MISTAKES WERE MADE!! I'm VERY Sorry everyone!!
Ryu gazed deeply toward Starlight's back. The latter seemed to realize that someone had come and he turned back with a hint of surprise in his eyes. It was clear that Starlight hadn't believed that anyone would be able to catch up with him.
When Starlight saw that it was a masked man, he blinked, seemingly trying to figure out who this person might be. Was he another anomaly like him? Or was he someone that he already knew and was just unwilling to expose himself for whatever reason?
Starlight himself had quite a blanket around him. It looked as though he was here in the present, but it was very easy for people to forget him. Even Zed, who had previously confronted Starlight, had already forgotten about this existence and they never clashed, and the same went for Ranna who had seemingly become infatuated with Starlight's handsomeness.
Starlight waited a moment, expecting the same to happen to this person as well. Even though he knew that Ryu would pick back up on his appearance quite quickly considering the fact there were only three paths here and he was the only remaining contestant, he should at the very least have a small lapse here and there.
However, when Ryu didn't seem to have any intention of forgetting him, Starlight's gaze froze.
"You are Ryu," Starlight suddenly said with a smile that seemed to outshine the stars themselves.
Ryu's pupils constricted into pinholes. Even after several seconds, he had no idea how he had been exposed.
"There's no need to be surprised. Of them all, you're the only one that didn't forget me. I'm a bit flattered. Your soul talent must be quite exceptional, a troublesome opponent, indeed."
Hearing this, Ryu slowly calmed. So this was how he had been exposed?
Geniuses were too intelligent. It was hard to fool them, he had only been able to rely on their ignorance and lack of familiarity with him. But hadn't Aantha and Mae, who were the most familiar with him among the group, been able to pick him out almost immediately? From that alone he should have been able to tell that this would probably be inevitable.
Ryu slowly took off his mask. It already had several cracks running through it, so with just a single squeeze of his palm, it shattered into countless pieces.
"Hehe," Starlight laughed, "you didn't have to do that. I have no reason to expose you, right? We can even be friends, there's no need to be enemies if it isn't necessary."
Ryu didn't respond. His qilin scales and horns had already vanished, leaving behind his toned torso dripping with blood. However, he already knew that this was just a small measure and it wouldn't do anything to stop him from being exposed.
Back then, due to the Dao Lord's pressure, many of his scales had fallen off. After they fell, they lost the veil of protection his mask had provided. So long as someone was curious enough, finding just one of these scales would have exposed his bloodline. Unfortunately, it was impossible to focus on not dying beneath the pressure and gathering up his scales and blood at the same time.
As for Starlight's words, they were spoken from a place of superiority. Even with Ryu here, Starlight didn't believe that he would lose the inheritance. In such a situation, he could afford to be as magnanimous as he wanted. But the moment he lost to Ryu, everything would change. That confident smile of his fade and his thoughts of friendship would vanish.
Ryu was too prideful to put his fate in the hands of the kindness of an enemy. Since he had been exposed, let him be exposed. If the Ancestral Beasts wanted to target him, so be it. His human race had defeated them once in Sacrum, it seemed he would just have to pioneer another such defeat for them in the True Martial World.
Ryu's white hair fluttered, his gaze glowing with a fierce eight trigram diagram. The pressure was immense, but he tore through it all.
BANG!
Ryu slammed his two great swordstaffs before the Body Realm Inheritance. He had been looking for it all this time, and just when he had given up, it had finally appeared. Starlight could wait obediently to be slaughtered. The final winner could only be himself, Ryu Tatsuya.
Starlight chuckled, seemingly seeing through Ryu's thoughts.
"A blade that is too unbending is brittle."
"A blade that is impossible to bend is indestructible," Ryu replied coldly.
These were the first words he had ever spoken to Starlight and they boomed like thunder. His aura oppressed the surroundings, his suffocating presence descending down with a malevolent momentum.
