Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1936

Ryu nearly collapsed. The drain on his mind had reached the point of excessiveness and he hadn't even been able to speak or taunt as he would have otherwise.

Usually, with how much anger he had bottled in, let alone leaving Old Wan to guess what had happened, he would have found one way or another to force him to confirm it.

However, he simply didn't have such a luxury this time, and maybe that was for the best. His arrogance often got the best of his logic, and truthfully speaking, the less Old Wan knew for certain, the more time he would have to spend on potential contingency plans in the future for the largest number of enemies possible, and the less singular pursuit and focus he would have on Ryu.

That would only help him.

In addition, since more than just Hope's soul had escaped, there wasn't any of that sort of certainty to help him either.

Luckily, the tail end of Ryu's pill managed to pump more life and vitality into him, the final breakthrough into the Omniscient Mental Realm expanded his Spiritual Sea to realms never before seen.

Part of the reason his Mental Realm cultivation was so slow and lagging in the past was because he wanted to constantly push it to its full potential, but that was difficult if his body wasn't strong enough.

This time, he had made a bit of a compromise.

His body still wasn't strong enough to push his soul to its fullest potential, at least not within the Omniscient Realm. In fact, it was too weak to do so even in the Transcended Realm.

However, he had still progressed it to the Omniscient Realm.

This sounded like a bad thing, but it actually went to show just how much potential his soul had. Even with his new Body Realm cultivation method, he could only bring out a small sliver of its perfection. Unless he managed to finish his Body Realm cultivation method, it would be impossible to bring out its truest potential.

But that wasn't far off either. All he needed to do was to find the perfect Holy Worlds to conquer.

What was unfortunate, though, was that because his cultivation had increased, the number of Holy Worlds he had to pick from had also decreased significantly…

But this was done on purpose.

After conquering two Holy Worlds back to back, even though it had been over a quarter century since then, many powers would be highly wary of him. After all, such a time span was nothing more than a blink of an eye to powerhouses of this caliber.

He would need to offset some of those worries by having more power himself. Otherwise, things would be more troublesome than not.

He had exactly zero intention of using the help of Ailsa. Even after all these years, he had barely calmed down from those events. It was hard to when you had an Origin Flame that didn't allow some of the details to become fuzzy.

That said, even if he was willing to rely on Ailsa, the result might not be what he wanted anyway. That was because Ailsa was still stuck in her Holy World and the situation wasn't exactly the best. How much she could help him to sneak into Holy Worlds especially after he conquered a fourth, fifth, or even sixth would be up in the air.

"Mm…"

Ryu's gaze flashed. He finally had the strength to push himself up and he watched as Hope's eyelashes fluttered.

A smile spread across his face as her eyes opened and he stared into those opal wonders.

A single line of drool pooled down the corner of Hope's lips as she looked around in a daze. The world lacked sharp focus and she didn't even realize what was happening.

She mumbled something to herself before the figure hovering above her finally came into focus.

"… Ryu?"

She blinked and then a flood of memories came back.

"Ah, where?!" Hope's head snapped around, only to find that there was no danger at all… or so she thought until she saw Wobbling Fairy and nearly jumped to her feet.

"Calm down, there are no enemies here," Ryu reassured with a chuckle.

"Ah…" Hope blinked again, feeling slightly embarrassed. Then, her face suddenly went ripe red, not just because of her closeness with Ryu right now, but because she noticed that there was a line of drool on her lip.

She hurried to wipe it, wanting to find a place to hide. How old was she? How could she still be drooling in her sleep?

Ryu laughed with a booming cadence, finding it all hilarious.

This was the little woman he remembered, indeed. When she wasn't being all mopey and depressed, she acted more like a little girl than the grown woman she was.

"What are you laughing about! It's a natural phenomenon, okay! Natural!"

Ryu's laughter only stopped a while later, only to be replaced by a gentle warmth hidden in his very gaze.

"Thank you for saving me, Hope."

Hope's eyes widened, then she suddenly didn't know where to look. Like a little deer caught in the headlights, her mind spun and steam almost came out of her ears. Her little head was overheating.

"Ah… this… you don't… ah…" She forgot how to speak, her words not coming out with any sort of logic at all.

"There is something I have to tell you, though."

Hope was taken aback, but then she nodded seriously, anything to move on from this embarrassing moment. Still, did he have to cradle her like this? She could move on her own, you know.

However, what she didn't expect was for what came next to be even more embarrassing.

Ryu explained how she had to feed her his Yang Essence while she was asleep in order to delay until he could save her.

Hope's organs practically ran out of blood as it all rushed to the surface of her skin.

She was… pregnant… maybe?