Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu couldn't feel anything. He saw nothing but darkness, the only exception being a slight spark of blue in the far off distance. But this blue wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, it was instead the power of the Diamond Protector Spirit engulfing his senses. He ignored it, focusing on the darkness.

Suddenly, slashes of red, gold and blue appeared all around him. They seemed intent on slicing him to pieces.

He could feel his body being pulled in several directions. One part wanted to crush them with absolute strength, another part wanted him to slide by and dodge flexibly, another part wanted him to roar and force them into submission.

Each and every one of his Bloodlines, even while fused, had their own ideas on how to deal with the situation, and what made it worse was that just picking one didn't seem to make sense. There was another layer of complexity that Ryu had neglected to mention earlier, and that was that all of these Bloodline memories that had managed to make it so far, came from absolute experts who had one stood at the top of their cultivation paths.

How would such existences react to being in the body of a weakling like Ryu? Would they even be able to acknowledge the fact that they weren't as powerful as they once were? Were these attacks possible to crush? Was he even fast enough to dodge them? Could he roar them into submission?

He didn't know the answer to any of these questions and the pressure of indecision weighed down on him. There was no path that seemed correct, they all felt wrong.

He took a step and felt a searing pain rack his body, dulled by the occupation of his mind. It was hard to tell if he had just been grazed, or if he had lost an entire limb, but he still didn't open his eyes.

The flashing lights overwhelmed him again. There seemed to be even more attackers now, a large number of them, and there seemed to still be more coming from the distance. His world of black was overwhelmed by blades of light, varying in color and spanning across the entire rainbow.

He once again felt the several pulls on his body, each one wanting him to do something different. His instinct was to rein in control of his blood, to command it as it was his. But in this situation, this wasn't an option. If he didn't, then he would have to rely on his own combat prowess right now, and his mind wasn't nearly sharp enough to do so.

The only way forward was to find a kernel that linked them all, to find a method of counter attacking that aligned with all of them. But even as he tried, he was starting to get more and more frustrated. As he continued to move, he continued to get hit, and for all he knew, he was on his last breath and the only thing burning within him was his frustration.

He had gone through all of this trouble to fuse his Bloodlines, even giving up the talents that he had painstakingly awakened, and for what?

The boost to his body was negligible compared to his cultivation method. His Bloodlines had once been the leading reason for his strong body, but now he was entirely reliant on a cultivation method that made him stronger in some aspects, but far weaker in others.

The Nine Pillar Flame Sect's Body Realm Cultivation method made him more powerful in body than any Nine Life Revolution expert should be, and yet it was the reason one of his strongest trump card, his Embryonic Qi, was now suddenly far more useful on others than it was on himself. It was a double edged sword that swung at him every time he swung at an enemy.

The frustration of his breakthrough came boiling over.

He had just made the greatest breakthrough of his life, allowing his Dao to accomplish something he was certain that, at the very least, no one on the Seventh Heaven had accomplished before. And yet, just mere minutes later, he was reminded of how far he had to go by the little woman's [Absolute Domain] technique.

Every time he made a huge breakthrough and he thought himself to have taken a large leap forward, he would find out soon afterward that he wasn't nearly as strong as he thought himself to be. He was one person trying to fight against the foundation of lineages that had existed for periods of times even Dao Lords couldn't possibly put into context.

This frustration wasn't something that Ryu would usually feel so violently. He wasn't a child, he knew the world wasn't fair, and he didn't expect it to be. The usual him would have already shrugged it off, but the him that had most of his mental faculties occupied by something so ridiculous caused the usual protections he had in place and much of his rationality to fly out of the window.

"Fuck off!" Ryu suddenly roared, annoyed by his Bloodlines being pulled in so many different directions.

If he had been aware of what was going on, he could have come up with a far better solution. Maybe he could have used his new Internal Matrix to try and filter out the coming suggestions and then only allow the one he felt made the most sense to activate. That would slow down the reactions by a small measure, but if he grew used to it and created a formation adjacent, just to focus on this one task, then he might be able to slow down the lag until it was truly negligible.

But he didn't even have the mind to come up with plans right now, and his disappointment quickly became the only thing that he could focus on, like a child whose mind had been consumed by their unhappiness, he lashed out.

His Boundless Cosmos Bone Structure released his Cosmos Fog into his body, wrapping around his blood vessels and squeezing them down. The raging pull and voices were cut to nothing and Ryu suddenly felt an avalanche of even greater pain. Without his Bloodlines to guide his steps, the attacks bombarded against him from all sides, and it was only his circulating Embryonic Qi that kept him on his feet.

His frustration grew and he suddenly lashed out. He threw out a fist with all of his strength, a violent roar leaving his lips.

He felt as though he was ripping everything in his path away, and without even noticing it, his Bloodlines had fallen into a line.

...

Ryu's rampage was catastrophic. He didn't even seem to open his eyes, but his physique was covered in both his own blood and that of everyone else. Corpses were strewn around him and his power had a lethality that didn't match the size of his body.

To his back, five monstrous beasts stood, each one just as imposing and mighty as the last.

The Fire Dragon, ruby-scaled and wings opened wide, raised its long neck and roared.

The Lightning Qilin's hooves trembled with black clouds and vibrant royal blue lightning.

The Dark Phoenix, the Fire Phoenix, and the Ice Phoenix all flickered between a physique of incorporeal flames and a corporeal body wreathed and the most gorgeous of intricately sculpted feathers.

The auras that radiated as one brought many to their knees. When Ryu appeared before their kneeling forms, they couldn't even mount a resistance, finding their heads twisted off and their torsos bloodied with an extra bowl sized hole.

The five beasts began to shimmer as though forming a formation of sorts, but seemed to be lacking something to take that final step. Even so, it didn't seem to matter at all, the suffocating weight of their emanations bearing down with full, overpowering might.

In the distance, Selheira faced off against Ramon. She hadn't been able to get close from the beginning, this mysterious figure appearing to block her path. She didn't even know who this person was, but no matter what she did, she couldn't get by him at all.

When she felt the sudden change, her raging bloodline settled and her eyes opened wide.

Litaor was thrown away like a broken rag doll, Reykian had an arm ripped from his shoulder and a leg broken in the wrong direction.

"This..." she mumbled to herself, not understanding what was happening.

Of course, she knew better than most. Those were definitely Bloodline Phenomena. But they should only be able to appear in the strongest of each race. Ryu himself had activated them before, but that was only in Sacrum. It had been impossible to even think of doing so in the True Martial World, he was too far away from it. The Strings of Karma here were too powerful to allow a human to tap into such things.

But even if Ryu could succeed with one? How could they be okay with sharing space with the others?

It was right then that a sixth beast appeared. A Phoenix wreathed in golden flames rose up and roared with a sonorous call that made one feel as though it was tapping into the very embodiment of nature itself.

Ryu's strength soared again and his punches and kicks became more furious. Ramon looked toward what was happening and his eyes narrowed. But then he looked toward Selheira as well as though something else had caught his interest too.

"I see, no wonder. Now, veiled beauty. Would you mind telling me what a Crystal Dragon is doing walking around amongst humans?"

Selheira's eyes snapped back toward Ramon, her radiant blue eyes suddenly becoming a stream of rainbow as her pupils turned into slits and her white hair began to emit its own rainbow colored light.

"Speak again and I'll kill you right here."