Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu snapped his eyes open a long while later. He had lost himself in cultivation and he didn't seem to care very much for the next round. In reality, though, he was only being smart.

Once the second round was over, the strength boost that the Diamond Protector Spirit had given him, not to mention the other three sets of 999 Protector Spirits of various grades that he had gathered, would all be gone. In that situation, his ability to climb cultivation ranks to challenge them would be limited and he would need to be far more cautious. It could be uttered that there was a potential chance this might be the last one he would receive for a while, depending on how the next round would go.

As expected, all around Ryu, there was a familiar treasure room. Though, he used the term "familiar", loosely. That was because while this treasure room looked almost identical to the one he had seen after the first round, the rewards were even more tantalizing.

Just the first one Ryu saw was of a Dao Lord Treasure, and he very much doubted that it was the strongest thing here. The gap between Omniscient and Dao Lord didn't need to be described, but it should be understood that it was enormous. This gap was as large as the gap between Omniscient and True.

It was clearly a honeyed trap. The Heavenly Path wanted to test the resolve of the survivors once again to persevere, and this time, many might really come to fall. After all, Ryu had taken the largest benefits from the first round, and what the others had received might very well be limited. Some might see a treasure room with treasures that hadn't improved at all, or maybe their selection of treasures might be even worse than the first round.

Would they gamble on a better result? Or would they simply just take what they could get and accept things as they were?

Did they have the resolve of a cultivator?

Ryu stood and shook out his arm. He could feel a power surging through him and a confidence in his gait. He had already been confident, but that was most an internal matter, something driven by his own heart and his own thoughts.

But right now, it was as though the tune of the universe itself was singing with him, as though the Lines of Fate had aligned and the Heavens felt that he most definitely did have the right to be confident.

'It went well, but I wonder how much more I have left to give!'

Ryu wasn't exactly new to the idea of infusing his vessel, or Realm Heart, with high level energies. In fact, back in Sacrum he had used Qi Pulses to raise its level. And after coming to the True Martial World, he had made use of Heavenly Favor to progress it as well.

But the method taught to him by the Heavens was different, and infusing might not even be the right way to describe it. In fact, the method almost sensed like he was destroying his Realm Heart rather than improving it.

After a few hours, he sensed that he had reached the first stage. The Heavens called this the Initial Success of Chaos, or an Initial Child of Chaos.

If Ryu had been aware of this method long ago, he might have already progressed much further than just this, but this was all he could hope for right now.

According to his calculations if he wasn't to form a Small Child of Chaos constitution, it would probably take him several more days. Beyond that, it would take weeks, then months, then years. If he wanted to reach the Great Circle of Perfection, for one, it was unknown if his imperfect vessel could even handle going beyond 100% infusion, and second, even becoming a Dao God might not be enough.

Even so, the fact that he had a clear pathway from Initial to Complete just went to show how lucky he was. If he had stumbled into a weaker version of a vessel, like a low tier one, for example, not only would it take far more than just a few hours to reach Initial Success, he would be capped at Small Success for the rest of his life.

But he wouldn't need to worry about that. What he did need to worry about, though, was the odd movement in his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation.

His Spiritual Foundation had clearly formed a home in his Realm Heart, and changes to the latter would impact the former. But he didn't quite know how.

The Heavens had mapped out a path for him, but it had already taken him over a day to outline the path of his Chaotic Silk Meridians up until this point, and his Spiritual Foundation seemed to be even more difficult to manage than that. On top of that, there was the added layer of complexity that came from trying to marry not just one path, but two of them.

Ryu sensed that it was okay to stall for time here a bit, but he didn't want to end up wasting too much time, or else he would start the next round too far behind again. There needed to be a balance, like all things.

The Lines of Fate the Heavens had drawn for him weren't going away just yet, and he could still sense them with resounding clarity. He would just have to wait to see what his Spiritual Foundation was trying to whisper to him.

With that thought, Ryu's body flashed and he exited the treasure room, not even glancing at what was around him.

A flash of blinding white light assaulted his senses.

When Ryu appeared, he saw an endless sea of pillars and almost couldn't refrain from chuckling. It appeared that testers in the Heavens were very much fond of pillars, though he had to wonder what that meant for the little woman.