Ryu landed on the ground softly, releasing a minor wince. His body wasn't in the best condition after what he had just put it through, but he wasn't very worried, not with the strength he had. Although he hadn't focused much on cultivation in recent years, just by virtue of the clarity of his mind, his strength had been well consolidated.
If his cultivation was a tower, although it hadn't grown any taller, its foundation was now far more robust and wide. The swaying of the winds could no longer impact him.
Plus, there were very few who could hope to match his healing capabilities at the same level. By the time he scanned the region with his Void Spiritual Sense and attacked, 10% of his injuries had already been perfectly healed.
Ryu tapped at the air several times, causing ripples to spread. Although they looked gentle and subtle on the surface, the moment they touched the bodies of the beasts that were lurking in the surroundings, they caused a violent chain reaction.
One after another, these beasts fell, unable to protect themselves. If one looked inside their bodies, it would look as though thousands of small blades had ripped their inner organs apart, destroying them from the inside out.
Ryu took a step and vanished, appearing over a hundred meters away. Toward this, he could only shake his head lightly.
Back on the Second Heaven, crossing over a kilometer at a time wasn't an issue. Here, he could only casually cross a hundred meters. A kilometer was already relatively small in the face of his cultivation realm, but a hundred meters was even worse than that.
Ryu wasn't too worried about this either, though. This was just a casual effort to begin with, but even if you put this aside, being able to teleport freely here was something very few could do. This environment was only a small fraction away from the Fourth Heaven. If the metric was strictly about stability and suppression, this Heavenly Path was actually beyond the Fourth Heaven.
The fact that Ryu's Soul Nature was enough to accomplish to move so far in this place at all was a testament to just how elite it was, especially since he was still at the starting phase of the Lower Soul Refinement Realm.
Ryu continued to walk leisurely. He didn't have a particular destination, so he simply chose a direction and kept his Void Spiritual Sense primed.
Very soon, there would likely be hundreds of thousands if not tens of millions of cultivators entering. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if, despite his efforts, he had still lagged behind and there might very well be a few who entered before him.
Regardless of which it was, there were a lot of things that he had to do.
The Heavenly Path was separated into three main phases. The current phase, the so-called Accumulation Phase, was one where one's main goal was to accumulate as much Heavenly Favor as you could. The second phase, the Opening Phase, was the phase where ruins, inheritances, and the like would make their presences known, shining like beacons that ruptured the white-gold skies above. And finally, the Third Phase, the Final Phase, is where the true bloody nature of the Heavenly Path would make itself known.
What was important to understand was that these phases weren't set in stone, meaning, things that could happen in the Final Phase could very well happen in the Accumulation Phase and vice versa, they were more like suggestions than hard rules.
In the Accumulation Phase, one focused on accumulating Heavenly Favor. This came in the form of exiting the miasma as quickly as possible and killing beasts, just like Ryu was doing now. With every beast that Ryu killed, a small fraction of Heavenly Favor would come toward him, but it was quite small in comparison to the amount he had gotten from his initial entry.
If Ryu's calculations were correct as they usually were, he would need to kill 100 000 beasts to double his initial Heavenly Favor.
All of these beasts were at the Eleventh Order, or the World Sea Realm equivalent. However, they were just of the Heaven Grade. If Ryu was correct, then in all likelihood there were probably stronger beasts somewhere out there that give him more Heavenly Favor, but for now he was stuck with this.
In the Opening Phase, there would be a chain reaction that would occur. Ruins and inheritances would begin to appear, releasing pillars of light that allowed many to see them from afar. In addition, the fluctuation of their auras would steadily grow as well.
In the beginning, there would be weaker inheritances, but depending on the caliber of geniuses who had entered and how much Heavenly Favor they had accumulated in the First Phase, there would be more powerful ruins and inheritances to take part in.
Essentially, the more talented the batch of disciples, the longer the Opening Phase would last and the more chances there would be. It was just unfortunate that given the sides of the Heavenly Path, even if you could see all of the inheritances, making it to them all out would be impossible before the phase ended. As such, most would have to sense the aura of the inheritances and ruins released and only pick the ones that suited them the best.
