Ryu gasped, a violent cough suddenly coming from him.  𝑜𝑣𝓛xt.𝒞𝑶𝐌

He wheezed and gagged, but nothing seemed to come out. It was only after several moments and his heart finally calming that he managed to regain his composure, still breathing heavily on all fours. 

In that moment, he had felt death again. He tried to fight back against it with all his might, but it didn’t allow him to do so. It only made it worse that his body had been drilled down with an unimaginable pain, as though it was being ripped to shreds and put back together only to be ripped to shreds again. 

Ryu’s eyes widened. ‘What…?’

The first thing he noticed was that his Body Realm had fallen completely out of the Blood Tempering Realm, returning to the pinnacle of the Vessel Tempering Realm. 

This wasn’t a small fall by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was the equivalent of falling through four entire Realms!

Ryu’s body had been the equivalent of the Cosmic Seed Realm before, but it had fallen down through the Dao Pedestal Realm, past the Path Extinction Realm, and returned back to the Immortal Ring Realm equivalent. What the hell was going on?!

Ryu took a deep breath, closing his eyes. He wasn’t the type of person to panic. It was only because this time he truly felt that he had died that he was acting like this. 

He didn’t fear for himself, but he feared what would happen to his mother if he didn’t show up, what would happen to Ailsa and Yaana who were both within his Inner World right this moment, and how would Elena feel without him? 

He had too many promises to fulfill, too many things he had to do. Even setting aside his dreams, he had people he couldn’t… people he absolutely refused to let down. 

When Ryu opened his eyes up again, he had calmed once more. 

He pulled himself up, crossing his legs and sitting in meditation. When he did so, what he found was even more difficult to understand. 

Despite the fact his Body Realm had fallen so far, his body actually hadn’t gotten any weaker. In fact, it had gotten even stronger, something that he could wrap his head around. 

But then, Ryu suddenly remembered something very important. 

‘When I fought those two of the Hidden Blade Sect, the both of them were just in the Path Extinction Realm, and yet they could read and react to my attacks. Just by virtue of the fact my body was the equivalent of the Cosmic Seed Realm, they shouldn’t have been able to do such a thing at all unless their bodies, too, were just as powerful. 

‘The only explanation, then… Is that my body was never as powerful as I thought it to be? If that’s the case, then the problem here shouldn’t be lack of talent, it’s most definitely cultivation method.’

Ryu was certain. The gap could only be explained in that way. Compared to those two, his Bloodlines were leagues beyond. There was no way that their Body Realm cultivation talent was beyond his own. The only possible disparity, then, was cultivation method. 

Ryu couldn’t help but notice while looking through their spatial rings that there wasn’t a single cultivation method within. 

Cross referencing with Sarriel’s information, cultivation techniques were highly protected commodities in the true Martial World. Just to lay you hands on one, you had to not only join a Clan or Sect, you had to swear loyalty to them and then you had to prove your worth. 

Of course, it was possible to become a Throne as well, but the situation of Thrones in the True Martial World was a lot different. Because these Clans and Sects could balance their Karma, they had far less qualms about killing off a Throne that was taking too much from them. 

This realization made Ryu realize just how naïve he had been to think of becoming a Throne of the Martial Gods. They might have fallen in line for a small time to keep up the façade that they were one with this world, but as soon as they got the chance, they wouldn’t hesitate to stab him in the back and snatch away his talent. 

As Ryu had learned before, being a rogue cultivator in the True Martial World was a sort of taboo. Well, not so much a taboo as it was greatly looked down upon. Legacy was everything in the True Martial World, so while a Throne was highly respected in Sacrum, at the center of Existence, they were seen as annoyances. 

Of course, this didn’t mean that Thrones weren’t powerful in the True Martial World. If anything, they were several times more powerful than anything that could be found in Sacrum simply by virtue of the kind of pressure they experienced from all sides. 

If you were a Throne in the True Martial World, then it meant that you were almost too confident in your abilities or you were one of the few remaining members of a Clan or Sect that had been recently destroyed. Either way, since you had survived to this point, you were powerful. 

This aside, the gap was suddenly all too obvious to Ryu. Even a Connecting Heaven Realm expert of Sacrum wasn’t enough to deal with Working Disciples in the Path Extinction Realm. 

But that still left more questions than answers. Why was it that he had regressed? Was it because of all that new blood that had shot into his body? 

Theoretically it made sense. Ryu had entered the Blood Tempering Realm and had suddenly gained all this new blood, it would make sense that he reverted back to a non-tempered state. But, even then, it shouldn’t have been like this, especially with how powerful the vitality of that black blood had been. If anything, it had felt far more tempered than even Ryu’s had… 

‘Blood…?’

Ryu’s pupils constricted. 

His Bloodlines… Why could he only feel three of them?