1243 Spatial Nodes
This obviously wasn't the only problem either. Just now, they had said that they would be gathering up all of the geniuses. If they gathered up all the geniuses of the various Sects and held them under the name of investigation, how would these geniuses be able to participate in The Convergence? If Ryu was correct, this group of Higher Heaven individuals probably descended with even more geniuses that would only continue to speed up the process.
In maybe a handful of years, the Complete Heavenly Path might be forced to be opened far ahead of schedule.
On the surface, this wasn't a problem, but Ryu was too far behind. The faster the Convergence was, the faster it would outpace him. The faster it outpaced him, the less benefits he would be able to gain from it. The less benefits he gained, the more unlikely it would be that he would one day reach a point where he could stand atop the cultivation world.
This alone was the greatest failure to Ryu, but even aside from that, he had too many enemies. If he didn't continue improving with great speed, then his only option might really just be death.
There was only another matter that Ryu hadn't considered.
Why had Starlight chosen to tempt fate and enter the Radiant Star Sect back then? If Aika had caught a whiff of him, no matter how talented he was, his only path would have likely been death. In fact, even if he was at Aika's cultivation level, given Aika's talent, would he still be able to escape death?
Ryu slowly stood. He wasn't the type of person to sit idly by when action was required. Even now, though he wasn't entirely certain of exactly how to counter this, he knew he wouldn't find the solution just by sitting here. He had to do something.
Ryu left the restaurant and moved toward the teleportation platforms. The first thing he had to do was return to the Radiant Star Sect to see what Aika would have to say about this. It was said that her enemies came from the Seventh Heaven as well, so how would she deal with this?
"HALT! Identify yourself!"
While he might have seemed lost in his thoughts, Ryu was paying keen attention to his surroundings, even using the wind to pick up on conversations in case there were any other tidbits that he might have missed. So, he had sensed this coming from a mile away, quite literally.
Ryu was quite conspicuous. He was probably the youngest person in the city right now, and that was because everyone else had probably already been shipped off to those Seventh Heaven experts. No one would think that a person would so flagrantly ignore the rules of those experts, so when others saw that Ryu was a Dao Pedestal Realm expert, they simply assumed that he wasn't from any great powers. After all, the law that had been sent down targeted all of the powerful Clans and Sects.
However, as Ryu attempted to pay for teleportation down to lower Heavens, he had to extend forward God Crystals. How could a normal Dao Pedestal Realm expert have such wealth? It was absolutely ridiculous.
Ryu stood on the platform, but with the sudden roar, the various attendees didn't dare to activate it at all.
Ryu looked up and saw a Sky God rushing from the distance, but he simply tapped his foot. A surge of spatial qi rose like a tide.
In the past, Ryu could have passed through the Heavens on his own, but that was the First to Third Heavens and in exchange for a great amount of stamina. While he could set up his own formation to travel through the Fourth through Sixth, the effort and time he would waste would be far too much. He didn't need to fuel this teleportation, though. All he needed to do was to use a faint bit of spatial qi to connect the nodes. As for the rest...
WHIR. WHOOSH.
"STOP! STOP THE FORMATION!"
The attendees panicked but it was already too late. Ryu was enveloped by a blinding light and by the time the Sky God landed, Ryu had vanished completely.
The Sky God was furious as he lashed out against the attendees, but he didn't seem to understand in time that it wasn't their fault at all.
"Find out who this person is! Now!"
...
On the Fourth Heaven, a ripple of Spatial Qi took form and the attendees were somewhat caught off guard. Usually there would be some communication from the other side first, but this hadn't happened this time. This would only happen if there was an crisis activation or if the teleportation platform on the other side was co opted.
All of the powerhouses of the Fourth Heaven central city were alerted one after another, but when the ripples ended, there was actually no one there at all.
A long distance again, Ryu appeared in the middle of nowhere. He had only used the teleportation platform for a small moment. Once he sensed the Fourth Heaven, he had stepped out. Since he had been stopped on the Sixth Heaven, he had no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen on the Fourth Heaven as well.
This would be incredibly dangerous for most others to do, but with Ryu's eyes and his Soul Nature, he was in a unique situation. Not only could he do it, his steps were incredibly accurate. He had appeared just a few kilometers from the Radiant Star Sect, in a secluded region, with great ease.
However, what Ryu saw when his vision cleared caused his pupils to constrict.
The location the Radiant Star Sect should have been in was an empty wasteland. There wasn't a single soul and there wasn't even the slightest hint of rubble.
'What happened...?"
Large disturbances of qi continued to echo through the skies. Although it wasn't as bad as when the Sixth Heaven seemed to almost collapse, the streaks and tears were very clear to Ryu's eyes.
Ryu's gaze couldn't help but narrow.
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