The commotion slowly came to a stop and Ryu stood in silence. Many thought that he should feel a great amount of jubilation, but he didn't. In fact, he was enraged with no one other than himself. His mood plummeted and the spatial fluctuations around him only grew fiercer. Many couldn't even get close for fear of what might happen to them in the attempt.
What could be on the other side of those spatial fluctuations? Wouldn't it just be the world that they knew? Even if it was a small world, there was no way that he wouldn't be able to sense her. In fact, if she had long since left his eyes, it should have been at least a year or so in his time, she would have definitely found him by now, no?
There was no one in this world that Ryu could sense better than Ailsa. To put this matter into perspective, he could even faintly feel Mae in the Nether Realm now, although it wasn't clear, the feeling was definitely there. He could sense Elena vaguely even on the Ninth Heaven. But, he couldn't sense Yaana and Ailsa at all.
Originally, he had thought that this was because they were sealed in his eyes, and that made sense. But now...
There seemed to be a very obvious answer sitting right in front of him, an answer that smacked him in the face and left him even more infuriated than he was originally...
They hadn't just been displaced through space, but time as well. How could he sense them if they weren't even living in the same timeline as him any longer?
"FUCK!"
Ryu roared, his voice echoing like a clap of thunder before he vanished entirely. He didn't even say anything to anyone, nor did he wait to accept congratulations. It was as though he had simply vanished into thin air, and only a rare few could even track where he had gone in the first place.
...
Ryu sat in silence, his gaze quite blank. If he could see the situation in his eyes now, he might be able to calculate some things and maybe figure out where exactly... or when exactly they had gone. But he couldn't see the situation in his eyes at all. In fact, it might very well have been a miracle that Ailsa's voice made it to him in the first place.
He ground his teeth. Just what was it going to take to awaken his eyes, or at least look into them?
His gaze flashed. Was it his soul? The eyes were the window into the soul, it was something that he had heard again and again, could he see the situation through his soul now that Ailsa's voice had managed to leak out to him? Or maybe he had to make his soul stronger first to gain the opportunity?
Ryu clenched his teeth and brought out his cauldron. He began to refine pill after pill, each one related to the soul, and each one used to both cleanse and strengthen. Now that he had completed his first Life Destruction, the equivalent of completing exactly 10 for anyone else, the room his soul had to grow was extremely vast.
Cracks of thunder roared through the skies, but he didn't seem to hear them at all.
He swallowed his created Runed Pills as though they were worthless, his soul expanding again and again, and then again. Eventually, it spilled over, reaching a limit of the Soul Refinement Realm. Ryu hadn't thought that such a limit existed as he thought the Perfect Blackbody could increase indefinitely so long as his body could take it, but he didn't care to linger on the matter.
He directly broke through and entered the Soul Ascension Realm and his soul began to grow furiously once again. He split his mind, mixing with one aspect and nurturing with the other. He didn't stop until he felt that his body was finally beginning to reach its limits, but at this point, he had already far surpassed a World Sea Realm standard.
The World Sea Realm equivalent for the Mental Realm was the Middle of the Soul Ascension Realm. However, Ryu was still firmly within the Lower Soul Ascension Realm, the supposed Cosmic Seed Realm equivalent. It seemed that whatever limit there was, he had yet to reach it, so he stayed put.
His Spiritual Sea was a vast ocean of reflective black, only a single spot of white hidden deep within its depths. However, Ryu was far more focused on his Perfect Blackbody. It had already grown to the point of being an adult, or more accurately, a perfect reflection of himself. This was completed through the Soul Birth and Soul Refinement Realms.
Now, in the Soul Ascension Realm, one would purify and perfect one's soul. For normal people, this would polish it, turning it from an opaque white into a crystalline glow at the peak. Once it reached the pinnacle of purity, it would transform, as would one's Spiritual Sea, and the normal Spiritual Qi would transcend to something entirely new. At this point, at the pinnacle of the Soul Ascension Realm, one would be in the Sky God Realm of the Mental Realm.
If there was an opportunity to glimpse what was going on inside, it would be through it.
Ryu looked deeply, trying to find what he needed to see. It had to be here.
Then he realized, he just had to follow the thread of the Silver Star. There was obviously some of its lingering energy here, so he should be able to find a line to his eyes.
'There!'
Ryu found it and concentrated on it. His Spiritual Sense was the strongest it could be in here, and he followed it immediately.
He felt as though his head was being squished from all sides, almost as though he was trying to look down a pipe to glimpse a vast realm on the other side. His vision was both constrained and strained, but he pushed through.
And then he saw it, the realm on the other side.
He fell into silence.
