Ryu didn't want to wait. Although he knew that he had more leeway with his Chaotic Silk Meridians now, more than he ever had, he still wanted to be certain that he was most definitely walking the correct path. If he didn't do this now, who knew if he would accidentally take a step so wrong that he would regret it for a lifetime? He had made recultivating sounds like an easy task, but that wasn't even true recultivating as his cultivation level never actually fell.
In this world, if you took a step forward, you would often be finished.
Ryu had considered methods of wiping cultivation clean, but such methods were drastic and the required one to restart from absolute zero. And then, from further on, every step they took would be arduous and difficult. That was especially so when it came to recomprehending what had been lost.
But now, he had the path right before him. How could he wait?n)-OvelbIn
Ryu entered the world of his Heavenly Pupils and began a focused session of meditation. He didn't miss even a single detail, and the more he learned, the more astonished he was... about just how lucky he was. In fact, it felt like something more than luck, it felt much more like divine intervention, as though some Dao God was watching over his every step.
But the amusing part was that that was technically true. Reason being.
[Intuition] was the reason he had been guided to this step to begin with. But, it wasn't entirely like that either.
For example, entering the Spiritual Severing Realm, the fourth cultivation Realm in his journey. Back then, he had failed his Severing, and it was probably one of the only times that Ryu had actually failed in a step of his cultivation. There hadn't been another moment like it since, but it was precisely that that allowed him to take the first true step in path: fusing with his Realm Heart.
According to his understanding, something he had muddied together by loosely and then firmly tying the Lines of Fate together, in order to access the truest power of the Chaotic Silk Meridians, you needed a vessel of sorts. The grade of this vessel would decide how strong your Chaotic Silk Meridians could become into the future and how much of its strength you could eke out.
The lowest level vessel would be something like a treasure, one crafted in the hands of a blacksmith. Of course, this would have to be a God Treasure, but even so, it was the weakest one on the list. This God Treasure would be fused to your body and follow you for life, and it would also, hopefully, have an upgradeable path just in case anything unexpected happened.
What could be considered a mid-tier of vessels would be a natural treasure, not one formed in the hands of humans, but rather one that existed thanks to the blessings of the Heavens. This would be some sort of spatial Spiritual Herb, or anything of the like.
The high tier level of the vessel would be something snatched from a cultivator. This could be the Godhood of a supreme being, the Beast Crystal of a Dao Beast, or even the Spiritual Foundation of a humanoid cultivator. Even if said cultivator was on the weaker side, so long as they were a Sky God and compatible with you, there would be no doubting the benefits you could receive. If it was an Ancestor of yours, with Fate tied to your own, there would most definitely be bonus points.
Beyond this tier, there were the truly elite of the elite. In this tier, there were several paths that could fit in well, but how good they would end up being would be highly dependent on several factors. Even so, even if these methods were used to their weakest of their potential, they would still be about a half step better than using a high tier vessel.
The first method, unsurprisingly, was the Godhood a Dao God. It made sense that this was kept separate from the high tier as it represented the path of an existence that stood above all.
The second method, though, was even more surprising, and that was because unlike the others, it required cultivation deep into the Sky God Realms first. Meaning, one could forgo everything and only use the Chaotic Silk Meridians to their lowest level potential, and then burst with all that latent strength later on.
Of course... the requirements were high. Much like the first method, it required a Dao God, but this time, it rested on your shoulders to reach that state.
Even so, this was a bit of a relief to Ryu even though he didn't really need to think about it anymore. Essentially, even if he had missed out on the first opportunity, so long as he became a Dao God one day, he would be able to unearth the true potential of his Meridians. Though...
Become a Dao God with a set of Meridians that could only be particularly sturdy and tough was as hard as ascending the Heavens themselves with all of your limbs tied.
The third method... Was the sacrifice of a world.
This was the method that Ryu's path fell into, but it could be said that within this tier, his benefits were of the highest.
The weakest journey in this method was to capture the Protector Spirit of a low level world. Ryu's own world, Sacrum, was already a middle level world, so one could imagine just how weak a low level world would be to the people of the True Martial World.
The greatest journey was to claim a Guardian Spirit from a world on the level of the True Martial World, or more accurately, one of its Planes.
The middle journey of this method was to find a Realm Heart before it could create a world, and this was the category that Ryu fell into.