Ryu watched Sarriel's back until even his eyes couldn't see her any longer. He suddenly hoped that she would be alright. This last action of hers, at the very least, reminded him of the version of her he had actually cultivated feelings for, rather than the version of her he only really had a crush on.
To have such a different set of opinions, and yet still leave with this act of kindness… That was the Sarriel he knew.
Her cultivation technique was quite special, but what Ryu was absolutely certain of was that it couldn't manifest personalities from thin air. At best, it could magnify parts of what Sarriel already was. And, in Ryu's opinion, whenever she regressed back to her 'real' self, she ended up amplifying her core ideals more than she otherwise normally would.
Ryu, for example, was an extremely arrogant individual as well. However, he still turned that off when he was facing certain people. Sarriel, though, couldn't seem to turn hers off at all, likely because she had yet to perfect the comprehension of her technique.
Ryu reached out and grabbed the orb.
"… This favor, I'll remember it."
These were the only words he said. However, when it came to the words of Ryu Tatsuya, he never said anything he didn't mean with every fiber of his being. Even if he one day found out that Sarriel had died before she could achieve her goals, he would make sure to wash her tombstone with the blood of her enemies.
Ryu grinned. "I owe you at least that much for taking your first kiss, now don't I?"
While Ryu knew Sarriel had done this for the sake of tying up loose ends and severing ties of Karma, he still smiled, not minding in the slightest. When he, Ryu Tatsuya, did things, the thoughts and feelings of others didn't matter in the slightest. She could hate him to her very bones and he would still follow through on his words.
Ryu's fist squeezed and the orb shattered. What he found within was a smooth piece of jade and a high quality on at that.
'Fascinating. The orb of light that surrounded it was actually a Small-Scale Copying Formation. I've never seen a formation capable of copying the information of a Red Grade Memory Jade so quickly and efficiently…'
It had to be remembered that Memory Jades were split into seven ranks. White Jade, Green Jade, Blue Jade, Violet Jade, Red Jade, Black Jade, and finally Crystalline Jade.
The highest rank was one Ryu was intimately familiar with as one currently rested in his Internal World. However, the lower levels were far more common. It took Blue Grade to be able to hold a Mystical Grade technique and at least Violet Jade to hold an Origin Grade technique. The Jades of a higher level than this obviously existed in a league beyond to the point Crystalline Jade could hold a whole world.
This was all to say that the information tallied within a Red Jade could surpass even the complexity of an Origin Grade technique and yet this copying formation had completed it in what… a few seconds?
As far as Ryu knew, Jades could only be written into by cultivators and said cultivators had to intimately understand that technique first. For a formation to be able to complete the same task… Ryu was absolutely floored.
Taking a breath, Ryu looked into the Red Jade.
The first thing he saw was an organization of maps. The first were of the Chaos Plane, or at least portions of it. There were markers for planets known to hold extremely valuable Spiritual Herbs, asteroid belts that held extremely valuable Ores, but most importantly…
The central piece of all these maps was a location at the very edge of the Chaos Plane. In every iteration, it was depicted as a magnificent golden gateway, more elaborate than anything Ryu had ever seen.
When Ryu locked eyes with it, his heart couldn't help but beat wildly. He knew that that was where Sarriel had gone, that was the gateway to the rest of Existence.
Taking a deep breath, Ryu calmed himself. It wasn't yet time to go, as much as he wanted to. He was already very close to dominating this world and being able to cause waves through every corner of Sacrum with a single flip of his palm. Once his family's destroyers were dead and in the dirt, only then would he truly feel relaxed and at ease enough to step upon this new path.
Once Ryu calmed himself, he looked through the other maps. Each was given odd names in languages that even Ryu himself had never seen. But, drawing upon his deep well, he was able to compute a lot of their meanings after some observation.
The World of Yegniea. The World of Thaovis. The World of Saxizuno…
There were many more but these seemed to be the closest, Ryu was almost overwhelmed. If not for the Origin Flame and his Heavenly Pupils, he would have already had to retreat from the Red Jade.
He completely forgot about the Spiritual Herbs around him, immersing himself in an all new world. Or, rather, worlds…
…
"Senior Brother Leolar, you saw it too right?"
Amidst the battle of Heaven's Warriors and the Invaders, a silent conversation began. If these Invaders didn't have their own methods of dealing with this situation, they would have never come in the first place.
Originally, they had just come to partake in some of the resources on the outside because middle tier worlds like this one had the perfect balance of talent and ignorance to take advantage of. Their worlds were robust enough to form nice resources, but their cultivators were too stupid to know how to take proper advantage.
Unfortunately, they had overstayed their welcome a bit and ended up getting detected.
"You mean that white hair brat? Yes, I saw it. He didn't have any protection whatsoever yet he was completely unaffected."
"You think…?"
"I don't know if there's another explanation for it."
"Did a world like this really produce someone who understands the right path of the Chaotic Silk Meridians? Seniors are always complaining that when they find a bastard lucky enough to be born with a pair in these weak worlds, they always take the stupidest path."
"I don't know. But, if the answer is yes, we've made a big profit. Selling Awakened Chaotic Silk Meridians on the black market would be enough to buy us both enough resources to cultivate for the next billion years. By then, we won't just be Working Disciples, we'd be Core Disciples!"
The greed in the eyes of the two secretly conversing disciples glowed. But first, they needed a method to peel away from these annoying Heaven's Warriors.