Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Chapter 2188  Doubts

Ryu’s Dao Heart almost seemed to become tangible. It was at that moment that many realized that the only reason he was still alive at all right this moment was because of how strong his Dao Heart was.

Being burned through by Karmic Flames like this… it wasn’t the first time Ryu had experienced such a thing. The very first time was none other than when he met Mae’s family for the first time.

But this time, his Dao Heart was on a completely different level. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he would allow even the Heavens to shake.

So when he grabbed at the Title, even if the Title Stele threw a fuss, even if the Heavens themselves opened up and unleashed their full rain of fury, he had every intention of taking it.

Holding Sarriel in one arm, Ryu’s eyes flashed, and a furious momentum came from him.

How could he care about the Heavens’ fury when his own was burning so brightly? Here, if he wanted to be the skies, then he would be the skies.

If he wanted his woman to have this Title, she would have this Title.

A towering Sword God Aura came from Ryu’s body, so menacing and imposing, so all-encompassing and suffocating that the Emperor Sword Title shivered.

Several hearts constricted as pupils shrank into pinholes. Right now, fueled by his Dao Heart, Ryu’s Control pierced through a veil. It wasn’t that he had a breakthrough, but rather that no one could force him to have such focused attention until this very point.

And when he unleashed that fury, focused by his burning Dragon Bloodline…

The world bowed.

“COME.”

Ryu’s roar shook the Fate Barrier surrounding the battlefield. It bowed and whined, twisting and shuddering under the pressure as the Title was forcefully ripped out of the skies.

Aurelia overcame her fear, dashing over in an attempt to cross the distance and close the gap. This Title was far too important to her, and she had put too much on the line.

But it wasn’t enough.

Ryu snatched the Title out of the air and pressed it into Sarriel’s chest before the Karmic Flames could burn them to ash.

The world paused.

Because of Ryu’s actions, no one had ever truly absorbed a Title until now. It was easy to forget, then, what truly happened when someone succeeded in taking a Title.

Sarriel’s body convulsed, and then a radiant light began to spread out from her. A sword howl that pierced the skies shot to the clouds, soaring beyond even the stars and lighting up the darkness.

There was a tremble from Sarriel’s fallen katana, and it shot up from the depths of black that it had fallen into.

The katana shivered with excitement, beams of Sword Qi splintering off in all directions.

Aurelia covered her eyes with a forearm, her eyes blazing with rage. She wasn’t a woman who showed much emotion to begin with, but seeing the Title she had worked for so unceremoniously taken by another, it was hard for her not to feel frustrated and enraged.

But there was nothing that she could do.

A violet-gold symbol was etched into Sarriel’s forehead, her bodily wounds beginning to slowly heal in real-time as though the Sword Qi of the world was blessing her.

The characters pulsed, and her Sword God Aura took steps forward by leaps and bounds. Straggling insights and loose ends she had never tied up over the course of her life reformed one after another, adding to the foundation of her swordplay and soaring upward with her aura.

There was a beautiful sort of change to her countenance, not necessarily in terms of looks, but rather her demeanor.

Sarriel had many personalities swirling around inside of her. Although she and Ryu were quite confident in which one was the real one, how difficult would it be to feel your personality change so actively within you without the chance to fight back against it?

It could be said that the power of Sarriel’s cultivation method was precisely this. Having to fight back against changes to your personality to find your true self time and time again…

But inevitably, there would be some imperfection. And maybe that was precisely why she hadn’t managed to truly perfect her Dao just yet.

There were still some inklings, some deviations within her, where she couldn’t quite find her true self.

And ironically enough, that was Ryu’s fault.

When Ryu first met Sarriel, she had been stuck in one of those personalities, having yet to break free. She was shy, demure, reserved—almost all the things the real Sarriel was very much not. And that version of her fell in love with Ryu.

When she was exposed and her true self came out, in a coincidence of fate, she found that her real self had feelings for Ryu as well, not as deep or profound as her shy self, but enough that there was a small mark left on her heart.

Ryu was just the sort of man she took a liking to the most, and it made it even harder to get rid of his shadow when her shy and demure self had gone and given their first kiss to him.

It could be said that until that point, Sarriel had followed the path perfectly. She had always been able to draw a strict line between the parts that weren’t herself and the parts that were.

But because of Ryu, that line blurred just the slightest bit, making it hard to find exactly where the edge was. For the first time, Sarriel understood why it was the Clans and Sects were so protective of their women. For something like love to ruin her path to perfection was something that both left her resentful and helpless. It simply wasn’t something that she could change.

However, right this moment, like a shining beacon, her sword lit the path ahead of her. The Emperor Sword cut through all things…

Including her doubts.