Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

"You fought in the city?" Rober asked. 

"No." Ryu replied. 

Rober's brow furrowed. "Are you trying to call him a liar? There are many witnesses to what you did."

"You call that a fight?" Ryu raised an eyebrow. "I threw a kick and he couldn't retaliate. Doesn't a fight assume an exchange of moves?"

Realizing the game of semantics Ryu was playing, Rober's jaw clenched. Just a few exchanges in and he suddenly felt infuriated. 

What he didn't know was that the only reason Ryu was wasting his time talking about because he suddenly found that he missed doing exactly that. There was nothing fun about beating weaklings, so he often artificially lowered his combat strength. At this point, the people before him were only really worth his words. 

Others saw it as him purposely infuriating others, while he just saw it as giving them a handicap. 

"… Are you not aware of the city's rules?"

"Oh? Does the Armament Guild not allow the exchange of pointers anymore?" Ryu asked. 

Rober's lip twitched again. First you said it couldn't' be considered a fight, but now it can be considered an exchange of pointers? Did wearing a mask give you extra points of shamelessness?

Ailsa was having a grand time while Yaana was doing her best to not burst into a fit of laughter. This sort of Ryu, who was slightly less cold and a half more mischievous was truly too much to handle, mostly because the both of them could imagine his very serious expression behind his mask. 

"If the Armament Guild is scared of losing to outsiders, I can just leave. I can already see from just this single game that I played that the Armament Guild really doesn't have any special talents if I can so casually break your records with a single arm."

"What did you just say?!"

Amery had hardly finished speaking when he violently coughed up blood. Ryu's kick had been no joke. Although he managed to keep his life, several of his bones were broken and his inner organs had suffered a devastating blow. Raging now was the last thing he should be doing. 

Rober's expression darkened, the staff on his back vibrating.

"Oh? Would you like to exchange some pointers? Maybe I was wrong about this city after all."

Ryu turned back. The staff in his hand had turned a deep dark gold, changing from its original brown color to become something entirely different. Ryu had hardly brandished it when a bloodthirsty air pervaded the surroundings. 

When Rober sensed it, his brows furrowed. He had never sensed such an aura from a staff before. In Ryu's hands, it felt like a wild and untamed beast, ready and willing to pounce on anything at any time. It was nothing like the most powerful staffs he had ever seen, but for some reason, aside from making him greatly uncomfortable, somewhere deep within his heart he also felt greatly inferior. 

Ryu casually raised the staff into the air. 

Rober reacted instantly, his pupils constricting. His staff shot out from his back and into his hands as he took a strong step forward. The booming of his sole hitting the ground caused several cracks to spread in the region, exposing his Path Extinction Realm cultivation for all to see. 

Ryu's staff slowly descended from the sky. It was so clear and obvious that even a mortal could have tracked its route from start to finish. However, to Rober, it felt as though the staff had already collided with his own and Ryu was just pressing down harder and harder. 

Rober subconsciously took a defensive stance, beads of sweat falling down his brow. The land beneath him trembled and quaked, his knees creaking and his elbows whining beneath the pressure. Blood vessels strained and popped through his body, a flood of blood marring the whites of his eyes. 

And yet, Ryu's staff was still over a meter away from his own. 

Despair suddenly took hold of his heart and mind, his muscles tearing in small increments and his tendons and ligaments threatening to peel from the bone. 

He couldn't even be of the mind to register that Ryu had limited himself to the strength of any normal Connecting Heaven Realm expert. All he could feel was the mighty weight of Ryu's staff as though a demonic mountain was crashing down toward him. 

"Hm?"

Ryu's attack suddenly came to a pause, a great deal of the pressure dispersing into the wind. He looked up and away into the distance. His gaze seemed to pierce through the veil, traveling several thousand kilometers and locking eyes onto something the masses would only hear several seconds later. 

Before those few seconds could pass, though… 

BANG!

Ryu suddenly felt a strong force land on his chest. His hair went fluttering about wildly and his clothes threatened to tear apart at the seam. But, when the wind settled down… 

Ryu hadn't moved an inch. 

Looking down at his chest, Ryu found the tip of a staff that had collided with him. On the other end of it, Rober panted heavily, his face drenched with sweat and his hands seeping blood through their cracks as he held onto his staff for all that he was worth. 

Rober didn't even seem to register that Ryu was unaffected by his blow. He was so happy to have landed something, so stuck in fear by the sheer fragility of his existence, that he took solace in just this smallest success. 

Ryu shook his head. It seemed the Dojo Masters of this place really weren't worth much. But, this was the kind of experts you would raise when there was an absence of hardship. 

Ryu casually swiped a hand down, batting Rober's staff away. The moment the latter lost the support of Ryu's body, he collapsed to the ground, his gaze vacant with 'happiness' and his body trembling. 

It was right then that it happened. The sound wave finally reached the city. 

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!