Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu didn't expect to be interrupted. It had been months since he had entered this round and those that he came across tended to steer well clear of him, even when he had this swirling pillar of Bronze, Silver and Gold around him.

However, up ahead, over 10 kilometers away, he could see a young man in black robes. This distance wasn't enough to tell if a person had come for you, at least by normal standards. But even at this distance, Ryu was quite certain.

His steps came to a stop and he continued to look ahead indifferently. He didn't seem to have any intention of closing the distance for this person, not that 10 kilometers was a large distance considering their cultivation realms. Even so, that didn't stop the black robed young man from being surprised.

Ryu had spotted him not from 10 kilometers away, but from over a hundred. The dense trees didn't seem to impede his sight at all, and the only reason he had continued forward was because this was the direction of his next target. But seeing that this person was also observing him from so far away, he felt that he wasn't planning on vanishing like all the others had.

He didn't say anything, just standing in place, looking at the young man. Usually, one might feel some pressure to speak, but it was as though Ryu was looking at air. His cheery mood had vanished and it was replaced by his usual cold demeanor. He didn't feel like this person was a friend, and no amount of smiling on their part would change that.

The black robed young man blinked. He had expected Ryu to notice him only when they were within a kilometer of each other. He hadn't exactly tried to hide himself, he was just waiting outside the barrier of Ryu's destination, waiting for him to approach. Just behind him, there was a monkey Golden Protector Spirit that he knew was Ryu's target.

Ryu's wrist trembled slightly, and suddenly all of the trees in the ten kilometer radius between himself and this man were shredded. First they were cut off once, rising into the air from their trunks upward, and then by some mysterious force of the wind, they were split into countless strips of wood, raining down in such a fine mist that the skies somehow still remained clear.

The black robed young man pursed his lips into a smile, looking down at his robes. There was a single line going through them, though they quickly healed, his smile couldn't help but brighten.

"Sorry, sorry. My name is-"

"Not interested," Ryu replied lightly. "Draw your blade or piss off."

There was an uncomfortable feeling in Ryu's chest, it was the kind of feeling he got whenever people tried to challenge him. He abhorred that feeling. Testing him implied that someone else deemed themselves above himself, worthy of standing above him and casting judgment on him and his accomplishments. This was something he would always hate, no matter what changed about him.

The black robed young man blinked. It was hard to tell if he was surprised because he lagged a bit in being mad, or if it was because he had truly never met someone like Ryu before.

Then, he suddenly laughed. "I didn't want to fight you, I just wanted to play a game. Aren't you interested?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Not even if it was a competition for our Protector Spirits? It would be fun, no? And quite high stakes. You could gain all the hard work I've put in for these last few months in an instant so long as you win."

Ryu didn't say anything. His silence only lasted for a split moment before he moved, but in that fraction of a second, his thoughts swirled with many things.

In a "bet" like this one, without a third party, who would be the arbitrator of this bet? How would the other force one of them to keep their word? Why would they trust the other?

It all came down to a single thing: this man didn't think he needed an arbitrator because he believed that he could make Ryu comply when he ran. It was nothing but a farce from the very beginning, and Ryu didn't have the patience for it.

The black robed young man was astonished once again. He locked down space around him, prepared to battle, but to his surprise, his senses suddenly flared. Tunnels of space opened up all around him, encircling him in a tight bind and it was impossible to tell which one Ryu would come from. It was as though he was coming from all directions at once and yet none at all.

In the distance, Ryu's afterimage had still yet to fade, but the attack was upon the young man.

To the young man's surprise, as his perceptions were flaring out, wondering which direction Ryu would come from, Ryu came right from his very front, his blades swinging down with a mighty force right before the former's eyes.

The black robed youth blinked, seemingly slow to react. This Ryu that Adlael had been interested in was quite... curious.

Having a Half-Step Dao God as an Ancestor was interesting enough, but to be this... well, odd, was another layer of mystery that left him quite baffled, especially since he seemed to have seen through the truth of this round.

After a moment of what gazed like hesitation, but was instead a casual thought, the black robed youth struck out with a palm...And hit nothing but air.

Ryu had suddenly vanished again. The black robed youth realized too late that the portals around him and never closed, not only that but they had looped and been layered around one another intertwining in a mess of spatial qi that he didn't have nearly enough affinity to see through. The only way to deal with them was to crush them by brute force, but by the time he crushed one layer, ten more would show up in its place, and if he made a second attempt, Ryu's blade would descend.

BANG!

He miscalculated. His body was sent flying forward. Somehow, Ryu's blade strike was even faster now than it had been before.

Ryu didn't even look at the young man, his blade pointed toward the monkey spirit from just outside the territory boundaries. His spatial qi condensed and quaked and he suddenly moved.

In a flash, the monkey spirit froze, rising up into the air under a mysterious power before it was shredded to pieces by countless silver radiant blades.