Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

Himari shook her head and watched Ryu run away. She didn't bother to do anything, and why should she? She was in a very good mood. Even her injuries had been healed by the little woman's pill, so it wasn't strictly necessary for her to stay here any longer. Maybe after all this time, she could finally reunite with her husband.

"100 years, hm?"

Her eyes twinkled, then she too vanished. For a long while, the Shrine Plane would be entirely uninhabited.

Ryu successfully "escaped" his mother. However, it seemed that his time in Sacrum had not ended yet as he sensed something.

His playful expression vanished as he suddenly appeared before a familiar man.

The King Cultus of the Cultus Faeries, Ailsa's father, stood in a vast endless void. Ryu wasn't surprised by this in the slightest. After all, this was a common ability of the Faeries, and Sacrum was also a much easier world to do it in. Part of the reason it had been so easy to bring Ailsa around with him during the start of his journey was because she could do this. Though, she was in the Ethereal Plane rather than the void.

King Cultus was taken off guard, clearly not expecting Ryu's sudden appearance. He had sensed the commotion, much like everyone else of Sacrum had. But rather than ignoring it, he had actually come, his heart weighed down by something unspeakable.

While he could hide from everyone else, though, it was impossible for him to hide from Ryu, and the latter sensed him almost immediately.

Ryu didn't say anything as he observed the man.

It wasn't a secret that there was no love lost between these two men. Ryu was hugely unsatisfied with his actions, but the straw that broke the camel's back wasn't how he had treated Ryu, but rather how he had treated his daughter.

Ryu's choice to stand up to the Martial Gods for the sake of his mother was exactly that, his choice. But during that entire process, King Cultus did not show his face even a single time. One would have thought that the Faeries had nothing to do with the Fate of Sacrum at all.

It was enough for Ryu to have little to no respect for this man at all.

King Cultus' shock slowly ebbed away as he met Ryu's eyes. He could tell that he was no match for this young man. Even back then he was already no match considering what he had done to the Martial Gods. It could be said that the Tatsuya Clan could go back to being the ruling power of Sacrum whenever it was they wanted.

Ryu actually didn't know why he bothered to appear before this man. He didn't think he deserved to know what had happened to Ailsa either, after all, he didn't step up the last time Ailsa needed him most, so how would he step up now?

Maybe it was just a petty desire to make sure this man knew that he was superior, and his nonsensical attempts to keep him and Ailsa apart were worthless before him then, and they certainly were worthless now.

With that thought, Ryu seemed to have the intention of leaving directly, but King Cultus actually spoke.

"My daughter..." he said slowly. "She is not of this world anymore, what happened to her?"

Ryu's gaze flashed like lightning. The pressure was so much that King Cultus fell to a knee, coughing up a mouthful of blood.

"What do you mean she's not of this world anymore?"

The low rumbling Ryu's voice pressed into the deepest crevices of King Cultus' body, making even the marrow of his bones tremble.

He coughed, hacking up another mouthful of blood, his brows vibrating with unwillingness and humiliation. However, Ryu's confusion made him more enraged than anything else.

"You are her husband! How can you not know?!"

"You are her father, and where were you when it mattered most?"

King Cultus seemed to deflate.

It took Ryu a while, but he eventually got the answer he wanted.

It seemed that while King Cultus was arrogant, he wasn't a wordsmith.

"Not of this world" sounded like he was asking how Ailsa died, but he had meant the words in their literal sense.

At first, he thought King Cultus was referring to how they had left Sacrum. Maybe whatever method he had used couldn't work outside the bounds of this middle world, and that would make sense.

But after interrogating him about the timeline, Ryu quickly realized that this couldn't be the issue. The time the Cultus Clan had lost connection with Ailsa was long after Ryu had stepped into the True Martial World, so that couldn't have been the trigger.

'Could it be the time dilation of my eyes? The time Emperor Cultus mentions is, indeed, closer to the time I absorbed the silver star Visualization...'

