Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1995

'Easy enough…'

Though Ryu thought this, he was surprised by himself, especially as three Lord Tribulation triggered all at once. He was even forced to put a Faith Barrier up between them, lest they fuse into one and cause more trouble than he was expecting.

He had always been able to help others break through, even long before he got Embryonic Qi. In fact, this time, he hadn't used Embryonic Qi at all, but that was beside the point.

The only reason Ryu didn't use this ability of his more was that he had no interest in it. It was the same reason why he felt that his Dao would be capable of making him maybe the greatest Emperor to ever exist, and yet he never used it either.

Only rarely did he use the manipulation aspects of his Dao, and even then, it was in niche circumstances.

The earliest instance he could remember of this was when he helped out a senior of the Armament Guild back in Sacrum. He had helped him become a True God in one go, though those titles had different meanings in Sacrum versus this world.

Ryu froze.

The moment he had this thought, it felt like a flashbang had gone off in his mind.

In Sacrum, there were two states of Sky God. It was to the point that Ryu had once thought that the Sky God Realm itself was the end all, be all.

There was the False Sky God Realm and the True Sky God Realm. Sacrum had nothing else beyond that.

False Sky Gods and True Sky Gods weren't things that you could just hop between or cultivate to. It was decided from the moment you broke free of the World Sea Realm whether you would be a Dragon amongst Sky Gods, or a Flood Dragon.

Ryu had never thought about this much. Things like this could be seen all over the cultivation Realm. It simply represented a broken system, one that represented a false step somewhere in the understanding.

In this case, Ryu thought he understood it.

They were missing the Dao.

In more complete worlds, the Dao was a part of cultivation almost from the very beginning. Some of the best geniuses would comprehend their own as early as the Awakening Realm.

By comparison, this wasn't the case in Sacrum. The Dao only came into play when it was absolutely needed, and in this case that was at the very apex of the World Sea Realm.

However, when one thought about it, the issues with that became very apparent, very quickly.

In the Cosmic Seed Realm, one formed their Cosmic Seeds, planted them into their Spiritual Foundations, and cracked their Foundations apart from a solid state into a more accessible liquid state.

This process allowed one to control a vapor form of Cosmic Qi at the Cosmic Seed Realm, and upon reaching the World Sea Realm, one could use true liquid Cosmic Qi.

The process of going from the Cosmic Seed Realm to the World Sea Realm seemed to only require forming enough Cosmic Seeds, and that was technically true, but there was another process as well.

In order to enter the Sky God Realm, one had to enter Godhood, and forming a Godhood required binding all of one's Cosmic Seeds together into a foundation that could hold your Dao.

This step didn't necessarily have to start at the end of the World Sea Realm. In fact, the best geniuses probably started the moment they planted their second Cosmic Seed, laying a solid foundation for what would come next.

But how could one even begin to do this if they didn't at least have a concept for what their Dao was? How could they even know if their Cosmic Seeds were compatible with the Daos they would eventually form? There was simply no way of knowing, and a sudden enlightenment like the ones the Sky Gods of Sacrum might have to rely on could come at any time, for anything.

Ryu had a feeling that what separated a False Sky God from a True Sky God in Sacrum was whether or not they managed to grasp a Dao that was at least semi-compatible with their Cosmic Seeds and coincidentally, or maybe by design, matched up with the path that they were already on.

A genius among geniuses might be able to do this on purpose by meditating on their purpose. But those that ended up as False Sky Gods, while they were assuredly geniuses as well for being able to grasp onto something so obscure without any sort of guidance whatsoever, were also clearly a tier below.

That was all fine and well, but why was Ryu even thinking about this now?

For some reason, when he had this thought, he had another…

Wasn't the difficulty in breaking through from the World Sea Realm to the Sky God Realm in Sacrum a lot like the difficulty in breaking through from the Omniscient Realm to the Lord Realm?

It was a random thought, hardly without any foundation at all, and yet the moment Ryu grasped onto the faintest string, he kept tugging and tugging only to run into a dead end.

Was he trying to say that even his current cultivation method was incomplete? Just like Sacrum's was?

Even he wasn't sure.

It was like he was looking for something that evaded his grasp again and again.

He circled around the thought once, then twice, then thrice. He eventually lost count of just how many times he had the same thoughts again and again, but it continued to slip out of his grasp until his heart skipped a beat.

His gaze sharpened and there was a certain menace that was uncovered deep within them.

He didn't like when others manipulated him. Not in the slightest bit…

"Piss off."

Invisible bindings of Fate and Karmic Strings were shredded apart with a flash of Ryu's eyes, and he could finally see it.

The answer was so obvious.

Control.