In addition, by being accepted by these inheritances, you would likewise gain Heavenly Favor to add to your accumulating total. However, likewise, you could lose your Heavenly Favor as well.
The best inheritances and ruins were gatekept. Without a certain amount of accumulated merits, you could not enter them. As such, your Heavenly Favor became a key for entry, but also a payment of sorts. If you managed to claim the inheritance, you would receive the Heavenly Favor you paid on top of much more. However, if you failed, you would lose anywhere between half to all of your Heavenly Favor depending on anything from how poorly your performed to the cruelty of the inheritance itself.
This was yet another reason that even during this phase, the cultivators couldn't be too willful. If you chose wrongly, you could lose everything in the blink of an eye.
Finally, the Final Phase would begin.
During this phase, the Heavenly Favor rankings would appear in the skies and every cultivator would be ranked from top to bottom. Unless you met a certain threshold of Heavenly Favor, your name would not appear, and so long as you did not appear, this would mean that you had failed the test of the Heavenly Path and would be sent back to the Third Heaven once the path closed.
When the rankings appeared, however, the higher you were on the rankings, the brighter the light around you would be. The brightness of our light wouldn't just be a function of your ranking either, it would also be dependent on just how much Heavenly Favor you had as well.
By this point, the goal of the final phase was obvious: to kill.
Killing and snatching Heavenly Favor was the only path forward. During that phase, rivers of blood would flow and geniuses would fall. It was also during that phase that one would learn if all their blood, sweat and tears was worth it, or if they would fall into obscurity to be forgotten by the tides of history.
Ryu had a very clear goal that was far beyond just making it onto the Heavenly Favor Ranking, or even beyond being number one. If he couldn't meet a certain threshold, the number one spot would be entirely useless to him.
In these years, Ryu had thought a lot about the path ahead of him, and most notably the roadblocks before him. If he could not reclaim his Spiritual Foundation, he would truly have to abandon his Chaotic Silk Meridians.
It was one thing if he didn't know the path ahead, but now that he did, abandoning it filled him with fury. He wouldn't delay his cultivation for the sake of an illusory dream, but with one sitting tangibly before him, he refused to allow others to snatch it from him.
In this time, though, he had calmed down greatly, the fogginess of his mind had slowly but surely cleared and his resolve had redoubled. What he needed wasn't fury, what he needed was a plan that was equally as tangible as the path of the Chaotic Silk Meridians ahead of him.
And so, he had formulated one.
There was one very unique thing about [Refinement Sutra] that Ryu had noticed. Every time he used it, the shackles on his talent were slowly undone even though that was never the purpose for which he had absorbed them in the first place. Ryu could still remember how surprised he had been the first time it happened.
What was even more surprising wasn't this, but actually his eyesight. Even the Rebirth talent of the Emperor Phoenix hadn't been able to restore his eyes, but these bits and pieces of Heavenly Favor were capable of it.
All of this made Ryu realize that the unique aspect of Heavenly Favor wasn't in bestowing power, but it was rather in its ability to cleanse, to elevate… to unshackle.
This was why Ryu didn't use [Refinement Sutra] to breakthrough, it was only after he broke through would he double back and "re-cultivate" with Heavenly Favor, polishing his strength.
So Ryu wondered… If he accumulated an astronomical amount of Heavenly Favor, one more potent and dense than any Path Extinction Realm expert should ever have at their fingertips…
Could he shatter the chains around his Spiritual Foundation?
No, it wasn't a matter of could, because that was exactly what he planned to do. Even if he had to bury every genius in here beneath his blade, he would definitely accumulate enough.
He wouldn't allow anyone to stand in his way.
Ryu came to a stop, flipping over a palm and bringing out the Matrix Selheira had gifted him. This time, she was too stubborn for him to refuse, especially considering how close they had become.
'There.'
Ryu had no intention of waiting for the second phase to start hunting down inheritances and ruins. He would flip the Heavenly Path on its head if he had to.