Ryu's heart felt heavy. It would make sense if the methods of the Cultus Clan couldn't keep up with such a powerful time dilation. The fact it could even track Ailsa's life to the True Martial World in the first place was already insane enough.

If that was the case, then this information was entirely useless to him.

Even so, he went to the Cultus Clan and unceremoniously took the treasure used to track Ailsa away. It was clearly beyond anything that he had thought of before, not in terms of power, but rather in the unique path it followed.

The Ethereal Plane was always one he didn't think much about, and even in the True Martial World, he hadn't really heard much mention of it. But according to this, all of the Ethereal Planes were far more interconnected than other Planes of Existence were. This was why it was possible to track Ailsa even to the True Martial World.

The Cultus Clan could do nothing to stop Ryu, especially given he had practically brought their Emperor Clan back like a strung-up chicken.

Were they unsatisfied? Yes. Did it matter to him? Not in the slightest.

In fact, he wasn't even finished taking advantage of them just yet. He entered their libraries and unceremoniously spent a day going through their most core records. Even when they tried to hide things from him, his eyes found them instantly and read them anyway. It could be said that the Cultus Clan's most important secrets were all laid bare before him.

After he was finished, Ryu walked out from the library wearing a gloomy expression. But he found himself blocked once again, this time by his... mother-in-law?

Ryu was only making a guess, but he was fairly certain that he was correct. This sickly woman, who seemed to have a foot in the grave already, looked toward him with a light smile on her face.

Ryu couldn't help but frown. He didn't like Ailsa's father, but he knew next to nothing about her mother. And truthfully, even if it was her father who looked this sickly, he would have still done something to save him-not because he was so soft-hearted, but rather because he didn't mind allowing his wives to take advantage of him.

He could hate them, but he wouldn't let them die as it was no longer just about himself.

"Child, you've finally visited," Queen Cultus spoke lightly.

Ryu looked into her eyes and he relaxed. "I guess you can say that."

Queen Cultus chuckled lightly. "Your personality is quite similar to my daughter's. I am not surprised that the two of you are Life Partners. But I also cannot help but worry as a mother anyway."

Ryu didn't respond to this. He had just been with his own mother, it wasn't too hard to understand how she might be feeling.

"I do not have much longer to live, I only hope that you'll bring my daughter this letter. I was absent for most of her life, though not due to my own choosing. So I hope that you can help me."

Ryu could hear some of that hidden bitterness.

Indeed. Ailsa's mother had been here all the while, but when her daughter was very young, she vanished all to wait for Ryu to finally appear millions of years later.

This woman had lost her eldest son, and then effectively her eldest daughter as well. The first couldn't be helped, but what parent wouldn't feel bitter that their daughter chose a stranger over them? Especially since the nobles of the Faeries never took Life Partners seriously.

"You can give it to her yourself."

Ryu tossed something forward and then vanished.

Before Queen Cultus' expression could sink, she caught the pill out of the air and her expression changed.

She turned around and looked for where Ryu possessed gone, but he was already nowhere to be seen.

"I'm not your worker mule. You cannot just order me to concoct pills for you on command. I have a life."

"Do you?" Ryu asked, sending his senses into that tiny Golden Moon World.

The little woman threw a tantrum at these words, but Ryu just listened with amusement written all over his face.

"Let's obtain to something more serious. According to my calculations after getting my hands on this treasure, it's impossible for it to be a simple matter of time dilation, at least not given the time. So what happened? What does another world mean?"

The little woman fell into silence.

Ryu remained only mumbling to himself and spoke to the little woman out of habit. After all, he had spent decades under the influence of that blackhole, he had to perform something to pass the time and that ended up being teasing the little woman.

So, he didn't notice when she fell into silence. But he definitely listened her reply.

"The Title Stele only appears once every several generations. It's such a powerful tool, so why haven't the Nine Powers taken control of it yet? Where perform you think it proceeds after the battle is complete?"