1119 Danger
''Enough!''
Orthros roared into the air, his golden hair dancing with sparkling motes of light. At that moment, his cultivation which had been at the World Sea Realm began to plummted and concentrate, only stopping after falling to the Path Extinction Realm. And yet, his aura seemed to become many times more concentrated in an instant.
It was clear that he no longer cared about anything else. There wasn't any of the trash of the Third and lower Heavens here anyway. What good was blending in to him?!
His glaive struck against the ground, bending wildly as it stopped his backward momentum. Then, he flung himself forward like a slingshot, his glaive's polearm vibrating wildly beneath the pressure. In an instant, he had already closed the distance between himself and Ryu, bearing down with a suffocating pressure.
The arc of the glaive traveled from near parallel with the ground right to Ryu's head, leaving a beautiful path of gold in its wake as sparks of lightning trembled along it.
However, when it seemed that Ryu would lose his head, his afterimage dispersed into the wind once more.
Ryu appeared high in the skies, his whips pulling against his arms as though the pair were trully flood dragons struggling against their chains. They seemed far more lifelike now even with just 10% of the first Rune formed. And yet, under a suppressive might, they were quickly compressed.
Ryu opened his palms and his great sworfstaffs flew into them. At the same time, the coiling lightning flood dragons wrapped around the blades of the great swordstaffs, pulsing with a might power.
With a single raise of his arm, the crackles of lightning and the booming of thunder in the skies caused the star path to quake. The roar of a mighty beast echoed and Ryu's great swordstaffs suddenly felt as though they had been forged with the bones of dragons and tempered in the blood of qilins.
Orthros felt a mighty pressure descend upon him and the faint sparks of lightning he had been accumulating were entirely snuffed out.
In the skies, a looming shadow appeared to Ryu's back. In its presence, even the most volatile lightning qi seemed to become completely docile. Its horns pierced the skies and its hooves solidified the earth. Before it, Orthros could only feel that his aura was completely supressed.
The geniuses in the surroundings felt their pupils constrict. They recognized it almost immediately.
Birted Phenomena.
Ever since Ryu had perfected his Ruler Realm Inheritances he had gained access to Birthed Phenomena. However, using such Phenomena in the True Martial World was troublesome for its own reasons. Even partially summoned like this, it was all too obvious that Ryu's Birthed Phenomena wasn't human. Using the Birthed Phenomena of an Inheritance obviously birthed from the affinity of his Bloodlines was like screaming to the mountaintops that he had Lightning Qilin blood flowing through his veins.
However, with his current identity, his bloodline was already exposed, and since he couldn't use his Immortal Rings for similar reasons, this was the second best option.
Orthros felt his heart skip a beat. Without the slightest hesitation, before Ryu could even swing, his palm flipped over and a talisman of sorts appeared. He slammed it onto his chest and vanished in a streak of lightning. He was so fast that by the time Ryu swung his arm down, his ttack hit nothing but air.
BOOM!
The star path quaked before settling down.
Ryu slowly fell from the air, his gaze frighteningly cold as he looked toward the direction Orthros had vanished. He had gone down a path that he had previously unlocked, but due to the rules of the star path, Ryu wasn't able to follow down it. Obviously, Orthros had thought of this and used it to his advantage.
Others felt shocked by the battle alone, but Ryu was entirely unsatisfied. He rarely failed to kill those he wanted dead, in fact he couldn't remember this ever happening before. He didn't like the feeling.
This was ultimately a failure of his ignorance, he had never even seen such an escape measure before, it didn't even look like Orthros had to pay a steep price, other than whatever the cost of the talisman itself was.
''Annoying,'' Ryu growled.
He only spoke for himself, but what level of cultivators were there around him? Even if he was speaking at a normal level, most in the surroundings several dozen kilometers heard him.
To the geniuses here, this only made sense. They had far too many protective reasures, normally, to kill one another, so often, they didn't even try. Their matches had slowly become tacit spars as a result of this. Ryu was probably the only one among them all that had actually been trying to kill his enemy.
Even so, although they felt that Ryu was somewhat arrogant, they didn't believe that it was entirely unwarranted. They didn't know why someone who could form a Birthed Phenomena was placed so far back, but what they did know was that anyone who could form such a thing, at they very least, was a genius of comprehension.
As steep as the difficulty in forming a Birthed Phenomena in Sacrum was, even saying it was a thousandfold harder in the True Martial World would be an understatement. It wasn't just that it confirmed a level of genius comprehension very few could match, more importantly, it assumed the existence of an Inheritance that had the ability to reach such a level!
They had wondered why Orthros' lightning had seemed so subdued, it turned out that this was because Ryu had suppressed him to the point he couldn't even raise his head!
Just who was this young man, exactly?
At that moment, Aantha's giggles reached their ears. It seemed that this mischievous young woman, the catalyst for all of this to begin with, was actually quite happy with the results. At the very least, Ryu wasn't weak, this was a good thing.
Ryu sent a gaze toward Aantha. Truthfully anyone else who had played with him like this would be dealing with an arrow to the forehead right about now, beautiful woman or not. However, he had always been more lenient toward family, and Aantha could barely be considered that.
He inwardly shook his head and decided to forget about it. Her punishment would be dealing with those three surrounding her on her own.
Without a word, Ryu turned toward the star paths once again and chose one. He had thought about going down toward the inheritance Orthros had been about to claim since he could sense that it was a lightning inheritance, but he decided against it. He had finally sensed a soul inheritance and it just might be useful to him.
Aantha's pouting returned once she realized that Ryu had dispersed his Birthed Phenomena and was continuing on without a word to her.
''I'm telling big sis!'' Aantha called out, but Ryu still ignored her. ''Hey, where are you going!'' Don't go down that path, there are some dangerous people over there! Hey! Listen to me!''
This time, Aantha seemed to actually be serious, but he was Ryu Tatsuya, since when did danger cause his steps to pause? How ridiculous.
Aantha was speechless. She somewhat felt like the boy who cried wolf, but Ryu should be able to tell when she was joking around and when she was being serious, right? Why was he being so stubborn?!
Aantha panicked. If mae found out about this, would she blame her? She had really tried, though!
Ryu's body flashed along the start paths, finally appearing at a crossroad. However, compared to the other star paths which either only had a single person others didn't dare to fight with, or had a number of individuals fighting it out, this one not only had several individuals, but they were also entirely unmoving.
Even with the appearance of Ryu, they stood each ten or so meters apart from one another, their eyes closed and their robes fluttering.
Others when they saw such a scene might come to a stop and hesitate. However, Ryu's steps didn't even hitch. He was on a time crunch, it would already be too late to regret it if others got to the Dao Lord's Inheritance before him.
Ryu had a Dao Sovereign's soul cultivation technique. It was just a single method and didn't have the full inheritance behind it. And yet, just its existence alone was groundbreaking. Compared to a Dao Sovereign singular cultivation technique, the entire inheritance of a Dao Lord was far more valuable, to say that it would be life changing was an understatement.
He didn't care what little game of arrogant chicken these robe youths were playing. If they wanted to stand around and do nothing, he would simply claim the inheritance and move on.
The moment the youths realized that Ryu actually had no intention of stopping, their expressions changed somewhat even within their seemingly meditative states.
At that instant, one who seemed far more relaxed than the others suddenly opened his eyes, turning towards Ryu.
''Since you don't understand your place, just die.''
The gaze of the youngman flashed, a streaking soul attack appearing before Ryu's forehead in less than a blink.
