Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Valerius thought he was truly seeing in red.

"Do you think you're worthy of such a thing?!"

SLAP!

Valerius had no idea where it came from. Ryu hadn't even taken a single step. His hand just swung and a handprint deformed his cheek and left a tooth flying into the distance.

"Every moment you don't, I'll increase the strength of that slap by 10%."

"You-"

The sound echoed even louder than before.

The beast tamer woman seemed to finally regain her bearings. "Stop right-"

Ice needles appeared once again, these ones even more robust than before, and yet somehow even less detectable than the first time.

Another slap.

This one shattered Valerius' cheekbone and part of his jaw. The side of his face swelled into a balloon.

By the time the fifth descended, Ryu was greatly disappointed. The combination of genius and youth on the Ninth Heaven left him feeling no sort of exhilaration.

Those that were both great enough geniuses and of adequate strength to fight him were still teenagers. Their minds lacked any sort of refinement, their techniques were what were passed down to them from others, and they had yet to form a single individual thought yet.

Valerius was a beast tamer. His senses were at least one par with Ryu's own if his eyes were taken out of the equation. But he couldn't even see Ryu's slaps coming because he had never faced such a thing in his life before. His mind lacked any flexibility and his battle tactics weren't nearly refined enough.

Compared to Ryu who had forgotten just how many battles he had fought just to reach this point...

This was all much too pathetic.

If it wasn't for Elena, Ryu would have regretted coming to this Heaven so early. Maybe if he had waited until he became a Transcendent Sky God first, or even a Perfect Sky God, he could have found some real opponents.

SLAP!

Valerius roared into the skies, finally so infuriated that he tapped the beast skin pouch on his hip finally. He expected his beast companions to take form in a swarm, moving to protect him...

But he received nothing of the sort.

He tapped it again, then again. His eyes widened in shock.

What was going on? Why weren't his beasts coming out?

"If this was a real battle, you would have died ten times over by now. You're pathetic."

Ryu had just wanted to test if his theory would actually work, and it seemed that he was correct. He could really make the geniuses of the Beast Mimicry Sect completely helpless. They couldn't even summon their beasts if he didn't want them to. At that point, they were just pigs to slaughter.

Ryu shook his head, about to leave when he sensed something interesting.

It wasn't that he was trying to shatter Valerius' Dao Heart. He had done so by accident to others many times before, but even though his Founding Dao was activating this time around, he wasn't actively targeting him for that purpose.

In his eyes, Valerius was just a kid. He found it hard to take him seriously in the first place.

Of course, he would have been willing to fight if there was a good battle to be had. But a child like this would be too easy to outmaneuver in battle.

There were two factors in combat. One was raw physical output, and the second was how well you used this strength, encompassing not just control, but strategy as well.

In terms of raw physical output, Ryu was weaker than even Janus from earlier. In fact, right now, he was probably the equivalent of a Low to Mid Tier Bloodline of the Martial Gods at the True Sky God Realm...

His talent had always been lagging behind... it just didn't matter.

The methods through which he could apply his strength was on another level entirely, and setting aside Transcendent Control, his eyes could see through everything and he had time to think of a myriad of ways to react before his opponent could.

If Ryu suppressed his usual battle instincts, he could begrudgingly make it an interesting battle... but what was the point? To boost this brat's ego?

But just now, Ryu sensed something interesting.

Valerius fell into silence, his roars disappeared as he looked down. His head covered his eyes and Ryu could see a beating heart in his chest, glowing with a bright red glow.

There were two ways people could take failure.

The first was to crumble like Ryu had seen many times before.

And the other way was this.

Valerius looked up, his eyes sparking with golden trails of lightning as his Spiritual Quintessence rippled.

Ryu suddenly felt the world solidify to the point that using his Spacetime Soul Nature felt like pulling teeth, and then he saw several ripples form in the skies, as though the vast expanse had become a lake of cold and several pebbles had been tossed into their depths.

Out from these ripples, the maws from vengeful beasts began to open wide. They didn't have corporeal bodies, and this was clear some sort of high-class Visualization, but their auras were palpable.

"Oh... you finally started using your brain."

Ryu could feel hints of danger blooming in his heart, his senses caused his hair to stand on end. He realized that this wasn't himself, but rather his Bloodlines. He understood now why his mother-in-law had said it might be a problem to go to this Sect.

His lip curled and a fiendish grin spread across his face.

Seeing this scene, Elena's heart skipped a beat. She had seen that smile once before, that smile Ryu had worn before he fought an army of Martial Gods all on his own. It was also a smile she had never seen during their first life together...

She knew that this was as much a part of Ryu as anything else.

That lust for battle, that love of competition, that endless trek to the top of all there was or ever would be.

Ryu activated his Bloodmancy and the invisible chains on his body shattered, his body erupting with white scales as a howl shot through the skies.

He and Valerius exploded forth at the same time.