Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

1753 Not Just Yet

Ryu was baffled. Even after several moments, he hadn't managed to come up with a solid answer, and it was beginning to annoy him.

He absolutely hated being suppressed like this. Part of the reason his personality had become so cold in his first life was because his constant inability to cultivate despite having the will and desire to was an attack on his mind every day.

This situation didn't feel much different.

The fact the other participants should be experiencing the same things should have comforted him, but it didn't.

He was definitely, by far, the one being suppressed the most because he had lost all of his most powerful abilities.

If he still had access to his full range, he would have comprehended this already.

'Nether Qi…'

Ryu's eyes narrowed.

First, he chose to take a step back. He was used to leaping over several bridges of logic and coming to an immediate conclusion. So this time, he would just have to cross each one of those bridges slowly.

So, instead of trying to absorb more Nether Qi, he focused on the changes to his actual soul.

What happened to his strength? Was there was a substantial leap? Did it regress? What about the limits of his Spiritual Sea? Did they increase? Regress? Stay the same?

Ryu began to build a list of checkpoints, going through them one by one until he built a solid picture of what happened.

That was when he realized something incredibly important.

This wasn't normal cultivation. He had been trying to repair his soul. That meant that he hadn't been adding Nether Qi Spiritual Quintessence on top of his foundation. But rather, he was adding it to his foundation instead.

This had clearly caused a great array of changes that he wasn't quite ready for.

The Nether Qi, its boundaries, the amount of space it took up, etc, were all different from what he was used to.

But it wasn't just the Nether Qi Spiritual Quintessence alone, but also its interaction with Real Qi Spiritual Quintessence.

It somehow made his soul feel… fuller.

'So that's what it is…'

Ryu finally settled on a conclusion, and he realized that this was only possible because he had a Perfect Blackbody. No one else could reform the foundation of their soul like this, not without suffering severe after effects.

It seemed that the interaction and balance between Real Qi and Nether Qi had resulted in this effect. But there was still something Ryu didn't understand.

Usually, he used Chaos Qi and turned it directly into Spiritual Quintessence. Chaos Qi was categorized as a form of Real Qi, but it wasn't quite the same as what one might expect from it.

Even further, Ryu didn't always use his Chaos Qi. Back when he had to hide his Chaotic Silk Meridians at all costs, he would just absorb normal ambient Real Qi.

He had never considered what changes this might cause to his Spiritual Quintessence.

But now, he couldn't help but wonder. Had he been too random with what kind of qi he used to form his Spiritual Quintessence? Was there a real, tangible difference?

What Ryu didn't know was that the only reason he could be so casual with what kind of qi he used was precisely because he had a Perfect Blackbody soul.

His soul allowed him nigh endless flexibility in how it was used and how he applied its strength. This was the only reason this was possible.

A Dream Wraith could never use Real Qi to form their Spiritual Quintessence, and a Faerie or Fey couldn't do that either.

Ryu was slowly piecing this together, and he seemed to realize now that there were likely some aspects of the Perfect Blackbody that had still yet to be fully explored… it was either that or he had yet to come into contact with these truths much like how the secrets of the Chaotic Silk Meridians had been hidden from him as well.

After some thought, Ryu continued to absorb Nether Qi and turn it into Spiritual Quintessence.

His recovery was fast, and his cultivation continued to skyrocket.

He just felt so…

Full.

His Spiritual Sea was almost bloated in a way he had never experienced before. He was used to it expanding nigh infinitely, but now it seemed to be showing some slight discomfort.

Ryu realized that his Spiritual Sea had, indeed, shrunk. But by contrast, it was still far more powerful than it had been in the past. One strand of his Spiritual Quintessence was now worth triple of what it had been in the past, and that shocked Ryu…

Because he had only changed 20% of his Spiritual Sea.

After some hesitation, Ryu pressed a hand to forehead and tore away another 30% of his soul.

The excruciating pain hardly made his pupils constrict, as though he were forged by fire.

Soon, his Spiritual Sea was half-formed of Nether Qi Spiritual Quintessence and another half-formed by Real Qi Spiritual Quintessence.

The bloated feeling actually disappeared, as though this was the balance his Spiritual Sea had been chasing after all the while.

Now, if before a strand of his Spiritual Quintessence had been worth three, it was now worth ten.

The shocking part about this was that this had nothing to do with his breakthrough into the True Realm. These calculations were based on his deductions for how strong he would have been had his soul broken through the normal way.

This change was shocking. To be worth ten times as powerful, his soul, which could easily crush those a Realm above now could seem to easily do the same for two Realms above now.

Under these circumstances, even if he ran into another Dream Wraith now, even if he lacked in skill compared to them, he could easily brute force his way to stopping them.

His mind felt clearer than it ever had before, and he realized that he wasn't finished just yet…