Ryu pricked his finger, causing a long stream of blood to flow out. His recovery was so fast that even after the thick mass of ruby liquid was double the size of his head, he showed no signs of going pale.
All this time, Ryu had been practicing with his normal blood, not his Blood Essence. If he had been using the latter, he would have likely already died by now. Blood Essence was too precious for such a thing. And, theoretically, he should be able to have the same effect as Blood Essence with his normal blood so long as he matched quality with quantity instead.
Ryu's gaze flickered as he calmly watched the mass increase, stopping when it was about half the size of his body, his face still ruddy and fresh.
If this worked, it would be game changing.
Ryu had only ever used his Dao on others and on external comprehension. But if it worked on himself, it could change things greatly.
This made sense. After all, whether it was Dividing Karma or Dividing Tribulation, both were targeted toward others. Dividing Karma was created to observe a sword scar, while Dividing Tribulation was created to challeng the Heavens.
Things only changed slightly after his creation of Dividing Dharma and Dividing Sin, and more specifically Dividing Dharma which dealt with the direct consequences of one's actions following karma doing its duty.
Even so, none of these things were directly related to Ryu himself, and as such, he had locked himself into one kind of thinking. If it wasn't for The Compendium forcing his hand, he didn't know how long it would have taken him to try this.
There was another barrier to this as well, and that was Ryu's choice of forming the eight trigram diagram. His Inheritances had always been more internal to him while his Daos were influencing the outer world. After all, his Rage Flames, for example, came from within him, as did his other Inheritances. But his Dao felt like something separate.
But now that he thought about it, there was no logical reason for this separation. While it was true that he had been born with his Rage Flame or his Ice Flame, or many of the other things his Inheritances relied upon, he also had external Inheritances like the Tatsuya Saintly Weapons.
That separation he had subconsciously made was ridiculous, and the moment he challenged it, he realized how wrong he had been.
Sometimes the most ignorant one could be was about things one didn't feel the need to question, and what was especially difficult about that was that it was difficult to realize what you had chalked up to common sense that couldn't be considered common sense at all...
Ryu was eager to see what shedding these shackles would give him.
His gaze flashed and a suffocating pressure rose from him.
Logically, if Ryu wanted to use his Daos on himself, taking his blood out of his body first didn't seem to make sense. But there was a very good reason Ryu had chosen to do things this way, and that was because he had a great deal of respect for his Dao and the strength it had.
If he divided his blood within his body, there was no telling what might happen. It wouldn't be certain that he would be able to fuse them, and given the clashing nature of many of his Bloodline, they could end up making his body a battlefield and ultimately kill him.
That would be a far too tragic way to die, so Ryu chose caution first.
A twin pair of spinning eight trigram diagrams appeared in each one of his irises, exuding a mighty presence.
Suddenly, Ryu could see everything about his blood. Much of it looked like swimming phoenixes, entangling and detangling themselves. However, just within, there were two slumbering beasts, both resting their large heads on their forearms. They didn't seem to care about the world at all.
Ryu's heart skipped a beat. Two of his most powerful Bloodlines were slumbering?
He slowly shook his head. In order to accommodate two races that hated each other so much, maybe this was the only way. However, just this sight alone seemed to make everything so much more obvious to him.
As for the phoenix portions of his Bloodline, they seemed to be struggling as well. Although they were awake, sometimes a fire and ice phoenix would run into another and cancel out, vanishing into nothing. The same would happen when a Dark Phoenix met an Ice Phoenix. At the same time, whenever the three ran into the weakest strands of Emperor Phoenix blood, they would turn and run.
Seeing his Bloodlines in such a state, Ryu realized how laughable his idea of "perfect balance" was. This wasn't perfect balance, this was mere tolerance.
His Bone Structure couldn't do anything about this, he had to take action himself.
Ryu knew that his Bone Structure would continue to grow. The only reason it was so weak was because the Essence and Chaos Qi that had formed it in the first place was at a level Ryu could use currently. Ryu was still using them at an Immortal Grade, if he could use them at full strength, he would probably already be one of the strongest existences in the True Martial World.
However, there simply wasn't any time.
In order to use the full strength of Essence and Chaos Qi, he would have to be in the final Sky God Realm. But even before that, while gaining access to Cosmic Grade Essence and Chaos Qi would evolve his Bone Structure further, there was no tell if this change would be enough to cause large changes to his Bloodline or not.
Of course, in all likelihood, it would. But would that change be satisfactory? Would it be enough to match Ninth Heaven geniuses? Surpass them?
The answer to that was definitely no.
Ryu couldn't wait until he was a Dao God to unlock his full potential, there had to be a faster method.
Ryu's aura surged. "Divide."
The sphere of blood quakes, rippling like the surface of a lake.
Suddenly, the slumbering Fire Dragon and Lightning Qilin shook, their eyelashes fluttering and their eyes cracking open.
A searing pain pierced into Ryu's eyes as he met the crack in their gazes.
At that moment, two roars echoed into the skies.
