Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu moved like a ghost, not even looking toward Lu’card and the Dragons at all. He hadn’t just allowed Lu’card to fuse into his mind, taking advantage of the master-beast connection. But he had also done so for all of his beasts and Summons.

There was no time for him to calmly allow them to increase their strengths. The only way forward was by taking drastic measures.

Well, maybe they would be drastic measures for others. But for Ryu, taking on the computational comprehension for thousands of geniuses at once was as easy as flipping a palm over, especially since he understood their Paths already even more intimately than they did.

Lu’card’s roar filled the skies, and he clashed against the golden Dragon Emperor. Their claws slammed into one another before the collision of their chests shattered space into a swirling black hole between them.

However, this black hole only formed for the briefest of instances before even it was suffocated by their pressure.

The long necks of the two arrogant dragons reeled back, their maws opening while breaths of space and metal took shape.

Swirling silvers and blacks crackled almost akin to lightning within Lu’card’s jaw, his scales rippling and the worlds hidden within them syncing into a unique rhythm as his throat expanded and his chest pulsed like the echo of a booming cannon.

The Dragon Emperor was furious that his path had been blocked from his son’s killer to begin with. The echoes of swords, sabers, and spears came from deep within its own maw. Like a storm of blades, they twisted and bent reality before its own booming cadence came from its chest.

The Dragon Breaths of the two were separated by hundreds of meters, but this was only due to their size. If they had been scaled down to the level of a human, it would have looked as though they were barely a half foot from one another’s faces, unleashing attacks that could level worlds and shatter reality at point-blank range.

BOOM!

Ryu didn’t even look up to see the result. There was a fluidity to his actions that melded into the Heavens themselves, his movements so seamless that he seemed to reap a life with every casual step he took.

Flowing and yet sharp, smooth and yet sudden. One would think that predicting his next action should have been easy with how his body moved so naturally. And yet, every time they found themselves using their years of experience to try and get ahead of his actions, the result was much the same.

One death after another, one severed head and torn limb, one punctured heart after crushed skull.

Ryu was absolutely ruthless, his great swordstaffs becoming akin to reaper scythes in the air. Blood flowed in mysterious patterns, forming magic circles and formations in the skies that mimicked the paths of the Dao Gods that he killed.

Using his dead master’s path, Ryu tapped into Bloodmancy again. He asserted his will onto them, imposing control over their paths, taking from them what he could understand.

Every time he killed someone, he stripped them of something he could incorporate into his own strength, amplifying his own power to the next level.

But that was far from what he did alone. Not only did he take their strength to incorporate into himself, but the added understanding of their paths made dealing with the others of their Race far easier as well.

The Lines of Fate that etched across the skies became clearer in Ryu’s eyes. He went from seeing three steps ahead to four, and then from four to five. By the time he had killed enough of a Race, it was like he could see through the entire sequence of a battle before it even happened.

Peeking into the future through Fate was something Lines of Fate could always do. It was one of the very first abilities of his eyes that Ryu had unlocked.

The problem was that in the past, it was too limited. Unless he had a strong Fate connection with the target he was fighting, or if he fought them for long enough, he would never be able to see too far into the future and the probabilities would become muddled.

But now, Ryu’s paths had all synced enough that he could take matters into his own hands. Finally, he was feeling the effects of what it was like to have all of his Paths working in unison.

Who needed to have Fate with his target when he could just create the Fate link between them? If he didn’t have the time to use his Bloodmancy to reverse engineer that Fate, then he would just kill them directly and then use [Fate Reversal] to bring them back to life…

And then kill them again.

If he couldn’t be bothered to waste the Focus Qi on using [Fate Reversal] on an unworthy opponent, then he would just use [Death Acupoint] with his new Spacetime Mysteries of Heaven and Earth Pupils, layering their Death Acupoints into the future to see exactly how their deaths could be mapped out.

If he couldn’t be bothered to do even that, then he could just directly crush and overwhelm them with strength, squashing them like bugs beneath his feet.

Fighting against Ryu now truly felt like battling it out against a God. Fate, Time, and Space swirled in the palms of his hands as though returning to their father.

His [Third Perspective] hung high in the air, [Lines of Fate] fusing along with it. He saw through not only all of their methods, all of their cultivations, all of their Fates, but even what they would be in the future.

And yet, despite using all of these abilities, all of these world-shattering powers…

He showed not the slightest hint of fatigue.

He was like a bottomless, unfathomable well, a mighty towering tempest of unmovable power.

Undefeatable.

He was Ryu Tatsuya.

BANG!

A spear descended from above, a swirling might of flames and the roar of a Fire Dragon echoing as Primus stepped in.