Ryu's gaze became intense, every fiber of his being focusing on what was before him. This was the very first time that he would be fighting something who had comprehended a Natural Enlightenment. Or, more accurately, it was the first time he was fighting someone who had comprehended one and actually deemed to use it against him.
Within the Natural Order, even though all two main facets and three sub facets were considered to be incredibly important, there were still divisions among them, whether that be within the sub facets themselves or even within the overall schemes.
In such a network, there was no one who would disagree with the idea that Natural Enlightenment reigned supreme over all.
Natural Enlightenment was the true embodiment of what Nature wanted to convey, it was the Artistic Conception of Nature's Order… it was the root from which the moniker of Natural Order stemmed from.
The flow of water, the freedom of clouds, the sturdiness of mountains… The harshness of cold, the gentleness of warmth, the oppression of pain… Each and every one of these concepts was so fundamental to one's understanding of the world that they were synonymous across being, across status, across gender, across culture, across Existence.
The power such things held was beyond one's wildest imaginations. The kind of Faith such wildly accepted concepts had was undefinable and, to someone who had yet to reach the peak of the world and look down upon all that was… It was infinite.
Every representation of a mountain, of water, of earth, of air or of clouds contained a tiny portion of this large well of Faith. When a cultivator chose to sit down and meditate upon these matters, they could take a tiny portion of that power for themselves, fueling their strength to untold levels, levels that most could never hope to touch or even witness.
But what is this 'small portion'? How large was it… Well… A small piece of something infinite just might be infinite itself…
BOOM!
Lioche's aura exploded forth, the dense white fog of energy that hung around him like a sparkling nebula expanding to the point it seemed that it just might envelop the entirety of the sky.
All around, the atmosphere gained a heaviness to it. Vision blurred, breathing became difficult, and it felt as though gravity was increasing across their skin, pressing down on them to the point that many fell from the skies completely, crashing below into piles of minced meat.
There was no mistaking it… it was as though they had all suddenly been plunged into the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean.
Everything warped. Movement was slow. Light was being continuously dimmed as they plunged deeper and deeper, making even the distorted images around impossible to see. A soul crushing weight bore down on not just the body, but also the mind, squeezing down slowly but surely.
And the only one completely unaffected by it all… Was Lioche himself.
Lioche vanished. When he appeared once again, his spear was already at Ryu's throat.
It felt like the vastness of the ocean was hidden within his strike, a tall tidal wave capable of swallowing a world whole and a relentless pressure that couldn't be stopped with a single blockade.
Even before the strike landed, Ryu found his hair flying back wildly. The pressure bore down on his head, Lioche's spear seeming like a piercing head of a coiling water dragon, a tail of a river expanding out for thousands of miles following its trail. But, what was the most devastating was the fact that this strike also carried with it all his other comprehensions as well.
Ryu's gaze glowed. Even as danger bore down, the smile on his face only seemed to grow brighter.
"This… Is so fascinating."
SHUUUU!
The spear passed right through Ryu's head. However, it only took a momentum for Lioche to realize that it was nothing more than an afterimage.
Ryu hadn't restricted. Instead, he took an odd angled step forward, piercing outward with his blade.
Lioche's pupils constricted, his mind practically short circuiting. He couldn't understand how Ryu had done it, but his reaction speed didn't slow in the slightest.
Unfortunately, just as he was about to use his odd ocean domain to deal with Ryu, it collapsed.
BANG!
Lioche was sent flying, his body piercing through the air like a falling meteor.
Ryu slowly retracted his dagger, his lip curled in amusement.
"Your reaction time is not bad, but where is your rage?"
In that moment, Lioche had managed to use his Metal Soul Nature to manipulate his shield into the path of Ryu's blade, but as a consequence, he hadn't been able to nullify the blow as he had in the past, causing him to shoot backward uncontrollably.
Lioche came to a grinding halt, the light in his gaze not dimming in the slightest.
"Treading Seas. Shedding Water. The Vessel of the Ocean is my Cup. The Depth of the Ocean is my Thirst. The Vastness of the Ocean is my Rage!"
The oppressive domain appeared once again, twice as suffocating as before. Lioche shot forward, relentless in his approach and unsatiable in his attack. Before even reaching Ryu, he sent out dozens of piercing strikes, each of them with the momentum of an ocean behind them.
Ryu brandished his blade, his steps light and his movements enigmatic. He appeared before one of the snaking striking, his dagger sweeping up and through its body.
Before the astonished gazes of everything, the twirling tornado of water, qi and strength was split in two, gliding by Ryu's shoulders without the slightest hint of suspense.
Ryu's figure flickered once more, gliding through the air and appearing beneath the underbelly of another raging strike. However, once again, just as easily, he split it in two.
He danced through the battlefield. Every time he struck just once, Lioche's attack would crumble, collapsing before the eyes of everyone and causing sparkles of dripping water to fuse with the skies and falling snow, creating a beautiful scenery.
He left hand didn't even more, his right drawing a poetic tale across the skies.
"Dividing Karma."