For the first time, Starlight's pupils constricted. There wasn't an ounce of hesitation in Ryu's voice. There was a difference between someone who would just say such words because they thought they sounded cool and someone who said them because they actually believed them.
Looking toward the blood on Ryu's body for the first time, Starlight's seriousness grew a step. He had just assumed that Ryu had gotten injured in battles against other geniuses, in fact that was part of the reason he hadn't taken Ryu very seriously at all. If the likes of them could injure Ryu, then he wasn't worth much at all.
But now that Starlight took a second look, he realized that those wounds weren't caused by other cultivators at all, in fact they carried a hint of the Heavenly Path's aura. That only meant one thing, Ryu was harmed by the star paths themselves.
BANG!
The Body Realm Inheritance imploded before Ryu's glare, descending downward in an unending stream of light descended toward him. Ryu closed his eyes, basking in the oppression. However, as the time passed, he found that gaining the acceptance of this inheritance was far more difficult than the last since it relied on two elements he had little to no familiarity with.
Due to his Dao, Ryu was able to see the name of the Sky God immediately. It was an Omniscient Sky God who went by the Shadowlight Sky God.
The Shadowlight inheritance, unfortunately, was well suited to its name. This Sky God had an exceptionally high affinity for both the light element and the darkness element. By using their clashing attributes and forcing them to coincide within his body, he was able to cultivate a nigh indestructible form.
However, this was where the other problem came from. For the likes of Ryu, even if he did have an exceptional light and darkness affinity, due to the existence of his Bone Structure, the Ice Jade Crystal Body, this method wouldn't work very well for him. The two elements would be incredibly docile within him because his body was used to balancing two things that could normally not coexist. He could balance fire and lightning, and even fire and water…
'Wait…'
Ryu's gaze sparkled.
He was a bit surprised, darkness affinity? He apparently did have such a thing. His Dark Phoenix Bloodline could be used in this way.
Truthfully, he never really carefully considered the secondary affinities of his Bloodlines, but logically speaking, considering the talent of Ancestral Beasts, their secondary talents would dwarf the primary talents of most individuals.
What was even more surprising was that both Ryu's Emperor Phoenix and Ice Phoenix Bloodlines had some light affinity, with his Emperor Phoenix's light affinity even being comparable to his Dark Phoenix's darkness affinity.
'Is the clash really the most important part, or…'
The more Ryu immersed himself, the more he found something fascinating.
'I can evolve this. I can make it better. I'm sure of it. Instead of the Shadowlight Inheritance I will call you…'
"Heavenly Chaos Body."
Ryu ignored his light and darkness affinities entirely. He didn't have time to waste building up new Inheritances and bringing them to a standard his body could use. In addition, even if he did, the original method the Shadowlight Sky God used was inferior in his eyes, not because it wasn't ingenious, but rather because its growth potential was limited and the harm to the body was constant.
Rather than light and darkness, Ryu would use two opposing sides of control he already had, Heavenly Favor and Chaos Qi. Ultimately, Heavenly Favor was simply a deliverable form of Essence, making it absolutely perfect. As for his Chaos Qi, he didn't need to source it, he always had access to it wherever he went.
This Shadowlight Inheritance was built off the back of Runes. It was the process of forming these Runes of light and darkness, and then infusing them into the body, that would give a person strength. So long as you could survive the "tribulation", you would come out with a body that was countless times more powerful.
These Runes were no different from the Fundamental Runes that Ryu now had a systematic breakdown of now thanks to the Magus Sky God. By using these two Inheritances in conjunction, the Shadowlight Sky God's legwork, and the Magus Sky God's research materials, he would fuse the two into a form that elevated the both of them beyond their current levels.
When he had a body forged of Heaven and Chaos, everything in his path would be destroyed with a thought.
Ryu ignored everything else and sat down cross legged.
Starlight was shocked when he realized that Ryu had already comprehended the Inheritance and he even felt his heart leap into his throat for a moment. But to his shock, rather than moving forward to accept his victory and take the Dao Lord's Inheritance he actually… began to cultivate?!
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