Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu had spent most of the last several decades of his life in an idle. Most of the time in the blackhole's range was spent repeating the same monotonous task again, and again, and again. As such, especially with the strength of his mind, he had a lot of time to think about other things.

In one of his many streams of thought, he thought about how important the Soul Quintessence was to Sacrum. It was a legendary Realm, one that even Sky Gods could reach. And he couldn't help but wonder...

Just how much of that was due to Sacrum's weakness, and how much of it was a hidden truth that lay right before his eyes? What was it about Sacrum that made the Soul Quintessence Realm different?

If he thought back, Sacrum didn't have concepts for the Sky God Realm, at least not in the general sense.

Back in Sacrum, "failing" to become a Sky God represented the Fragmented Sky God Realm, and only if your Dao was strong enough could you become a True Sky God. Most True Sky Gods didn't become False Sky Gods first, they instead leapt direction to the True Sky God Realm.

How the system worked wasn't entirely important to Ryu. What was important was the fact that Sacrum's Sky God Realm system was completely different, so why didn't it work the same for the Mental Realm?

Although there were some slight differences, the emphasis on Soul Quintessence was still the same. And that made Ryu quite curious.

Why was that? What was he missing?

He didn't exactly need to figure all of these things out for himself, so he asked the one person he could at the time: the little woman.

He didn't receive the response he wanted out of it. And how could he? The little woman didn't have any familiarity with Sacrum, so she wouldn't know. To her, the Soul Quintessence Realm was the Soul Quintessence Realm, separated into Nine States of Quintessence, each one the equivalent of Sky God Realms from Fragmented to Origin.

Much the same way, following a similar scheme, the Body Realm became Enlightened Body Realms.

Until this point, the Body Realms were as simple as they came. There was no comprehension needed, just pain.

Despite the change in name, nothing about this changed. Instead, the Body Realms chased such a depth of simplicity that with would become complexity. It was a Realm where every movement of the body would cause the Heavens to move and tremble along with your intentions.

If one heard this, it would sound a lot like the Golden Runes around Ryu, or rather, Golden Runes that were inconspicuously missing.

Since he had entered Sacrum, these golden runes hadn't been mentioned a single time because they simply weren't around him any longer.

In these years, Ryu had come to understand another limitation of his rewards. The room of white had taught him how to enter the state of oneness with the Heavens, but it hadn't taught him how to maintain it.

As time passed, his body would change in countless unknowable ways, his strength would grow and he would have to learn to control it, his qi would evolve and gain different properties, even as his comprehensions evolved, the laws around him would manifest in different ways, meaning he would have to move at a different cadence to be in tune with them.

Ryu had realized this immediately, and he didn't have an immediate solution. But when his Lines of Fate returned, although they were blurry, it felt like his thoughts had clicked into place.

If he wanted to maintain that oneness with the Heavens, he would have to do something, something that would allow him to rely on himself and not an external treasure like the room of white to improve himself.

Right now, he could feel that path more clearly than he ever had before.

Soul Quintessence. It meant perfection, the very essence of it. But perfection of what was the question.

Enlightened Body. It also represented perfection, but down a different path. One pushed across layers of complexity, the other through layers of simplicity.

To enter Soul Quintessence was to take your soul and allow it to grow. Spiritual Qi became Spiritual Quintessence. And what was it the Quintessence of? It was none other than a representation of your path itself. For one with a Soul Nature, its path couldn't have been more obvious.

To enter the Enlightenment Body Realms was to root your body in Godhood, shedding mortality and bring you closer and closer to the Heavens with every step of refinement was a step closer toward that Realm of absolute simplicity.

They fed into one another rather well...

However, Ryu had yet to pick his Soul Quintessence. Though his soul had already breached that barrier, he had left it in a complete limbo because he wanted to accomplish this first.

He sank into deeper and deeper States of Meditation as his enlightenment took hold of him. Cosmos Fog poured into his soul and his Seven Spirits and Three Souls lit up.

