Chapter 1718 Talent

Chapter 1718 Talent

Ryu smiled and didn't seem to feel the fact that both Death Guards were Lord Demons. It seemed that his hesitance earlier was worth it.

He hadn't sensed the Death Guards earlier, but that was because he wasn't looking for them. It had been a long while since he thought of Death Guards.

Now that he thought even further, Valerius, the 16-year-old youth he had battled in Martial God territory, almost certainly had a Death Guard as well. It was just that Ryu hadn't threatened the young man's life during the course of the battle, so he hadn't appeared. And, on top of that, it was likely that Valerius' Death Guard was even more powerful than these two Lord Demons because Valerius himself was an existence with far more potential than these two...

At least on the surface.

It was much harder for Ryu to gauge the age of a non-human creature. For all he knew, Ferouge and Luna were both 16 years old as well, or maybe even younger.

Even if they were that young, though, their auras were less substantial to him than the Beast Mimicry Sect's young genius, so he placed them on a lower tier.

But it was precisely because they were all so young that they were worth nurturing in the first place.

Ryu had already realized that except for the very top echelon, the gap of talent between geniuses didn't exist in anything but temperament. If they were so young, they still had a great deal of time to mature and build that temperament.

That meant that any genius born with a bare minimum level of talent had the right to be nurtured until they proved themselves to be carps stuck in a tide or carps capable of leaping the Dragon's Gate.

'Temperament...' Ryu's eyes fell into a bit of a daze for a moment.

There were Six Pillars of cultivation. The Meridians, the Bone Structure, the Bloodline, the Soul, the Spiritual Foundation, and the Dao... None of these included temperament. The Spiritual Foundation was somewhat related, being the Dao Heart... But why did those with strong Dao Heart glow from their chests?

In that moment, it was as though his Dao had become a Quasi-Omniscient Dao, exuded an aura that was somehow both at and not at that level at the same time. This was the beauty of having his Internal Matrix, and at this point, it was likely his greatest breakthrough to date.

At that moment, droplets of Embryonic Qi began to fuse with his body, taking advantage of the metamorphic state to perfect himself even further.

Of all the people he had used Embryonic Qi on, his own self was likely the most resistant to it all. Since the formation of his Inner World, things had changed... but hadn't changed at the same time.

At the very least, he could instantly heal himself on a whim now, but he instead faced a different problem.

If before Embryonic Qi didn't work on him because he didn't follow the path of the Heavens, now it didn't work well on him because he didn't follow a path at all.

When he gave Embryonic Qi to a beast, the Heavens knew exactly how to perfect their path and bring them toward perfection. When he used Embryonic Qi in the past, the Heavens could see the path, but it wasn't compatible with it, so there wasn't much it could do.

Now, however, when he used Embryonic Qi, it floundered, not quite understanding what to do. The reason it could heal him instantly was that it understood his current state perfectly, so it could bring him back to his pinnacle condition. However, because he was now creating a path of his own, it didn't know what the future looked like, so helping him to improve was difficult.

The exception was when he had a breakthrough.

When he broke through, he paved new ground and took a large leap forward. His Dao and his eyes both became stronger, so his ability to deduce and comprehend where to go from here also increased.

Like this, when Ryu broke through now, it wasn't just a change in Realm...

It was also a change in talent.