Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Chapter 2167 Hunt

Ryu stood before a Faith barrier. Ahead, there was a new region waiting for him. This was the path that he was supposed to take from the very beginning, but now, things had certainly changed quite substantially…

Not that it mattered.

He passed through with ease, his thoughts still considering his battle with Yeger. He wasn’t blowing his own trumpet; he really could have defeated him with quite some ease. Maybe even easier than he had defeated Young Mistress Nightly.

But what fascinated him was the weapon Yeger had been carrying around.

Until now, maybe what had fascinated him most about the enemies he had come across were their weapons. It wasn’t that they all had the same sort of specialness, but the exact opposite, actually.

Each new opponent he faced seemed to have a new way to view the world. Their techniques reflected that as well, but none more obviously than their weapons.

Slight tweaks here and there actually made quite a large difference, funny enough. Ryu crossed the barrier while he was lost in thought, an unexpected wave of heat hitting him in billowing waves.

He looked ahead, a sea of gold and red before him. The change was quite abrupt and without any sort of rhyme or reason.

Before, he had been in a normal forest, and now suddenly everything had changed before him.

Hm…

Ryu looked off to the side, wondering how he should go about finding Sarriel. It seemed that the change in atmosphere wasn’t enough to make him care for very long.

But… he felt that it wouldn’t be so easy. If so, he probably would have found her before already.

He had a feeling that among those hiding themselves from the world right now, Sarriel was certainly among them. She had always been someone who kept her cards close to her chest, and she was very much invested in hiding her potential.

That was to say that if she hid herself, it would be difficult for even Ryu to find her, and it was obvious enough that that was exactly the sort of situation he was dealing with right now.

That said… it wasn’t necessarily impossible to find her.

After all, if Ryu just assumed that she was one of the handful of figures strong enough

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to hide herself from Fate, then he could pick her out just like that.

She would likely be hiding her combat style and even her gender as well, so he could narrow it down even further.

It didn’t take Ryu much effort to land on a single one of them and grin,

It was a woman who was controlling three Corpse Puppets.

Sarriel was, indeed, a Summoning Necromancer. During their first battle, she had definitely summoned an Ice Queen to do battle. But these Corpse Puppets were a few that Ryu had never seen before.

That said, Sarriel rarely used her puppets in battle, so this was the perfect method of hiding herself. It hid her aspects as a Fey, and also her two strongest assets…

Her Heavenly Pupils and her katana.

Seems I have a date, then.

Iam stood in silence.

He was constantly receiving reports about the state of things, but he had his own problems to deal with.

The suppression of this world around him was suffocating, so much so that he even had to be cautious with how he approached Lords.

This wouldn’t last for long, but he knew well that he had to take things one step at a time… especially since he had joined late.

The weight of the matters he was facing now wasn’t lost on him. He knew that he was being used; he knew that he was essentially being sent to die. But…

His gaze was calm.

He was a Dao God. Even compared to these little geniuses running around everywhere, he had the Dao Heart to reflect that. And his plans, his goals, his aspirations…

They wouldn’t end here.

With a step, lam finally found what he was looking for. It looked like a stairwell, formed from ancient stone and covered in moss that was no less wizened by the annals of history, randomly placed in the ground.

A Ruin.

He had carefully chosen this Ruin because the plans he had for this mission were very different from what others might expect.

What neither the Ruin Master nor Ryu would know was that lam had been studying these sorts of things for a very long time.

In the past, Ryu had wondered why someone like lam would lug around dead weight like Kira and the others. It was odd.

A Dao God wouldn’t just casually take disciples like that, and normally, even the weakest Dao Gods would have disciples that were more powerful.

They were simply too inferior.

Though their talent couldn’t be looked down upon so easily, and it was certainly up to par, their hearts were lacking. And the heart was far more important in deciding how

far someone would go.

For a long while, even Ryu himself didn’t realize just how much of a bridge he covered with his heart alone. Not until he actually gained the talent to match, that is. That was when he truly started imposing his will onto the world.

However, what was important here was why Iam had cared enough to take these few in… and the answer could be explained quite simply…

Experimentation.

It didn’t seem so, especially not considering the fact the three seemed perfectly fine. They didn’t have any marks on them, nor did they seem to have suffered any sort of

trauma.

But they didn’t need to have. All the while, lam had been observing them in silence, testing their limits, and seeing what changes they might experience. In fact… the fact their temperaments were so bad was precisely why he was so interested in them in

the first place.

Kira had been too cowardly to go after the Bloodlines he should have to make himself

truly strong…

Blue was a hypocritical coward who could only take killing others while fearing

coming to harm herself.

And then there was a certain young man of the True Martial World, a Martial God descendant who hated Ryu to the bone. He was probably the oddest choice of them all because he showed signs of teetering on the edge of a strong Dao Heart.

But it was precisely this teetering that was so intriguing to lam… because it allowed him to observe the world from a completely different lens.

With a step, he entered the Ruin, slowly making his way through with leisure.

There was one thing about these Ruins that was different from those in the outside

Realm.

Usually, Ruins would have some sort of restrictions on them. Though not obvious on the surface, those that left Ruins behind would obviously not want them falling into the hands of those without potential or those far stronger than them. As such, they

would limit the cultivation.

However, here… there was no limitation. And yet, the difficulty was set to the Lord

Realm.

That meant one very important thing…

Iam could clear them with absolute ease.

Soon, lam got to the very end and found himself staring at exactly what he wanted out

of this place: its Inheritance.

Using his own power here might be possible, but it would be like climbing uphill, and how much he suffered would be far worse than any damage he dealt.

But… what if he built a new power?

Of course, building one from scratch would be almost impossible in such a short time.

Well, no. It would actually be quite easy. The real difficulty would be in building one

that could match up to these world-ending geniuses.

So he wouldn’t.

Well, he wouldn’t do it himself.

Instead, he would conveniently use the Ruins that were here to do so, building an

avatar that could replace the function of his Dao. Or rather, be built from his Dao.

Iam took another step forward, crossing the final barriers with ease and appearing before the Inheritance. With one hand, he waved out a strong pulse of Control, and with the other, he grasped Fate.

The Inheritance was sucked into the former, while a great surge of Quasi-Embryonic Qi was sucked into the other.

If Ryu had been there, he would have realized that Iam had actually just done exactly

what he had. He took all the Fate for himself, cutting off the Ruin Master Guild’s piece. Except, unlike Ryu, rather than storing all that Fate away, he began to form it, mold it. His gaze flickered with dense lightning as an avatar of him formed…

And then he took out something else.

A crystalline armor.

Once again, this was something that Ryu would have recognized immediately… this

material… wasn’t it the very same one that his daggers were formed from? The very same material he had stolen away that day? The very material that formed the weapons he simply didn’t care to use any longer because they would only hinder his

progress?

And now, when lam slipped this armor on… his avatar fused into his body, and the volatile air around him shifted and calmed.

Now… he could be more relaxed.

It seemed that he would be able to hunt a certain Ryu Tatsuya very soon.