Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu stood in silence high in the skies. The Ice Shrine was beneath him, its cool winds lapping against his skin.

On his face, all his rage seemed to have vanished as he smiled lightly.

‘Soon. If I’m correct… then soon…’

It was rare for Ryu to doubt his own deductions like this, but this time, even he didn’t dare to confirm it with any 100% certainty. The disappointment he would feel if he was incorrect wasn’t something he was sure he could take.

Not when his momentum was riding so high right now.

‘So close…’

Ryu reached up to the skies, grabbing at the sun’s rays. He could almost smell that mountain peak.

Shrine Mountain trembled.

Ryu finally looked down below him, his gaze returning to its calm.

“You’ve always been there, trying to tell me something. Do you want to tell me who left that human skin tome at some point?”

The mountain trembled again and Ryu’s lip curled.

“Me? That really does sound like something I’d do. I bet I made it with the skin of the Martial Gods, didn’t I?”

The mountain trembled again.

Ryu’s laughter filled the skies. Sometimes, he really could be a sadistic bastard. But who asked them to come after his family? They got what they deserved.

They wanted to treat his Tatsuya Clan like some experimental subject they could suppress and control as they pleased? Well, he would use them in his own research.

What better template was there outside of the Martial Gods for the growth of corpse puppets? Their Bloodlines were the most pliable, least reliant on Fate that Ryu had ever seen, able to change and warp as they pleased.

He had quite the good idea if he did say so himself.

“I guess it’s about time. Break through.”

Ryu said these words as though he was commanding the world to give him power. But more shocking than that was the fact the world actually responded.

Chi.

The glass ceiling blocking Ryu shattered to pieces, his cultivation skyrocketing from Quasi Lord to Lord.

Plumes of energy flooded toward him from all directions, his body greedily swallowing up everything.

His Dao Heart directed everything, far more powerful than it had been the first time. His control had already dwarfed that of a Dao God, and somehow, it only seemed to be growing stronger.

When he first began his cultivation journey, he cared for no one. To him, the only difference between himself and them…

Was time.

Ironically enough, time itself had borne that out. After all these years, these decades, this just over a century, he had reached that step.

The Shrines of Sacrum trembled and energies flooded into his body even faster. As though he was a bottomless well, he moved from Lower Lord to Middle, and then from Middle to Higher, and then from Higher to Peak.

While the commotion was raging around him, Ryu couldn’t hear it at all. The only things echoing in his ears were a heartbeat, not one that was his own… but rather one that was of someone else.

His son.

The thought brought a smile to Ryu’s face.

His parents were off having their own adventures, enjoying the time together they hadn’t been able to have before. He was sure that they would be targeted, but after he realized this, how could he allow it to happen so easily?

He shrouded their Fates, protecting them from detection from others. But this also meant they wouldn’t know their grandchild was being born either.

Such a thing was enough for a sinister smile to spread across Ryu’s face.

His fingers itched, his blood rolling through his veins.

To deny his parents such an opportunity, they surely had quite the boldness.

Ryu took a deep breath and yet another glass ceiling shattered.

It was time.

Reaching Dao God? To deal with these people, he had no need to do such a thing.

Sovereign… Sovereign was enough.

BANG!

The skies swirled, dark gold pooling. But it had hardly formed when an armored arm descended from above.

Heaven’s Empyrean.

Ryu shook his head slowly. The strength gap here was truly enormous.

Back then, a Sentinel was the strongest he faced, and yet that Sentinel was already enough to stand with the geniuses of the Title Stele on its own.

The only reason Ryu had struggled so much with them was because he had been injured by the Karmic Flames. Otherwise, getting his Title would have been a walk in the park.

The gap between himself and the geniuses of this world had opened wider than anyone could fathom long ago.

‘An Empyrean, huh…?’

Aspirant… Knight… Vanguard… Sentinel…

This was already the limit of what Ryu had faced. But then…

Herald… Warden… Luminary…

And only then would one finally reach Empyrean. And yet, it was the first that appeared for Ryu this time.

But so what?

“Scram. I don’t have time for this.”

Veins of black suddenly appeared across the enormous dark gold gauntlet falling from the skies.

Like a cancer, it spread rapidly until the arm shattered to pieces. But then it continued, the tumor pulsing and crawling across the laws of the Heavens and piercing into the depths.

Ryu’s black flames commandeered the Tribulation Clouds for themselves, and then…

Ryu opened his mouth wide and inhaled.

A cyclone formed in the depths of his chest, his Dao Heart pulsing with life and vitality.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Ryu felt some resistance and his sinister grin became wider.

“I’m winning this time, bastard.”

**

Little Rock hovered high in the skies, his wings so large it cast shadows over an entire star system. There was a gentle look in his eyes as he looked down toward his son, and then back up to the skies.

If Ryu had dared to look at Little Rock back then, he would have known what the problem was immediately, and why Little Rock had chosen to grow so large.

On Little Rock’s once majestic, gorgeous, almost mythical countenance, there was a pulsing cancer of black, one filled with endless pools of corruption.

Corpse Poison.

“So tell me, Roc Emperor. I’ll ask you again. Have you agreed to be my mount yet?”

A figure stood in the depths of the endless shadows of the world, wreathed in black.

Little Rock recognized the aura all too well, though. It was too similar to his best friend in the world, his brother.

But this wasn’t his brother. It was a twisted mirror image.

And yet, just the same, it was him.

Ryu Tatsuya.

But that wasn’t all he went by. He had another name.

Patriarch of the Corpse Poison Cult.