He was able to feel that connection between his body and soul, more clearly than ever before. His Soul Nature was a representation of what his soul was then very best at, but did his body not have their own souls?

He wanted something core to himself, something so central and foundational to his very being that it couldn't just be taken away or just fade with time like everything else seemed to.

He wanted a world of his own.

Space and time already had the fabric he needed. What he was missing was a tiny kernel of something different, something that was able to make it his own.

And that was where his Cosmos Fog came in. It was the very core of his Bone Structure, a mysterious energy that seemed capable of separating him from the bounds of this current reality, forming his own.

It, too, was built on a foundation of Space and Time. It was, after all, this sort of comprehension that had allowed the Heavens to grant him his Bone Structure in the first place.

What would his Quintessence be? What journey of Enlightenment would he take? He felt...

That they curiously be better as one.

He would call it..

The Cosmos Quintessence.

BOOM.

Ryu's body trembled. Seven points of light circles in his body, three points of light in his forehead.

His breathing entered an odd sort of rhythm, and although he wasn't moving, the dense fog of qi around him seemed to form its own arms. Every time his heart reverberated, the fog would move. As though a buddha in deep meditation, layered upon a Tai Chi master in a somber state, they moved in a steady, beautiful sort of cadence.

The runes began to appear once more.

In these decades, Ryu's strength hadn't increased by a large enough measure for the Golden Runes to completely vanish. The real reason they didn't appear was because he was storing them deep within him. He had been spending every waking moment comprehending how they formed, how they took shape, how they strengthened his movement.

And now... he would make them his.

The Golden Runes began to turn from Gold to Silver, radiating a resplendent light brighter than the golden runes had ever been.

In that instant, Ryu's soul suddenly changed. His Spiritual Sea became so thick that it was able to be called one anymore, it was more like an endless plane of thick, black oil, even the gentle waves that usually coloured its surface were far more muted.

The void began to tremble around him.

The fog of qi around him almost seemed to solidify into illusions. One Ryu after another layered atop of him, as though he was looking through every law of causality at once.

BOOM.

Ryu's Dao fused into one once again. The flood of strength caused the entirety of Sacrum to rumble and roll, the might of a Founding Dao causing every other present Dao to dim. In fact, even if they tried to use their Daos now, they would find themselves completely unable to.

All at once, a flood of strength poured into Ryu and finally, he felt his eyes twitch. It was different from what he had experienced before. It was different from just a sharpening of his vision, he was able to feel it as though it was just barely over a hill he was climbing past.

Ryu exhaled a slow breath and the fog moved again. Rather than layering upon him, they split out.

One was wreathed in chains, the other had a blindingly radiant pair of rings, and the last was an amorphous blob without pondered or structure.

Their auras would flare from time to time as though Ryu was testing something, but every time he didn't like it, he would disperse it and then try again.

Suddenly, his eyes opened and he looked up into the skies. Reflecting in his pupils, a radiant Silver Star sat, a Star that looked so familiar, and yet so foreign at the same time...

'You want to take my Fate away? Okay... I'll make my own.'

The Divine Chain and Divine Wings shattered. They're two foggy constructs fusing into the amorphous blob that suddenly became a small, rotating star.

It was a Star that looked exactly like his Fate Star. His Dao fed into it and quickly began to expand more and more powerful until it expanded once, and then twice, doubling in size every time.

Nothing would bind him again.

Ryu's White Phoenix Spiritual Foundation shook, soon followed by his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation. Their Cosmic Seeds began to bind and intertwine, forming separate Godhoods of their own.

As the Silver Star grew in size, it quickly began to resemble something else as well.

A certain Silver Star that gave Ryu his Spacetime Soul Affinity to begin with.

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Erdiul's Note: I always had a theory that the owner of that Silver Star was a future Ryu, this kinda just makes me even more confident of that theory. Could still be wrong, but I'm kinda leaning towards it more now.