Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Chapter 2174 Fathomless Scope

Chapter 2174  Fathomless Scope

Ryu frowned when he heard this. He didn't think that Sarriel was the type to fearmonger without reason, and right now, he could hear something very distinctly… not like her in her voice.
Fear.
He could feel it almost palpably, as though she was only able to say so much because she was holding him right now.
Just what could put Sarriel in such a state, and what had she been doing this whole time keeping such a thing bundled up for so long?
Ryu became several points more serious, even to the point of tripling the defenses in the region. He was pretty confident in his abilities, but this time he threw everything he had at the wall before looking down at Sarriel seriously.
"What's going on?"
Sarriel opened her mouth to reply, but it seemed that even she didn't know where to start.
Honestly speaking, none of the things in her mind were concrete, and most of all, the things she knew were drawn from observation and inferences. She had collected many things over the years and had begun to slowly draw her own picture until she reached a final result that she didn't like in the slightest.
Not one bit.
Ryu was patient, but even after a long while stuck in her own thoughts, Sarriel still hadn't said anything. At that point, Ryu decided that maybe they needed a different approach.
He knew what Sarriel was experiencing right now. Sometimes, when you had an inference built on "vibes" or vague feelings, they were the most difficult to describe.
Someone else might think you were crazy or that you were blowing things out of proportion, and they wouldn't necessarily be wrong to feel that way. After all, it's impossible for you to pop your own brain out of your skull and swap it with theirs so they could experience every little thing that led you to your conclusion.
At least… that would normally be impossible. Unless you had a husband like Ryu, that is.
Using Sarriel's Primordial Yin as a bridge point to their souls, Ryu decided to open up his own soul completely to Sarriel, and she did the same after a moment.
Their memories became akin to an intertwined box, and several of the things that weren't quite clear to Sarriel began building into foggy shapes in Ryu's mind as well.
Ryu quickly began to frown as a large tapestry of oddities made themselves known.
There was the oddity of the rivalry between the Fey and the Ancient Beasts.
And then there was the peculiarity of the relationship between the Fey and the Fiend Race themselves.
Then there was the matter of the Fiend Race and its relationship with the Ruin Master Guild.
And then there was the scope of the Ruin Master Guild's control and how that might or might not be related to the so-called Heavenly Court.
There was a huge jumbled mess of nonsense that didn't even seem related at all. Even Ryu hadn't bothered to connect all of them. But that was because he lacked one thing that Sarriel had…
Experience.
Ryu had ultimately not been in the cultivation world for long. And the time he had spent in it was mostly spent alone.
By comparison, Sarriel had entered the depths of the Cultivation World and spent a lot of time in various Sects and powers, ingratiating herself, learning from them, and picking up on their secrets.
The way she saw the world was hugely different from the way Ryu saw the world, so she was able to connect things that even he didn't.
And because of that, she had been slowly drawing connecting lines between these seemingly unrelated things for years already.
But even with all of that, there was still one thing that caught Ryu's attention the most.
As though all of these matters weren't pressing enough, they all tied back to the very same thing in the end…
The Phoenix Sky God.
That was when Ryu felt the very crux of Sarriel's fear. And that was when he also realized that it wasn't a normal sort of fear at all.
What Sarriel feared wasn't death or dying. She feared that she wouldn't have the time to grow, the time to establish herself well enough… that she would fail to live up to her promises to herself, to her family, all because she was born too late.
That was what filled her with the greatest sense of unwillingness. She didn't want to have to suffer such a Fate at all.
Feeling through Sarriel's memories, Ryu finally understood.
All of these schemes, all of these movements, even the Fiends that seemed to want the destruction of the world itself, were all just acting for the sake of dealing with the Phoenix Sky God.
In their obsession with finding a path to break beyond the God Realm, the Phoenix Sky God was leaving destruction in their wake… Hope's World was just one of the many that had suffered such a Fate, but as time went on, and the appetite of the Phoenix Sky God became more insatiable, it became less and less likely that anyone would be able to stop them…
Not the Fey…
Not the Fiends…
Not the Ancient Beasts…
Not the Ruin Master Guild…
Not even the Heavenly Court…
This was the very first time that Ryu had felt the devastation of the Phoenix Sky God in earnest. An existence so powerful, so harrowing, that they had gripped the hearts and souls of every power across all of existence.
It was hard to even fathom just how powerful such an existence would have to be to reach this level, and yet beyond that, still be so obsessed with improvement that they were willing to sacrifice so much for an attempt at reaching a step that didn't exist.
Maybe it was that sort of obsession that was required to create such a powerful existence in the first place. Maybe it was only by being so focused in mind that you could become as powerful as the Phoenix Sky God.
At the same time, Ryu couldn't help but wonder about himself. Would he become so insatiable too? He had always said that he just wanted to reach the top of the world… he had also said that so long as he died in that pursuit, he would be fine with it too…
But would he be?
Would he be fine with dying, truly? Would he be satisfied with just reaching the pinnacle? Or would he become obsessed with chasing after a new high as well, making himself and his Clan out to be the enemy of the world?
Ryu shook his head. All of this was shocking enough, but there was something missing here for sure.
It was still all too vague.
What did the Phoenix Sky God have to do with the Fey and Ancient Beasts being mortal enemies? How were they related to the Fey and Fiends being opposite sides of the same coin?
But that was when Ryu felt it—the shuddering realization that had pulled Sarriel down to the depths of hell in the first place.
Ryu thought back to the tales and legends he had read of the Phoenix Sky God back in Sacrum. Back then, he had been forced to piece together so many tidbits of folklore and various footnotes of history before he could reach one conclusion that inevitably led to him killing himself for a chance at reincarnation.
But what that experience had also taught him was that there were many iterations of the Phoenix Sky God across history…
Still, no matter which it was, what was clear and obvious was that the Phoenix Sky God was not, in fact, a Phoenix, but rather a member of a humanoid Race.
Ryu had no way of knowing exactly what that Race was, but… what if it was the Fey Race?
Ryu felt a shudder of danger and all the blood in his body immediately went cold. Still, his reactions were fast. He clutched Sarriel in his arms and wrapped his robes around her, shooting up with a sharp light in his eyes.
His breathing was somewhat heavy, and his gaze became bloodshot. His gaze swept around in a suffocating heft, and even long after the feeling had disappeared, he couldn't help but stay there in a protective stance for several moments longer.
Suddenly… he understood just the sort of scope he was dealing with, and also why Sarriel had no idea where to start.
When you were dealing with something like this… how could you possibly know where to start?
The Phoenix Sky God wasn't just going around to various worlds, destroying them, and swallowing up their Paths of Reincarnation… the Phoenix Sky God was manipulating the very fabric of the Heavens themselves.
Even the rivalry of the Fey and Ancient Beasts was constructed by the Phoenix Sky God for no other reason than to allow them to observe and strengthen themselves.
What better way for a Fey following the Path of a Beast to improve than to watch countless iterations of these two Paths clashing?