Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1843

1843 Seperate and One

The three Incorporeal Souls...

The Original Spirit, the root of Intelligence, was where Mental Realm Talent lay, what gave cultivators their sharpness and insight, their senses...

The Yin Spirit. It was the source of life, what fueled you, what kept you alive and powered the other Incorporeal Souls and your entire body for that matter.

The Yang Spirit… it was one's self-awareness and identity; it should have been the Ego.

When Ryu was born, he lost two of these souls. Or more accurately, he lost one, and the second was heavily damaged after being taken and scavenged.

His Original Spirit was his Perfect Blackbody, a soul that he didn't have by his side for the longest time. Only a small part of it was left remaining, which was why he usually thought that he had two of his Incorporeal Souls, when it was really more like 1.5.

His Yang Spirit… this was his Dao Heart, his Spiritual Foundation, the very existence that had just taken over his body.

As for his Yin Spirit, it was the part of him observing things from the skies, and it was precisely because of this Yin Spirit that he had remained alive at all. If it had ever been touched, he would have ended up as a cripple.

This might seem confusing. That's because if Ryu's Ego was in his Yin Spirit, then how was the Ego supposed to be in the Dao Heart?

The reason for this was Ryu's adaptation.

The Yin Spirit was the source of life, and its sole responsibility was keeping one alive. At the same time, a Dao Heart was meant to mutate, change, and adapt over the course of one's life, and all of that change was fueled by the Yin Spirit and what it experienced.

The last additional layer of context one needed here was the fact that Awakening only took place after one was seven years old. Why so late? And if it took that long for one to connect to their Spiritual Foundation, then what of their Ego? Did they just not have one until they were that old?

The answer was complicated and multi-faceted, but the short of it was that a Spiritual Foundation wasn't exactly one's Yang Spirit, but was strictly considered to be half of it, an external object capable of perfectly resonating with one's Yang Spirit and forming a connection with it.

Upon the completion of the Awakening Ceremony, the Spiritual Foundation would officially become one with a person, and ultimately, that would make it one's Yang Spirit.

Before this stage, the Yang Spirit was nothing more than an Embryo waiting to be nurtured. And that was when two oddities happened to Ryu.

The first oddity was obvious. He failed his Awakening Ceremony. And though it was called a False Spiritual Foundation, this wasn't exactly true either. There was still some resonance formed between Ryu and his Spiritual Foundation; it was just that the connection couldn't be completed because of the interference of the Martial Gods.

The second oddity was that Ryu fused with a Realm Heart and another's Spiritual Foundation before he finally reconnected with his own.

This wouldn't normally be an issue under normal circumstances, but after he regained his own Spiritual Foundation, rather than placing it in his dantian, he placed it within his Realm Heart!

It had to be remembered that the Realm Heart had an immature and unborn spirit within it. So, as his Spiritual Foundation was resonating with himself properly for the first time, it was likewise resonating with the soul of the Realm Heart.

Due to all of these series of coincidences, the Realm Heart's soul likewise became "Ryu." And as such, two Egos were born in Ryu's body instead of one.

The difference was that his first and true Ego had the desires of a human, it had emotions, it had thoughts.

However, the spirit of a Realm Heart, as influenced by his Spiritual Foundation, was a complete blank slate. It was technically en route to becoming a "Heaven," so it didn't have such thoughts and emotions. It was only interested in a single thing…

Improvement.

When it sensed that Ryu was no longer taking proper steps toward that end, it took over and expelled him from his own body.

But now, everything was changing.

Ryu's Yin Spirit became his core. It was the source of his life, and since this would be the last life he lived, it would become the center of his entire world. He would become the hand that held up this sky.

His Yang Spirit became his clone, separating from him in thought and experience, obsessed with cultivation, and finally, he could sense the Path of this Realm Heart more clearly than he had ever sensed it before.

His Original Spirit became his second clone. Adaptable, flexible, and wielding the powers of space and time while also being insatiable for more.

And yet, as separate as they were… they were truly one.

Both his Yang Spirit and Original Spirit had learned to survive on their own. And having come back to him, they had felt comfortable in their roles. They lacked thought and emotion, and as such, they were the most perfect clones they could be.

One forming Two. Two forming Three. And Three forming All Things.

When they resonated with one another, Ryu felt as though his thinking speed and his comprehension skyrocketed to another level.

But when they were separate, he felt that he could well and truly look in three directions at the same time.

He didn't need to form separate bodies, he didn't need to waste resources on compiling new methods.

His body already had the foundation it needed to take this step.

They were separate, and yet they were one. They were one, and yet they were separate.

It was a feeling that made Ryu feel entirely unstoppable. It was the sort of seamless cooperation that even the most veteran of teams or even the closest of siblings could never replicate.

When he opened his eyes, the world shuddered and collapsed.