Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu didn't really expect this turn of events. Quite frankly, he had thought that Fading Star would teach him more about manipulating Karma or things of the like since they clearly had this in common. Even so, this unexpected twist was actually very much appreciated. If he could find methods of improving his Bloodlines, how could he not jump at the chance?

He stared at Fading Star seriously as she began to speak, soaking up everything she was saying.

The first thing Fading Star did was actually change the way he viewed Bloodlines in the first place. He felt like he was a child and she was trying to shift his perspective on things. Ryu had already begun to see his Bloodlines more like living, breathing entities, but Fading Star, or rather, Bloodmancers in general seemed to take this even a step further.

As Ryu listened, he realized what it was she was referring to.

The Seven Corporeal Souls.

"... Necromancy and Bloodmancy share a suffix, and this doesn't necessarily mean what it seems to. The root of Mancy comes from the word divination, a word that translates to a great many things but ultimately refers right back to insight, usually insight that most people wouldn't be able to easily glean..."

These sorts of explanations were what Fading Star began with. She was a very thorough teacher, albeit a bit of a bland one. She was highly specific in her choice of words and almost overly verbose in her speech. The little woman was already yawning, and that was despite being an Omniscient Sky God who obviously didn't need sleep in the normal sense.

It was obvious to anyone why this woman would have never taken in a disciple before. She'd probably kill anyone else with her long, drawn-out tirades. She seemed to jump from tangent to tangent before finally getting to the point, and then jumping into another tangent.

And yet Ryu listened to every word of it.

Radiant Star had had a smile on his face, expecting Ryu to suddenly fade away or make a snappy comment. But he didn't even look bored as his gaze became more and more intense.

These talks of language, these specifics of the origins of words and the root of a discipline were things that Ryu had been swimming in all his life as a Ruin Master. These were normally things he would have to fill in himself later down the line, so why not take them in from the source directly?

"... However, the act of divination is only one portion of what are shared between Necromancy and Bloodmancy. There are many branches of Necromancy, many of which require things similar to that of Bloodmancy. Improving a corpse, shedding away its weakness and blooming it toward its strength are similar mirrors to Bloodmancy...

"... The blood is a living entity. It can be counted as a separate part of you and part of you at the same time...

"... Training the blood, then, is no different from training a beast companion or a corpse puppet. Much like those things, it has chains of its own. A Bloodline only exists because it was passed down, and as a result, there are strong bounds of Karma that can and will restrict it...

"... This is a perfect time to explain why it is that Summoner Necromancers can exist. The formation circles that they use to summon their Demons to fight for them is more so a method of Bloodmancy than anything else. It's here that the two disciplines overlap the most...

"... A Demon can be considered to be a creature that exists somewhere between a beast and a human. On the one hand, their Bloodlines are highly important...

"... What's interesting then is why it is Demons can be summoned but beasts can't be, what is that difference? And it's that observation that sparked the first instant Bloodmancy-"

The epiphany hit Ryu like a speeding truck.

Beasts didn't have talents like humans did. Instead, they had what were called Spiritual Roots, and these Spiritual Roots practically decided everything about their talent.

The Spiritual Root wasn't as beautiful as it sounded, Ryu had extracted plenty enough to know that. It was an organ that was like a mashup of intestines and the circulatory system in the way it worked.

Its looks weren't really the point, though. The main part was that it was more organ than it was spiritual, and it was intertwined and inseparable from blood and its production.

A beast's Bloodline WAS everything its talent was.

By comparison, like his master had said, a demon was caught in between this and the Six Pillar system of the humans. In fact, they had more of a weighted Pillar System, where their Bloodlines played a much heavier role than much of everything else. This was why it was lineages that ruled the demons and there were hardly any Sects at all.

The reason Demons could be summoned to do battle against their will, then, was because they represented a link between absolute reliance on the Heavens and the exact opposite.

Why was it that beasts had originally won the favor of Sacrum and become the Favored Race? It was the same reason that beasts usually won such a battle.

Their progress was almost guaranteed so long as they had time to grow, whereas humans, humanoids, and human-adjacents like Ryu and Hope were faced with higher barriers the stronger their talent was. Hope even failed to reach the sixth Sky God Realm despite being maybe the best alchemy talent the True Martial World had.

Demons were stuck in the middle, and this provided a unique sort of resonance with both the Heavens and the Earth. They were more easily anchored and taken advantage of.

Those that relied on the Heavens for their strength had to likewise deal with the consequences. Beasts could be captured and reared, while Demons could be Summoned.

What was interesting was the real reason why...

All of this sounded like it made sense in a vague sense. Sure, Demons were a bridge between Heavenly Laws and the Earthly Laws that humans relied on to progress.

And all of that looped back to the existence of the Seven Corporeal Souls.

Ryu had already learned that these Seven Souls were actually chiefly represented by his organs. Much like Spiritual Roots, they didn't look very "soul-like" or spiritual.

This was the same for the Demons. The difference was that in Demons, their Six Pillars were skewed. This made their Seven Corporeal Souls far more prominent and easy to get a grasp of.

Beasts only had Spiritual Roots, and as such they had evolved their own unique methods of avoiding outside manipulations.

But Demons, being stuck in the middle, didn't have perfect protections. And the fact their Bloodlines skewed so heavily more important than any of their other talents made it so that a skilled Summoner Necromancer could take advantage of it, summoning and controlling them to do battle for a short time.

Even this, though, was only surface level analysis.

When Ryu took a step deeper and really got into the weeds, he felt like a whole new world was opening up to him.

He seemed to understand now why humans were so "average", and yet could be so absolutely powerful in some cases, and yet so pitifully weak in others.

It was all the balance of the souls, the perfect balance between attaching yourself to the Heavens and self-reliance. It opened you up to a breadth of potential that the other Races simply didn't have.

Radiant Star shook his head slowly. This annoying brat actually reached a state of enlightenment. Maybe he was wrong after all.

Of course, what he was wrong about wasn't whether Ryu was an annoying brat or not, that was pretty much ironclad in his mind. What he was willing to admit, though, was that this kid and his wife were like two peas in a pod.

Even he couldn't listen to his wife go on and on like that, it was a source of many arguments for them. Though, everything was a source of argument for them these days... or rather, all days.

However, Ryu could. Not only could he, he could do so eagerly.

Looking at his wife's bright smile, it took everything in him to refrain from rolling his eyes. He had an image to upload.

Ryu didn't have a thought for his surroundings at all, he was completely focused on his body and that sense of balance.

Even though Fading Star had yet to explain a single thing about how Bloodmancy actually worked, he felt he had already grasped it.

Right now, his Blood was concentrated into his Seven Corporeal Souls, but humans had a clear advantage that they weren't taking advantage of.

What would happen if you gave control of your Blood to your Soul? What if instead of being concentrated in your Seven Corporeal Souls, your Blood also lay new roots in your Three Incorporeal Souls?

And what would it mean for his Blood to form a connection with them...

Especially since he remembered quite clearly...

Wasn't his Dao Heart his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation?