Ryu's gaze sharpened, his senses reaching the most heightened sense they could. Whenever he risked his life like this, he didn't do so recklessly. Although there was an inherent risk involved, he always felt that he had adequate reasons to do so.
When he came to this world, he knew there was something dangerous on the other side. However, he had believed that what benefits he could gain were beyond what detriment there was, and in the end, he had been correct.
This time, he was facing off against his own limits, bringing into his body a substance that even Dao Gods feared in high enough quantities. He was nothing short of a madman, but he had a sure belief in his Spiritual Foundation as well.
Ryu had certain thoughts about the Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation. He had always thought that the Martial Gods had decided to target him, and then chose to seal away his Spiritual Foundation and his soul... But what if his premise was wrong from the very beginning? What if the sealing of the Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation had little to do with Ryu himself?
If one thought about it, the entire interaction that Ryu had with the Martial Gods of Sacrum was quite odd.
One had to remember that Ryu had only dealt with the very fringe branch members of the Martial Gods. Elena's mother was only one of countless wives and concubines her father had. If it wasn't because Elena's mother had greater ambition than just this, maybe the Martial Gods wouldn't have come in the first place.
Of course, this theory had some holes in it. That was because the Ruin Master Guild was very much involved in this matter as well. It was clear that Sacrum had some special place in the thoughts of the powerhouses of the Martial World, it was just that they weren't able to enter due to the suppression of the Heavens.
But this was still somewhat countered as well... Even though the top tier powerhouses couldn't enter, Elena's father could. So why hadn't he? And the Ruin Master Guild, why hadn't they sent more powerful experts?
There was a potential explanation for this, of course. Back then, before Sacrum had weakened, or more accurately, Shrine Mountain, it was even more difficult for powerful existences to enter Sacrum. However, that explanation would have only been good enough for a Ryu who had no reference for how powerful the people of the True Martial World.
To put this matter into proper perspective, as a Path Extinction Realm expert, Ryu had been able to crush World Sea Realm experts. During that battle, he had even been able to crush Sky God Realm experts of the Martial Gods, though he had relied on his eyes to do so.
Ryu, back then, was thought about to be among the weakest talents of the True Martial World. Although he was a top tier genius of Sacrum, that meant nothing in this place. That was the reality.
What was this all to say? The shocking part of all of this was that if you took an absolute genius of the Ninth Heaven and sent them to Sacrum instead, wouldn't they be able to crush Sacrum even easier? So why hadn't they done this? Why had they allowed such weaklings to come in the first place?
As he was thinking of this, Ryu's mind suddenly flashed with a thought and he felt like everything slipped into place. This line of thought all started with just a single thought... How had the Martial Gods found Sacrum to begin with? What had triggered their curiosity over the world?
What if the Martial Gods never cared about Ryu to begin with? What if, instead, they had noticed the birth of the Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation, and instead of allowing it to grow and waiting for it to pick its owner, they decided to chain it ahead of time?
This seemed to be in line with the actions of those powers. They didn't like the idea of anyone rising up and growing enough to be able to threaten them in the future, so it was in their best interest to take out whatever talents that had the capability of turning the tides ahead of time.
With that sort of thought in mind, Ryu might have never been the target to begin with, his Spiritual Foundation was the target from the very beginning and he just occurred to be the talent connected to it.
So how did all of this tie back?
If Ryu was correct, the Martial Gods sealed his Spiritual Foundation and left it at that. To them, he was already a cripple who would never be able to cultivate, and even if he got a new Spiritual Foundation through an Inheritance, they never had much respect for such cultivators to begin with, and even beyond that who cared if he got a lesser Spiritual Foundation anyway? If his new Spiritual Foundation was a threat to them, they would have already long since sealed it.
Ryu guessed that he was forgotten at that point, but maybe someone, out of curiosity, decided to trace where his Spiritual Foundation would have gone had they allowed it to be Awakened. As a result of that, Sacrum was found and the peculiarity of its Shrines were also exposed.
But with this in mind, it had to be comprehended that the only people bored enough to do this in an attempt to find an opportunity would be the weak to begin with.
In order for a smaller world to birth a talent that the Martial Gods felt they had to seal no matter what, there was a chance that this world had something special about it. Of course, these odds were quite small, after all worlds of all shapes and sizes could birth talents of all kinds. No matter the world, they had access to a great pool of talents, all of which were interconnected. If not, how could Ryu possibly improve his talents like he was doing now?
However, even in such cases, there were odd exceptions. The Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation was so impossibly rare that the faction behind Elena's mother had to check.I think you should take a look at
It had to be remembered that different worlds had different pools of talent. For example, Sacrum didn't birth many with Soul Natures. Another world might not birth many great Bloodlines. It was ultimately worth the check.
In the end, Elena's mother's faction stumbled into a gold mine... But they ultimately hit a steel plate in the end.
This theory was one Ryu felt had a great deal of merit to it, but it was impossible to check to see the truth. In addition, it still had its own flaws. It still didn't explain how the Ruin Guild was related to this, for example, but Ryu had his own working theory for this as well.
If he was correct, the Ruin Guild was here by nothing more than coincidence. The Ruin Guild likely had a branch in all worlds and just so occurred to have one in Sacrum by proxy of that policy. However, it was impossible to tell whether they had gotten news back about Sacrum or not. It was more likely that they had been...
Ultimately, this meant one very important thing to Ryu: his Spiritual Foundation wasn't to be underestimated. It was an existence that the Martial Gods feared so much that they had to chain it ahead of time regardless of the person it would be gifted to...
What was a little Infinity Mist to that?
BANG!
Ryu felt as though a great weight had suddenly landed in his body. Almost as soon as it was released into his Spiritual Foundation, Ryu felt as though everything would be destroyed, starting with this inside of his body.
However, Ryu remained calm even in the face of this, that was because Infinity Mist didn't act like this. If it did, then he would have been dead the moment he appeared within it. It was ironically too violent for him to be scared, something else was happening here.
As expected, the moment the Infinity Mist was released, it sank down, crashing into his Beyond Perfect Extreme Spiritual Foundation and causing cracks to form all across it.
Ryu's gaze narrowed. This was quite shocking, that was because this was something that should only happen when one was entering the World Sea Realm, he didn't know what it meant for his Spiritual Foundation to crack ahead of time.
Even so, Ryu continued to watch without doing anything, he felt that this was actually a good thing. There was a very important fact that kept him going: he didn't feel even an ounce of pain right now...
Under Ryu's careful gaze, the Infinity Mist burrowed into his Spiritual Foundation and took shape before a wild number of roots began to spread out in all directions. Then... It slowly came to a stop.
There Ryu's Spiritual Foundation was partially cracked, but still mostly intact. The Infinity Mist had taken shape as something Ryu was quite sure he knew of even though he had never seen it before...
A Cosmic Seed.
At the same time, through those cracks, a large amount of energy was spewing out. There was no doubt that this energy was the very same energy that World Sea Realm experts would use freely.
On top of this, Ryu felt like he intimately comprehended this Infinity Mist more than maybe anything in his life, maybe more than even his own Dao.
At that moment, Ryu understood.
His Beyond Perfect Extreme Foundation was far too huge. How long would it take him to crack it into a World Sea with his own comprehension?
It all clicked into place. He could replace his own Cosmic Seeds with Beyond Perfect Extreme Natural Treasures!
This realization was both shocking and amazing, but it gave Ryu another headache...
Where was he supposed to find other materials on the level of Infinity Mist?