reality of the world.

Nothing was unique. Let alone the soul, even their bodies weren't their own. They shared everything from breath to the very building blocks of their cells.

There was no uniqueness at all, so what was the point of it all?

When Ryu had had this thought, he really felt like it was over for him. There was simply no coming back from such a thing. It was too tall a mountain to climb, too thick a barrier to rip his way through. He could only stare into the skies and wait for the last of his Ego to fade away.

But then he had that fleeting thought about Ailsa's Temperament.

Looking at the rage in her eyes, he couldn't help but think that she was far superior to any Dao God that he had ever seen, that her Temperament was truly special.

That was when those two sentences came to his mind, not in that order, and not even with all the words arranged properly, but he had seen through it all in the end regardless.

Temperament was forged through cultivation. Cultivating was a process of going against the Heavens.

Going against the Heavens…

It felt like a full circle moment for Ryu.

In the start of his cultivation, that was all he was obsessed with, trying to prove the Heavens wrong even though it had already Blessed him so much. This wasn't just a figurative Blessing, but even Heaven's Knights themselves had descended to tell him exactly as much.

But he was immature, obsessed with hating any and everything about the world, and wanting to make an enemy out of everything.

But then he began to change. He began to see the benefits of being on the side of the Heavens, and not just the benefits, but also understanding that the Heavens weren't some demon to be crushed beneath his feet. It treated all things beneath it equally, and while some might be luckier than others, everyone would be granted opportunities to change their Fate.

Back then, Ryu realized that he had to strike a balance between fighting against the Heavens and accepting its Blessings…

But this was the difference in understanding something and how you came to understand it.

It wasn't until this moment that Ryu truly understood what it meant to strike that balance; it wasn't until now that he was truly enlightened.

His mind quivered and his dimming gaze regained some of its glow.

The process of cultivation was to go against the Heavens… and such an important part of cultivation was forging one's Temperament…

It didn't matter even if he was right, even if it was true that there was no uniqueness in the world.

He just had to make a choice.

Did he want to reach that mountaintop he had dreamed of as a child…

Or not.