Grand Ancestral Bloodlines

1601 Stroke

It was a wildly unorthodox idea. Ridiculous, even. But given the new streak he was on, he couldn't help but smile at the thought.

'It really has been a long time since I've painted anything…'

Ryu sat down abruptly, his mind slowly entering a state of incomparable peace.

The Four Arts. Calligraphy, Painting, Music, and Domain.

He could once be considered a master of them, at least by Sacrum standards, but much like most everything else, he had directly abandoned them.

Honestly, the only reason he had picked them up in the first place was because he had heard tales of mortal masters of these arts suddenly one day reaching enlightenment and breaking free of their mortal shackles through these disciplines alone.

Maybe those tales were nothing but nonsense, or maybe he hadn't reached a deep enough level of mastery to reach such a level, or maybe it was just that he never truly gave his all to these Four Arts.

To him, they were just a means to an end, he never truly loved them, he never truly gave them the focus they deserved.

But the Unbalance Art Sect was interesting…

Calligraphy was actually such a large part of this Sect's strength, and they were even able to use it to directly strengthen their bodies.

Even so, Ryu felt that it was a bastardized form of the Art. All it really did was use Runes, it wasn't true Calligraphy, it wasn't true Art.

Calligraphy was all about evoking an emotion. You could tell a lot about a person's character from their handwriting, even if it wasn't particularly good.

Were they rushed and impatient? Did they take up a lot of space, boldly proclaiming themselves? Were they small and diligent? Did they skip strokes for the sake of brevity or enhance them for the sake of emphasis?

Calligraphy was bold in its simplicity, and it was because of that it took a true master to truly see through its secrets…

And yet Painting was the exact opposite.

Calligraphy shed the extraneous for what was upfront and before your face. Mediocre painting, though, could easily be hidden beneath flashy colors and a radiant canvas.

Cultivators were existences with extreme control over their bodies and high observation skills. Even in the hands of a layman, they could perfectly replicate any scene placed before them or even from memory.

Ryu, though, had been a mortal. He hadn't had such control over himself when he first started to learn the Arts and he could only build himself from the ground up…

And that was what had allowed him to truly learn the difference between a good painting and a poor one.

An old wooden box suddenly appeared on Ryu's lap. Among the possessions of his Maternal and Paternal Clans, this had been among them, an item he had just ignored.

It wasn't too special, just an old brush. Well, it had been forged of Ancient Grade materials of a Sacrum level, but here it probably wouldn't even be considered an Earth Grade treasure.

He opened the box and the old brush flew into his hands.

It was a simple, glossy black with a brush that looked as though it was flowing in liquid silver. It vibrated in Ryu's fingers as though to welcome him back, a hint of a sad overture in its cadence.

'I didn't think that you would have gained some spirituality of your own… but after being stored in a Shrine for so long, maybe it was inevitable.'

Ryu raised the brush and the hair formed together until his qi, becoming as sharp as a sword.

His eyes flashed open and his brush glided across the air as though the downstroke of a resonating note.

What was surprising though was that he didn't bother to take out a canvas. Instead, he pushed his qi directly into the world itself and his paint…

Were the Spatial Tears.

The world of Ryu's eyes had been filled with bright colors ever since he mutated his eyes for the first time and created [Ephemeral Tapestry]. Now, he felt like he had unlocked a unique use for it.

He could see the world in ways others couldn't imagine. Each one of these Spatial Tears radiated a slightly different color, and when they were bent and folded beneath the stroke of his brush, they seemed to come alive.

He suddenly felt a peace the likes of which he hadn't in a long time.

He used to feel this peace back when he painted in Sacrum, but it never lasted long, soon replaced by agitation and anxiety, hoping that the next stroke of his brush would push him toward enlightenment and finally allow him to cultivate.

It had ended up being counterproductive and he grew to hate those moments.

But this time, that feeling never came.

Wide mountains, grassy lands, a sun that shone like rainbows and a sky akin to a pot of gold. It was a fantastical painting, the kind that only appeared in fairytales… and yet it was the way Ryu saw it.

And it also happened to be the scenery of the world directly on the other side of this teleportation platform.

At that moment, the combination of strong Spatial Qi and the aura of the painting became akin to an error in the pillar's programming. It suddenly thought that it had appeared on the wrong side of the platform and began to vibrate wildly, unable to understand what had happened.

A permanent teleportation platform of this kind was permanently tethered to a specific location. This meant that on the other side of this gateway, there should be an identical pillar and there was a great attractive force between the two.

But now, this side of the gateway suddenly felt as though the other side had appeared right above it, something that made little sense. And due to this, its extreme stability became its greatest weakness. It felt like something was wrong, and yet there was nothing it could do about it.

The moment Ryu finished the last stroke of the painting, the first crack appeared in the platform, then another.

Ryu slowly awoke from his peaceful state, a smile on his face. But he was already prepared to retreat, he couldn't be caught dead in this blast radius.

"RYU!"

That was when it happened.

Before Ryu could react, Hope had appeared to his back, her palms striking out against an overwhelming force.

She was unable to stop it completely and crashed right into his chest.

Ryu felt all the bones in his body shatter, his ribs skewering his organs. And yet, as the explosion of Spatial Qi took hold, he still looked up calmly, holding Hope's limp body in his arms.

Up above, there was a man standing in the skies with his palm stretched out, a hint of surprise coloring his gaze. It was one that only became deeper when he realized that Ryu had the wherewithal to note his presence and the fact that he wasn't surprised in the slightest.

There was a very good reason the man thought that Ryu should be surprised, though…

And that was because he wasn't Black Worm, nor was he some hidden Dao Lord of the other Sects.

He was none other than Old Wan.

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