Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

"This energy..."

The milky energy that ran through his Meridians was objectively quite little. Due to the robustness of his Meridians, Ryu was very much used to having qi pushing right up against his limits to a point the meridians of most others would burst.

However, this small amount of energy felt absolutely magical. Setting aside just how comfortable it felt with it gliding through his veins, the lightness of his body felt particularly foreign. He realized that it wasn't just because he was well rested, but also because there were fundamental changes to him.

A suppression he hadn't quite been aware of had been lifted, for one. As a foreigner to the True Martial World, he hadn't perfectly assimilated. Something like that would take decades, but now he was perfectly suited to this location.

Ryu's heart lurched. Looking at his Realm Heart, it had already broken into the Cosmic Grades. Not just this, but it was already on the verge of entering the second Comic Grade, reserved for World Sea Realm experts.

This was a shocking change, especially for just a single year.

It had to be understood that originally, Ryu had only been able to say that it would take him a few days to reach the first Cosmic Grade with his Realm Heart because it had long since reached perfection of the Immortal Grades. It was just a single half step from the Cosmic Grades.

However, evolving beyond that would take time, a lot of it. To go from the lowest reaches of the first Cosmic Grade, to perfection of the first Cosmic Grade in just a little over a year... That was absolutely astounding.

Ryu didn't believe that this was just a change caused by Essence and Chaos Qi, this milky energy, this Embryonic Qi, definitely played a huge role.

Ryu quickly looked toward the rest of his body but he didn't find any huge changes outside of his blood also running far smoother, that was until he looked toward his bones.

Ryu's brows jumped once again, looking at his Heavenly Chaos Bone Structure with a deeply contemplative look. The changes to it didn't seem to be immediately obvious, but the more he looked, the more astonished he felt.

If he had to describe the feeling, it was like his Bone Structure had taken perfect root in his body.

Whenever a mutation occurred, there was always the chance that it could have poor cascading effects, and that was especially so for Ryu's Bone Structure, this was because without this particular Bone Structure, whether Sacrum or not, it would have been impossible for Ryu to be born with so many opposing Bloodlines. If anything ever went wrong with his Bone Structure, death wouldn't be far off. Namely, Ryu had to keep the Balance Aspect of his Bone Structure in line.

However, at the same time, Ryu faced another problem, one that he had been ignoring until now, and that was that if his Bone Stucture remained at Ancestral Grade, how could he ever accommodate more powerful Bloodlines?

With the Balance Aspect of his Bone Structure also tied to the Ancestral Grade, it couldn't possibly hope to force balance in Bloodlines that were far beyond it.

That put Ryu in a bit of an awkward situation. On one hand, he needed his Bone Structure to evolve just so that he could continue to improve his Bloodlines without worry about his body eating itself alive. But on the other hand, if he accidentally went down a poor path of cultivation, then he would lose the aspects of his Bone Structure that allowed him to maintain balance in the first place.

Luckily, the first mutation Ryu had undergone was undergone by two of his most opposed Bloodlines, his Fire Dragon and Lightning Qilin Bloodlines. Due to it being catalyzed by them, the adverse effects had been limited.

And even luckier than that, or so it seemed, his second mutation was related to balance...

But this wasn't entirely true, now was it?

The Shadowlight Sky God's Godhood wasn't related to balance, in fact more accurately, it was related to taking advantage of imbalance and finding power within that. This was a subtle difference, but it was a difference nonetheless.

While stabilization would eventually come, it first required suffering, which obviously required allowing his Bloodlines to clash in the first place. But if this was allowed in the first place, there was no telling what might happen in the future.

This ticking time bomb, though... seemed to have entirely disappeared. It was hard to describe, but it felt like the Embryonic Qi was able to bring Ryu back to his origin. It was like it could sense the talents that the Heavens had originally granted him, and then was able to slowly guide him back toward that path.

On the one hand, that meant he couldn't just swallow as much Embryonic Qi as he wanted. This made sense, Embryonic Qi wasn't some cheat code, or else there would be a tragic number of mothers and their unborn children who suffered fates worse than death.

However, what this did mean was that Ryu could force his body to evolve and rely on Embryonic Qi as a "reset" of sorts. It would never make him weaker, but would rather strengthen him by optimizing the changes in his body to perfection.

This change was enormous because it was akin to a mysterious energy consolidating all of Ryu's improvements into a single path that suited him the most. He had guessed that after some rest, his strength would at least double. But with the way things were looking now, his power hadn't just doubled.

Ryu suddenly punched out. His entire body flowed like water, as though he was a newborn.

Ryu's eyes narrowed, his punch still hanging in the air. His gaze flickered for a long while before they became decisive.

With a light grunt, Ryu shopped down at his own arm with a great amount of force, coating his hand in qi.

PCHU!

His entire arm was severed from the elbow, falling to the ground with a sickening plop, and yet Ryu's expression didn't so much as change.