Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Ryu made a leisurely path through the forest.

From what he understood about Ninth Heaven's layout, there wasn't necessarily a single region to go in order to run into beasts of ice. All nine regions, each controlled by their own Powers, had both regions of extreme hot and extreme cold.

Separating the regions, there were what they called the Nine Flood Dragons, a winding path of nine rivers that split the regions and connected around the outside of the Ninth Heaven in the very same vast ocean that Ryu had once been stuck beneath.

Some of the most powerful Ice God Beasts were located near the bottom of that ocean.

One had to remember the layers of the ocean were separated into tiers. The first few tiers were simply dividing tiers of pressure. However, when the pressure increased to an extreme, the ocean became a slab of ice. It was above this slab of thick ice, and honestly also the few tiers above that the strongest creatures of ice were located.

While this would be the best place to get Ice type beasts, for one, Ryu couldn't survive that kind of pressure right now, and second, beasts that could live in such an environment were on an entirely different level. Even their newborns had bodies so tough that even Dao Lords would have a hard time cutting them.

This was just the innate superiority of a creature born in a terrible environment.

Of course, if there were any creatures born in the Infinity Mist, they would be beyond imagining. Ryu wouldn't be surprised even if a Dao God would have a difficult time killing a newborn born in such an environment. Though, that was just in raw strength. A Dao God would have a million other methods to deal with such an existence, as would a Dao Lord against a creature born above the slab of ice.

This was all to say that Ryu couldn't go there. It would be even more impossible considering Little Silk wasn't a creature adept at swimming.

After two battles, Ryu had a deeper understanding of his current strength, but he still felt that he had more to learn. His strongest state was when he activated his Dao Vessel and projected his Inner World. His Inner World was akin to a Phenomena, but what it was exactly was more complex than that.

First, it fell into a category of Natural Enlightenment. It was already well known that a Natural Enlightenment was on a completely different level than a Mortal Endowment, however the projection of his inner world was no normal Natural Enlightenment.

It had to be known that Ryu had already formed a Natural Enlightenment before, and that was his Shrine Mountain Natural Enlightenment.

However, because his Natural Enlightenment was too weak, his breakthrough into the Sky God Realm had been weaker than it should have been.

And what was ironic was that now... his self-created Natural Enlightenment had reached that level all on its own. That was right. His Inner World projection was already at the Natural Breath Realm, the highest Realm of Natural Enlightenment there was.

Listen. Feel. Immerse. Control. Heart. Soul. And finally, Natural Breath.

'Hm, that's an interesting idea,' Ryu's thoughts suddenly veered away.

'If I use my Inner World as a medium and project Shrine Mountain, what would change?'

Ryu slotted this idea away and didn't pursue it for now. It sounded good, but executing it was a different matter entirely. That was because a Natural Enlightenment gained its strength from a Natural Phenomena. If he changed the fundamental aspects of the Shrine Mountain there was no telling if it would even be able to retain its same strength. In fact, it would almost certainly lose much of its potential.

According to Ryu's comprehension, Shrine Mountain would be stripped of its greatest potential, but overall, his Inner World Projection would actually strengthen. However, if his Shrine Mountain Natural Enlightenment was even stronger than it was now, then wouldn't the assimilation of the two in the future be even more powerful?

'If I put more effort into comprehending Natural Enlightenments instead of letting them naturally come to me as I have in the past, it might be another method of strengthening my Inner World.'

Right now, the only method Ryu had was accumulating a lot of Faith. That was what his world was missing the most right now, and if he wanted to form the Tenth Heaven within himself, he still had an impossibly long path ahead of him.

This was the unfortunate truth, because Ryu wasn't just competing with one or two people, he was competing with trillions upon trillions of years of rising and falling geniuses.

Plus, it had to be considered that the True Martial World wasn't just the Real Plane, it was an amalgamation of all them. Meaning, the Faith of the Nether Plane and the Ethereal Plane also played a huge role, not to mention what might or might not occur in the Abyssal and Chaos Planes as well.

But... if he was relying on his comprehension instead, would that change?

It was one thing to try and accumulate as much Faith as a huge, impossible to fathom number of people. But if he was relying on comprehension instead, would that change?

'Hm, I'll have to see... I'll return to Sacrum after I'm done with everything here and see if I can't improve my Shrine Mountain Natural Enlightenment. Then we'll see if it's worth it or not.'

Although he said this, Ryu had a feeling that there was a good chance that he was correct. In fact, there might be other things in that vein that he could work on.

For example, if he found more natural treasures, would that work? Or maybe he could slowly begin to use the ones he already had to raise his strength to another level entirely.

He would definitely have to shelve that latter idea though, and even the first was dangerous.

The only reason he had been able to take in those powerful natural treasures to begin with was because his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation could suppress them. His Inner World wasn't on that level yet. And even now, he could only make extremely limited use of his Infinity Mist and the rest, and that was only if he went all out with his world's projection, barely using God Control to wield them.

'But that doesn't mean I can't use them... can't I try observing them and creating new Natural Enlightenments from them? Not only would that help me control them better, but in the case that Natural Enlightenments could directly improve my Inner World Phenomena, the results would be... something to look forward to.'