Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

2021 No Time

Ryu didn't seem to react much to his slice across Falling Snow's body, his gaze calm and unperturbed.

Falling Snow fell to a knee, hacking up mouthfuls of blood, the howling winds of his breath strong enough to cause space to shudder.

That was another large difference between the two. Even without the injury, Falling Snow's skin was a bright red, his chest heaving and sweat matted on his body as his limbs trembled from the strain.

Comparatively speaking, Ryu just stood there silently. His heartbeat was so slow that his chest couldn't even be seen moving. It was only every few minutes that his heart might echo with a beat that caused space to shudder.

It was like he hadn't even been in a battle at all, the cadence of his breathing too even.

His body looked spry. Though his robes were torn asunder, it didn't do much to detract from his momentum in the slightest. There didn't even seem to be the slightest wound on his body either.

Ryu casually swung down his second great swordstaff, and Falling Snow hurried to block. However, he quickly found that the energy pouring into his body couldn't easily be handled.

The ravaging darkness suppressed him from all sides, tearing into his body and throwing the qi that he once had such great pride in into disarray.

That was when he remembered that part of the reason they wanted to capture Ryu in the first place was because of his Chaotic Silk Meridians. He hadn't taken it very seriously at first.

The Chaotic Silk Meridians were just another God Grade talent. He had plenty of them, and unlike the Chaotic Silk Meridians, the usage of his own were quite straightforward and not difficult to manifest at all. Comparatively speaking, without jumping through many difficult hoops, the Chaotic Silk Meridians would never be able to display their greatest strength.

However, this was both a curse and strength of the Chaotic Silk Meridians.

They might be lackluster if you failed to bring them to their full potential.

But when they were...

Falling Snow coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"Since you like seeing your blood so much, I thought I would help out," Ryu said casually. "You'll probably need quite a bit of help closing that wound if you want to survive.

Falling Snow was driven to his second knee by Ryu's blow. The former was struggling through gritted teeth, but the latter was only casually chatting as he continued to add strength to his blow.

None of these people even knew that Ryu had not just one set of Meridians, but two of them. And the second just might be even more shocking than the first.

Wanting to use a series of battles to tire him out when on the one hand, he had unlimited qi, and on the other, he had unlimited healing...

Weren't they overestimating themselves too much?

Falling Snow didn't respond, both because he didn't know what to say and because he couldn't. If he loosened his muscles just the slightest bit to speak, he would collapse to the ground and suffer the greatest humiliation of his life.

Being on his knees was already bad enough. But if he was forced to lay flat on the ground before an enemy in his generation like this, that was the sort of thing he would never be able to erase from his heart even if he killed Ryu in the future.

"No response, hm?" Ryu asked with a smile. "Who do you think is going to come to save you? I wonder. If a woman ends up saving you, would that be better or worse for your psyche? What do you think?"

BOOM!

The pressure from Ryu's great swordstaff suddenly increased by another 50%, and Falling Snow's teeth shattered beneath the strain of his clenched jaw.

The pain didn't even register to him as tears of bloody rage fell from his eyes. Ryu's smile didn't fade, but deep within his eyes, there was a dense flicker of killing intent.

The reason he didn't act to kill Falling Snow immediately was that he could feel his life-saving measures through his Fate. He needed time to tease them out before he could circumvent them and go in for the kill directly.

In the meantime, he was trying to attack Falling Snow's Dao Heart, but there was also

a very clear difference in skill between geniuses.

The more he attacked Falling Snow's Dao Heart, though cracks appeared, the foundation seemed to be tempered further.

It was clear that Falling Snow wasn't the sort of man that could easily collapse. In that respect, he was a lot like Starlight, who had had a breakthrough beneath Ryu's

pressure.

This was part of the reason Ryu was dissatisfied with his Dao even now that it had grown so strong. What use was a powerful Dao if it was only useful against middling opponents and geniuses?

Why waste the time using his Dao when he could just kill the likes of Kira directly?

17:27

Why even waste his time?

But then, when he faced an opponent like Falling Snow, even after forcing him to his knees and defeating him in direct combat, his Dao still couldn't seem to attack his psyche well enough to shatter the foundation of his cultivation.

The truth was that Ryu was confident in succeeding if he could work on Falling Snow slowly and subtly for a few days. But Falling Snow was not only now on his guard after witnessing Kira's ending, but how could Ryu be willing to spend days on a single opponent?

This was why he had said that his Dao would make him the greatest Court Minister of all time, but he didn't say anything about using it to become the greatest expert. There were many things about his Dao that he wanted to change, but very few things that would be easily resolved.

And unfortunately, right now, he didn't have the time to take Falling Snow's life.