Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu pointed his blade forward. "I already know what your elder brother would do. He would smile and leave without a word, it's not quite time yet for him to reveal himself, after all. But I'm far more interested in what you'll do. I mean, unless you want to follow in the footsteps of your big brother a bit more.

The black robed young man took a breath.

He was intelligent, highly so, far beyond what these geniuses of the Sixth and Seventh Heavens could compare to. He had already succeeded in his goal on the Sixth Heaven, and so had his "elder brother". The Heavenly Path to them was just a convenient way of returning to the Seventh Heaven, whereupon they could return home with ease. They still planned to benefit from the Path as it seemed far different than what it had been in the past, and there might even be some things here that even they could benefit from. However, the goal stayed the same.

They couldn't bring too much attention to themselves.

That sounded amusing to say. After all, Adlael was known as the best alchemist of one of the top two Alchemy Pavilions of the Sixth Heaven. While he, Ramon, had likewise taken a similar position in the opposing Pavilion. They were as high profile as they could get...

But it was all relative. They had already been forgotten in the grand scheme, and that was always their plan, a plan that had gone perfectly until now. And what had changed...? Well...

Ramon really wanted to kill right now.

Ryu beamed, his smile brightening up the world. "Come!"

The word had barely come out when Ramon moved, his speed tearing space in two, a trail of void following in his wake. It tore apart Ryu's attempts at controlling the space around him and he almost couldn't react when a palm had appeared before his chest.

Without even a forced thought, Ryu could tell that if he let this strike hit him, it would pierce right through his chest as though he wasn't standing here at all. He wouldn't die thanks to his Realm Heart, but he would be in a state where battle was next to impossible without using his Embryonic Qi.

Even so, he didn't seem to panic. His Dao flared up and it crashed down with the full force of a mountain descending from above. When Ramon felt it, his eyes widened into saucers. He felt like his perspective was being flipped on its head.

"Founding Dao!"

Twin pairs of eight trigram diagrams spun in Ryu's eyes and all the secrets of the world were laid bare before him. He could see it all, everything there was, and he realized that Ramon hadn't torn space apart with sheer power. He was a Ruin Master, he used his Matrix to find the nodes and attacked them with precise force. His skill was so high that he painted the illusion that he was no different from a Transcendent Sky God.

This told Ryu a few things in an instant. The first was that there were more than just Transcendent Sky Gods that could disrupt his Spacetime Soul Nature. The second was that his Founding Dao...

Was far more powerful than he knew.

With swift movements, Ryu threw one of his great swordstaffs into the air, flipping his palm over and taking out a Matrix. His gaze flashed with a blinding silver light and all of Ramon's attempts at destruction were reversed in an instant. Ramon might be a genius Ruin Master, but what he didn't have a Space Soul Nature. When faced against Ryu who was also a genius Ruin Master...

What opportunity did he stand of stopping the latter?

Ryu's figure flashed backward, disappearing into space as he pierced with his great swordstaff.

Ramon's brows jumped several levels. He didn't even have the thinking speed to process what had just happened when Ryu's blade threatened to pierce right through his hand and toward his chest. He could even feel that heart shuddering attack Ryu had used to slice a part of that Golden Protector Spirit in just a single strike forming, but he could also tell that there was no way Ryu had the time to form it.

Ryu had shrunk the time he needed to complete the attack from over a minute, to just a second in these last few months. But an entire second in a battle of his caliber was like asking to die.

Ramon's mind spun, he knew that Ryu wasn't so foolish. Someone that could out maneuver him, and was obviously a Ruin Master of great accomplishment, couldn't possibly make such a stupid mistake.

But that was the thing. The best plans weren't the most clever ones. They were the ones where an opponent knew what was coming...

And yet couldn't do anything about it.

A portal suddenly opened before Ryu's blade and Ramon's palm hit nothing but air. At the same time, dozens of portals the same size as that one appeared all around Ramon.

Ramon's brows jumped. He couldn't sense which portal the blade would come out of. He threw his effort behind his hidden Matrix and he began to calculate, his mind spinning at a high octane before he struck out at a portal.

He sneered, his smile forgotten as Ryu's blade appeared out from his right. But then... his expression changed.

Out from every portal, an uniform piercing blade came out from them all. And... each and every one had a completed vortex of raging spatial qi around them.

There were too many, and Ramon didn't have time to understand how Ryu had suddenly multiplied his blade. Spatial qi couldn't do this, and there was no technique that could make each one so perfectly... identical.

BANG!

Ramon was swallowed up. Small vortexes of spatial qi swallowed him whole, suddenly combining and forming an attack that raised him into the air. shredding him from top to bottom.

He unleashed a shout of anger, but even after obliterating the first layer, there was another, and then another.

His shout was distorted and swallowed, his body disappearing beneath countless crisscrossing blades.