532 Blood 1

Dyon's heart beat wildly. He couldn't understand what was happening to him.

It felt as though everything in his world was crumbling.

His knees that he had long since lost control of due to Patriarch Ragnor's influence began trembling violently. Waves of tremors tore through his soul, threatening to separate it from his body. Even his eyes turned a blood read color, struggling against his instinct to drop everything and run, even if it meant his death.

Fear.

That's what Dyon was feeling. An emotion he couldn't remember ever experiencing in his life. This was the first time Dyon felt a pressure that surpassed his own father's by so much that his veil of arrogance and disdain for the world was completely torn from him.

Dyon had faced the martial world without any cultivation. He had boldly exposed the plans of a God Clan and provoked too many of them to count. He faced armies of hundreds of thousands with a smile on his face. He sacrificed his himself without hesitation and dove head first into torrents of death qi.

He had faced the anger of the universe itself!

Not once in all that time had Dyon felt this feeling… This feeling of absolute suppression and despair…

Patriarch Ragnor's hand involuntarily shivered on Dyon's shoulder, but he quickly stabilized himself. As for Elder Daiyu who was the closest, he showed no signs of trepidation. After all, he was without a doubt the firmest in his martial way, despite the shattering of his dao.

In addition, Dyon was correct. The distance between them and the hand was unfathomable. The fact it looked to be a hands length away was simply a testament to how absurdly large it was.

Elder Daiyu turned a gaze back to see Dyon's sorry state, seemingly having expected this. Sometimes with how he acted, Elder Daiyu would completely forget this boy's age. But, when you really put things into perspective, he really was just a sixteen-year-old child… Even if he was hundreds of years old, in any universe worth its salt, he would merely be a member of the younger generation.

There is a pinnacle of cultivation that one catch reach that surpasses a dao. It's a mythical state that seeks to trample over the laws of the universe themselves. What is a dao if not for a philosophy? And yet aren't there too many of them? Don't they often clash? How can a dao be an absolute truth if there are other supposed absolute truths that directly counter it?

Patia-Neva attempted to follow the absolute path, and yet stumbled and fell. To him, that sort of dao was a façade – nothing but a shallow construction. And yet, many others had formed a dao using the same principles Patia-Neva tossed away! So what was truth? What was the pinnacle of being? Of existing?

The answer to these questions were what true martial artist sought. The presence of this path was exactly why one couldn't hope to rely on the cultivation of another to transcend. It was why despite the shattering of his dao, Elder Daiyu's mentality was as calm as the surface of a lake.

When one approached this state, its said that their martial path becomes so fierce that it disdained the path of others. Upon approaching this state, with a simple thought, you could destroy the cultivation of another.

It was this state that made Dyon's energy cultivation technique so important. The suppression of stepping into some else's universe was far too great unless you had the power to look down on everything with disdain…

This suppression was what Dyon was experiencing right now – except on an entirely otherworldly level. It was a mere hand, and yet its presence threatened Dyon's very existence…

The entity wasn't even aware of their appearance. Would you be aware of an ant crawling thousands of miles from yourself? And even if you were, would you care?

And yet, the mere pressure of his martial path made Dyon understand very well that if he approached… The only result would be death…

Suddenly, a thought other than fear crossed Dyon's mind.

Everything that he had suffered. That his parents had suffered. That his master had suffered. This his world had suffered. Everything. It was because of this person.

This person that saw his existence as so much more lofty than anything else that he didn't think twice before using the lives of billions for his own pleasure.

'This is your fault!'

"Ah, so the arrogant boy does have things he's afraid of. How adorable." Patriarch Ragnor laughed lightly.

But, that was the moment that Dyon's fear turned to anger. The demonic blood within his roared, sending popping sounds through his body as his shoulder bulged out of Patriarch Ragnor's clamping hand.

The corridors violently shook under Dyon's anger. His only thoughts were of seeing that entity die beneath his feet. To show it that there was no arrogance above his in existence.

Regardless of the celestial energy Patriarch Ragnor circulated into Dyon, there was no stopping what was occurring.

In an instant, a barrier that should have been as difficult as crossing an abyss to leap over shattered.

14.9%.... 14.91%... 14.92%....

14.95%....

14.98%....

14.99%...

15%

All of Dyon's wounds and fatigue were washed over be a dense saint energy, sending his blood vigorously pumping through him as his bones reached another level of toughness.

There was nothing in the world that could stop such a perfect breakthrough…

Dyon had touched upon what it meant to be a demon in his fight with Femi… He touched upon what it meant to be a sovereign in fight with death… And that all culminated in this moment where he did something very few could ever accomplish…

There was a reason ancestors didn't simply hand all of their essence blood to the most talented of the next generation… The amount of tenacity needed to defy heaven's laws in such a way was unprecedented… It wasn't a matter of simply having more blood to absorb, you also needed the comprehension and will power to do so, or else the blood with simply be wasted.

If you then realized you had given all of your essence blood to an unworthy genius, what solution would there be then? The only option would be to forcefully extract the remaining amount… But, that was a pain very few had the mental fortitude to survive. You'd get the blood back, but you'd lose the genius you thought was good enough for it all in the first place!

Patriarch Ragnor and Elder Daiyu froze. Before this moment, whether they said it out loud or not, they had both written off Dyon's talent as something unearned. As something he simply lucked into…

That was why Elder Daiyu, nor Patriarch Ragnor, had ever taken Dyon too seriously – nor did they feel that their younger generation members were inferior…

But in that instant… The instant where Dyon forged himself a saint body, something very few could boast…

They realized that just maybe, there was more to this story than they had previously assumed…

Just maybe… It wasn't luck…