Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Chapter 2149 Pluripotent

Chapter 2149  Pluripotent

"… Interesting…" 
It took Ryu an entire three hours to deduce the secret. He even had to enter the Ruin itself, checking it out without clearing it—a task that was much more difficult than it sounded. 
He had to avoid the traps, but by virtue of avoiding them he would be in the process of clearing them. In order to not succeed in clearing it before he was ready, he had to dance between life and death for as long as he could. Essentially, until the very end, his life had been on the line. 
That feeling though… left him feeling quite alive. He wouldn't rather be doing anything else. Well, aside from maybe his wives. But even a man like him needed a break from that from time to time. 
Soon enough, he'd have a farm of kids running around everywhere. Who knew when the next time he would have such freedom would be? 
Ryu found himself smiling. For a moment, he forgot that he was in the middle of something quite important. 
The idea of Elena and Eska being barefoot and big-bellied put a smile on his face. He was especially happy since Elena finally trusted himself enough to stop striving through so much hardship all the time. 
Maybe it didn't sound like a very endearing quality for his first wife to be so "lazy." But Ryu didn't see things that way. 
Much like all things in cultivation, the process and details were far more important than the end result. Elena might be lazy, but she was willing to set aside her true nature for his sake when she thought it would be of great help to him. 
That meant more to Ryu than anything else. The fact his wife was capable and simply didn't like to be was enough. 
Ryu shook his head and he sneered. 'The Ruin Master Guild sure has a good deal here. They almost fooled me several times.' 
If it was before the advancement to his mind, Ryu knew that he wouldn't have been able to figure it out without at least several weeks to months of effort. However, this time, three hours to Ryu might as well have been millennia to others. His mental capacity was beyond 99% of Dao Gods, and those that could boast to have such mental acuity were not only a very small percentage, but they were unlikely to be beyond him. At best, they could be on par or faintly better. 
This was all to say that it would have taken the smartest individuals in all of history to figure out the trick here. But the explanation was quite simple. 
The Ruin Master Guild was siphoning away Fate. 
Essentially, they had managed to find a method to harness the Fate one might receive from Ruins, taking most of it for themselves, and only leaving enough behind to fool the participants into thinking they weren't being screwed. 
Every Ruin, upon being cleared, came with Fate. This was the case for all Ruins, not just the ones in this Title Stele World. It was just that, for the most part, this Fate functioned like all Fate. Meaning, it was vague, hard to grasp, ethereal… It was the kind of Fate even Ryu had a tough time sensing properly. 
This was the usual state of Fate, the sort of Fate one could gather just by accomplishing great feats and spreading your name and legend, or building a powerful Sect or Clan. 
However, the Fate of the Title Stele was much different. It was tangible, transferable. It could be stolen and taken, exchanged, and most importantly, it could be easily sensed and easily manipulated. 
That milky white light Ryu gained every time he killed someone here was precisely that. 
The Ruin Master Guild was taking advantage of the Title Stele to turn the normal Fate gathered from Ruins into this more malleable Fate. They would siphon away most of that energy for themselves, while giving the participants a sliver of what was here. 
Over the years, they would have surely accumulated a mind-numbing amount. 
Objectively, the Ruins here would have far greater concentrations of Fate than the geniuses participating. They were all from figures that had long established themselves as Dao Gods, legends of past eras where Fate was actually even easier to accumulate. 
Clearing their Ruins essentially made you their successors, so how could this not come with a great amount of Fate? 
The question was… why? What about this malleable Fate was so special? 
Ryu flipped over a palm and a familiar milky whiteness appeared. 
Embryonic Qi. 
What was the opposite of Embryonic Qi? It was Corpse Poison, an energy formed from an accumulation of terrible, horrid Karma birthed from the most tragic of circumstances—the kinds of deeds one shouldn't even speak of or mention. 
Karma and Fate, they were inextricably linked. And it seemed that the same was true for Embryonic Qi and Fate as well. 
But that was only natural. The only time Embryonic Qi appeared naturally in one's life was during one's gestation period. It was what decided one's potential… one's Fate. 
This more easily manipulated Fate, wasn't it just a quasi form of Embryonic Qi? No, it was a form of Embryonic Qi even, one that was slightly less omnipotent and all-encompassing. Or rather, the best word to use was… 
Pluripotent. 
The Fate here was still somewhat limited. The Title Stele used real Embryonic Qi, but due to the restrictions of the Heavens, by the time it got to them, it became something very different. But this quasi Embryonic Qi was still valuable enough that the Ruin Master Guild set all of this up to gather as much of it as possible. 
Ryu's eyes glazed over as he entered the Ruin. This time, he cleared it, a process that took not even a full minute. 
When he came out, his second hand was adorned with a floating blob of quasi Embryonic Qi. It shimmered with a milky whiteness not much unlike true Embryonic Qi. 
"I see…"