Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

1701 Read It. Mold It.

Almost instantly, Ryu could feel the strength of a Rank Four Heavenly Pupils. No… right now, they should be the Rank Three.

Space bent and twisted so fiercely that the battlefield was immediately split into two. It no longer felt like a battle between two existences, but rather two worlds.

One was dark and brooding, forming swirls of reality that one couldn't look at straight without harming their eyes.

The other was dark as well, but in a different sort of way. The clouds rumbled and lightning sparked. There were only two points of light at all, one being a young man wreathed in shimmering white scales, and the other being a bright silver star that shone down as the only luminescence in the world.

At this point, even Lu'card's beautiful silver scales had become dark. His wings spread wide, blackholes forming in each and every one of his scales.

By their third clash, Ryu was sent flying.

He crashed into a mountain range that quickly crumbled beneath the sudden impact.

Selheira covered her mouth, her temper almost getting the best of her for a moment, but she held back. She could feel her husband's thoughts… his excitement.

BOOM!

Ryu shot into the skies once more, looking toward Lu'card with a blazing fire in his eyes. His clothing looked ragged, but his body seemed to be perfectly fine.

He ripped his robes to the side, revealing a dense pack of scales that followed the outline of his chiseled silhouette dancing beneath a shimmering armor blue steel.

He wasn't the only one that could synergize his abilities. It could be said that a Spatial Dragon born with Blackhole Pupils was broken, truly broken in the worst of ways.

Now, not only were each one of Lu'card's scales practically a spatial world of their own, but they also contained the violent devouring aspects of his Heavenly Pupils.

Right now, he looked like a legendary black Dragon, blotting out the skies with his wings.

His maw opened wide, a roar that could collapse worlds echoing from him as a vortex of black shards of broken space rushed out from him and toward Ryu.

Ryu took a step forward, his Founding Dao rising high into the skies.

[Heaven's Gate].

He stepped through Heaven's Gate and his cultivation soared to the True Sky God Realm.

He punched out, sparks of lightning ripping the torrent of space apart.

He retracted his fist and raised his other hand. A claw glistened within his gauntlet, the furious barrage of Heavenly Tribulation Lightning falling with greater and greater fervor.

Dragon's Claw.

Lu'card flapped his wings, a pair of blackholes rolling forward and blocking before him.

Sparks flew and the Heavenly Laws trembled. For a moment, it almost looked as though three rotating blades had clashed in the skies. Just a single spark razed down a forest, the cacophonous booms forcing the Dragons below to retreat again and again.

Ryu suddenly took a step as he activated AbsoluteDomainAbsoluteDomain. Between his Spacetime Soul Nature and this undeniable movement technique, even his control of space began to faintly catch up to Lu'card's.

He appeared on the other side of the Dragon's twisted blackhole. He had spent ten years in such a space… why would he fear it?

A fist rammed into Lu'card's chest like booming thunder, sending him flying out even further than Ryu had.

The Spatial Dragon's enormous body rolled through the ground, unleashing a devastation that shook the heart. His body seemed to already be faintly approaching the weight of a world, every time he collided with something, they disintegrated as though the greatest touch of destruction had spared them from living.

"Spatial World!" Lu'card roared.

"Storm!" Ryu's voice echoed.

A wave of dejavu hit them both, but it didn't slow them down in the slightest.

Ryu harnessed the Tribulation Lightning that had been accumulating above him.

Spears, glaives, halberds, swords, sabers… weapons of all shapes and sizes, radiating with dense Godhoods took shape. Somehow, each and everyone radiated the aura of an absolute master, and when Ryu took a step forward and punched out, they moved with him.

A world of reflective glass formed around Lu'card. Ryu remembered this world well, but the difference was that this time, the mirrors that formed looked to be shaped from black ice.

Up became down and left became right, and honestly speaking, this was just the simplest way to describe it. If someone without spatial affinity took a step into this world, it would rather seem like direction had no meaning at all, like reality had crumbled entirely.

A clash of the void and lightning erupted. Sparks flew and spatial fragments rained down. The absolute carnage of black and radiant blue was akin to a painting of the Gods, one small human and an enormous black Dragon seemingly taking hold of an era in their palms and claws.

They flickered and vanished continuously, only appearing for brief instances of time to erupt with strength that collapsed the void itself. Even a Transcendent Sky God hiding in space to watch this battle would have been forced to escape continuously.

Void Claw.

Lu'card suddenly swiped down in an arc that it seemed Ryu would be able to step out of. But the moment Ryu took a single step back, ready to explode forward in the next instant, he found a terrible pressure pressing down on him from above.

BANG! Ryu crossed his arms above his head before being driven down to the ground below. He landed so heavily on his feet that the earth fragmented into pieces, large cubical boxes of rock and soul flying up and out.

Lu'card followed up with a tail whip that crackled almost like black lightning. However, Ryu could tell with a glance that it only looked like that because everywhere it passed, space fragmented like glass.

A wild grin spread across Ryu's face.

BOOM!

The Immortal Sakura appeared high above Ryu's head and his blue steel armor gained a sheen of crystalline ice. If before the blue color was somewhat muted and restrained, right now it was so bright that it was hard even to look at him.

Ice Phoenix Heavenly Patterns coated his body from head to toe as the call of the ancient bird filled the skies.

Ice Flames erupted across his body as his hand clamped down on Lu'card's tail. The cold was so fierce that the shattered space was forced to solidify once again, almost healing.

Ryu had realized that his close combat abilities were lacking. He was surprised to find that while he was exceptionally good at using them to target and counter humanoids, against a beast as large as Lu'card, he almost preferred to have a weapon in his hand.

However, he had already taken a step onto this path and he didn't believe that it was the wrong one. Using his body as a weapon was maybe the greatest breakthrough he had had in his entire life.

In that case, what he was missing wasn't yet another method he had to learn, but rather he needed something that either supplemented or bolstered what he already had.

The rain of weapons from earlier, a storm of attacks he had created on a whim, filled him with a bout of inspiration. He had never lost his God Aura, he had just incorporated it all into his body.

But who said weapons had to be in his hands to be used?

Ryu roared and lifted himself out of the hole Lu'card had pressed him into. With a wave of his hand, the Dragon's tail was sent flying and he shot out of the earth.

In that moment, he looked like a blue Phoenix soaring into the skies.

Blue lightning crackled within his blue flames, the world fragmenting like glass as the cold continued to spread.

Chichichichichi

"Since you insist on being so stubborn, it seems I'll have to show you what the true number one Heavenly Pupils can do."

Lu'card caught himself in the air, rising up higher. He bared his teeth, a row of perfect, white and sharp, glistening pearls contrasting his deep black hue.

"Number one? You're stuck in the past."

Ryu's grin widened. "No. I'm just secure in the future."

Suddenly, Ryu's eyes widened and his pupils constricted. A sharp light radiated from his gaze as his towering horns sparked with lightning and ice.

[Lines of Fate].

The world turned to bundles of black, white and grey threads in his eyes.

Everyone spoke about how powerful Heaven's Gate was, some even felt that [Rob the World of its Color] might be the most underrated of his eye's ability, some chose [Intuition, others felt that [Death Acupoint] had to be the strongest of them all… what was it like to be able to decide a person's life and death with a single poke?

But in Ryu's opinion, the strongest abilities of his eyes were the most fundamental and also the one that was the first to awaken.

When [Lines of Fate] descended onto the world, everything was in his grasp.

Why was he so secure in his future?

Because he could read it. Because he could mold it in his very own hands.