Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu was indifferent to this change, but inwardly, he felt a tremble. He was very much used to this tremble, it was the very same thing he had felt that day the Heavens descended on Elena's ceremony.

Feeling this, Ryu's lip curled. That was exactly how it should be. His Bloodlines were in service of him, not the other way around. If not for his family, after what they did to him that day, a day he saw as nothing short of a humiliating one, he would have long since purged these Bloodlines from his body.

Suddenly, the gloominess Ryu had been feeling over the past few days vanished into thin air, a cold smile spreading across his face.

He instantly thought of a few things.

For one, if he could use his chains like this, then it wasn't impossible to mitigate the risk of using his Dao on his body.

Secondly, where did the strength of his Heavenly Chaos Bone Structure come from? Wasn't it through an imbalance?

The function of the Shadowlight Sky God's Inheritance was in taking an imbalance and forcing his body to balance it. Through that process, he strengthened his body. The fact he used Light and Dark Qi hardly mattered, which was why Ryu had been able to use Essence and Chaos Qi.

Logically, if Ryu let his Bloodline rampage within his body as they pleased and used the methods of the Shadowlight Sky God to strengthen himself, then the results would be extraordinary. And, now that he had a method of reeling them in and controlling them when that time came, it was most definitely worthwhile to try.

With a flick of his finger, Ryu opened The Compendium, allowing several pages to flutter open as he placed large amounts of blood on each one.

Ryu's gaze glowed as he watched the result. At that moment, large streams of information began to enter Ryu's mind. Information that had once been vague suddenly became clearer and clearer.

Ryu's eyes lost focus, illusory shackles slowly unwinding within his body. He could feel his foundation slowly becoming larger and larger.

others might struggle with deciphering the information of The Compendium. It was a jumbled mess of images and runes. The sentences were incomplete and difficult to grasp causality from. But, beneath the rotating eight trigram diagrams within Ryu's eyes, they were all pieced apart one after another, slotting in with incomparable ease.

Ryu began to string together memories, illuminating vague comprehensions of the past and strengthening them. The changes weren't large given a broad perspective, but on a micro scale, the feeling of improvement felt like lightning. Ryu had never improved the comprehension of his Bloodlines with such speed before.

This process lasted for several hours before it slowly came to a stop.

Ryu's gaze regained focus and he looked forward, the intent hidden within his irises blazing.

After a moment, a flash of determination rushed through him. The twin eight trigram diagrams blazed to life, rotating faster and faster and a crack of thunder rang out in the skies above.

In that instant, Ryu turned his Dao toward himself, forcing his Bloodlines apart.

A shocking pain coursed through his body. His skin began to bubble in some areas and split in others. His right leg was as cold as ice, but his left arm felt as though it had been dipped into an infernal hell. Cracks of lightning surged out from where his heart should have been and his left leg erupted with a black flame.

Despite his body collapsing from the inside out, Ryu's gaze was as cold as could be. The only thing that gave away the pain he was under were the beads of sweat falling down his brow.

Suddenly, his right eye erupted with a blazing black-red flame and his left eye froze over. He could hardly see at all.

'Not yet...' Ryu thought to himself.

A whirlwind of ice, fire and lightning formed in the surroundings. Heavenly Patterns began to appear, then the scales of dragons and qilins.

Feathers appeared on one side of Ryu's body while scales appeared on the other. The raging storm only grew worse and worse.

'Not yet...'

Ryu's expression could hardly be seen. The commotion in his surroundings was only growing, but he didn't seem to care in the slightest. His body was enveloped by his talents. Some seemed to try to freeze him into a block of ice and others seemed to want to burn him to ash.

ROOOAAARRRR! CRACK! CRACK!

Ryu's bones shattered. Standing seemed impossible at this moment, but his qi barely kept him upright.

At first they were splinters, but they quickly became large fissures, and soon after they shattered like glass, then became small shards, before eventually becoming nothing more than finely ground sand.

'Now!'

Ryu's chains surged and complex dark gold and white gold Runes began to appear around him once again. His tattoos appeared once more, exponentially more complex and even more powerful than that.

The skies above crackled and surged, forming a cyclone of black cumulonimbus clouds.

A strike of lightning as thick as a grown man's waist descended, the strength of which was unlike anything Ryu had ever faced before. Even so, he didn't dodge this time, allowing it to strike him without implementing Dividing Tribulation.

Ryu's body shuddered and his entire body became nothing more than a charred mess. The lightning danced across what remained of his skin, but his tattoos only shone brighter and with greater force, seemingly taking it as a sort of impetus.

Ryu raised his head and roared, finally unleashing the suppressed Embryonic Qi within him.

BANG!

His aura surged, his cultivation entering the Peak Dao Pedestal Realm. At the same time, he entered the Middle Blood Tempering Realm.

His charred skin was blasted away as though the shrapnel of a grenade. Their disappearance revealed red, unprepared flesh. But just as quickly as it appeared, it thickened and became more lively.

Ryu gripped his fists, his presence soaring into the skies. Every time his bones crackled, the roar of dragons and the call of phoenixes would sound, the echoes suppressing everything in his surroundings.

Ryu released his chains from their hold on his Bloodlines and a final resonating BOOM collapsed the air in the surroundings.

A rush of power surged through him, fueling him to new heights.

Ryu's closed eyes opened, as he exhaled just once.

His Bloodlines had finally left the Ancestral Grade behind.