1117 Patience
''Brother-in-law?''
Almost the instant Aantha's voice fell, several gazes turned towards Ryu. The rush was practically instantaneous.
Aantha had several brothers and sisters, this was just the way things worked in the Dream Asura race. With their promiscuity, even considering the realtivly low birth rates that were a result of their strong talents, over enough time, they would have plenty of children.
Even so, the person everyone thought of almost instantly was still Mae, which was a bit ironic considering the fact that Aantha and Mae weren't really siblings and were instead a close pair of cousins. It was just that Aantha's other siblings were simply far too old to have married themselves to a young man like Ryu.
Strength mattered too much in the cultivation world, and often talent wasn't enough to guarantee future success, there were simply to many variables. This was why although there might be many verbal agreements regarding marriage, many wouldn't be followed through upon until the two interested parties reached a certain status.
However, for Aantha to call Ryu brother-in-law meant that even if the marriage hadn't been confirmed with 100% certainty, at the very least, Ryu, and this secondary party, had to be in agreement with one another that they would be Dao Companions. And, the only way for this to happen was if this masked man was of close enough status with someone Aantha was close enough to call sister.
In that case, there was only one such person that fit all of the requirements, and that was Mae.
But although everyone reached this conclusion simulatenously, all of them being geniuses with more than powerful enough deductive reasoning skills, they still found it hard to accept.
Setting aside Mae's personality for a moment making it hard for them to believe that she would have already settled on a man, just looking at the direction Ryu had come from... What exactly made him worthy of Mae?
This group here could be considered to be quite top class in talent. Facing the likes of Enren and Theris, they would only need a handful of moves to defeat them despite being several cultivation realms beneath them.
However, they were still aware than in comparison to the geniuses that were ahead of them, they were far inferior. Those were the true monsters of the fourth, fifth and sixth Heavens, existences that just might have a chance to be accepted as disciples of a seventh Heaven Clan or Sect in the future.
How could someone who was worse than even them be accepted by someone of Mae's caliber?
What made it all particularly bad was exactly this truth. With her talent, it was very much possible for Mae to marry into a Seventh Heaven Clan in the future. So why would she make such a decision before even reaching the Sky God Realms?
Could it be that Antha was messing around? She was quite mischievous by nature, but would she really allow some random man to take advatange of her big sister like that? Even she wouldn't cross such a line, right?
Ryu inwardly shook his head before looking away. Aantha wasn't in any danger at all, she was just annoyed and now wanted him to fight her battles for her.
Even so, he wasn't particularly mad at her for ''exposing'' him. As far as he was concerned, since he dared to bed Mae, he dared to publicly claim her as his woman. Anyone who had a problem with it could be escorted to an early death by his blade.
Aantha pouted when she saw that Ryu was going to ignore her. This brother-in-law of hers was really too hateful, however she still became teary eyed.
''I'm going to tell big sis that you just let me die.''
Ryu was once again rendered speechless. If she died, how was she going to inform anyone? For the first time, he was thankful for being an only child. If he had to deal with annoying siblings like this, especially considering his personality, he would have been driven up a wall.
Plus, this wasn't just a matter of whether he wanted to help Aantha or not, it wasn't that simple. Just to make it to her, he would have to detour off of his preferred path, and from here, he couldn't even sense if the inheritance they were fighting over was even worth it for him. Although it seemed like they were within close distance of one another, that was just because of their cultivations. In reality, they were probably separeted by at least three to four inheritances and several hundred kilometers.
''Who are you?''
Suddenly, a cold voice came from not too far from Ryu. The young man had flowing golden hair and piercing green eyes. To his back, he had a glaive as well. If Ryu knew who Vie was, he would have probably classified this young man as someone from his Clan, but seeing as Ryu didn't know who any of these people were, all he cared about was the hostility in the latter's voice.
Ryu didn't respond. The young man was in an adjacent star path to himself and Ryu could easily reach him by taking that path, but he hadn't decided which route to take yet as he was still carefully analyzing his surroundings. The number of inheritances here felt like a hundredfold compared to what had been behind them. In fact, Ryu could see several individuals who were even doubling back to take part in several more.
These geniuses were treating this place like their playground.
Orthros almost immediately lost his patience. As far as he was concerned, it simply didn't matter whether Ryu was truly Mae's husband or not, just the fact his name was associated with the latter was enough to sentence him to death. No one could be allowed to cuckold his elder brother.
Orthros immediately abondoned the fight over his own inheritance, cutting forward a blazing path toward Ryu.
At that moment, Ryu's gaze turned frighteningly cold, sparks of radient blue lightning flying between his horns.
It seemed that these people really wanted to test his patience.
