A blaze of blue streaked across the skies.
In the blink of an eye, a beauty, gorgeous beyond words, and wreathed in sparkling fine strands of ice appeared by Ryu's side.
Himari appeared completely unlike anything Ryu had expected. He had thought his mother would be weak and frail, needing his protection when she finally stepped out of her seal. But, the woman who stood by her son's corpse right this moment couldn't have been more perfect even if she had been painted.
Himari had been conscious of everything from start to finish, witnessing it all from her place in the seal. Though she couldn't move or communicate, the ice became her eyes, covering the whole of the Shrine Plane.
From the moment her son had appeared on the Shrine Plane, she had sensed him.
Back then, her heart had overflowed with warmth and happiness. In fact, it was because of Ryu's appearance that the first flaw in her seal had appeared. If she had continued to meditate in silence, unmoved and unhurried, she could have held the seal for nine cycles of a hundred billion years without an issue. The Martial Gods had simply been naïve to think that a seal powered by a Shrine would be so easy to break.
Still, Himari hadn't regretted it. In fact, she had hoped that the seal would break sooner so that she could finally see her son again.
However, if she had known something like this would happen, she would have been more patient, she would have let her son grow for longer. She felt that this matter was her fault, if only her heart had been stronger.
A single tear fell from Himari's eyes, but it froze the moment it fell from her cheek.
It dropped onto Ryu's arms, almost instantly in casing him in a coffin of ice that pushed Elena away.
"NO!" Elena shrieked. "He can still live! He can live! Please!"
Himari placed a hand on Elena's shoulder and pulled her back.
"… Of course he will live, he's my son." she said softly.
Her face had gone from rosy to a deathly pale, making it obvious that that single tear had taken more out of her than it seemed initially. But, that only made sense. This coffin of ice couldn't save Ryu, nor could it give him life again, but what it could do was freeze time itself while leaving Ryu untouched.
It was either Ryu figured out a way to save himself, or he would spend all of eternity in that coffin until the day it inevitably ran out of strength.
It took Himari exchanging over half the cultivation she had gained in the last 900 million years to accomplish it, but she didn't regret it even for a single moment. This was her son, even if it was her life she had to give, she would not hesitate.
Her aura regressed, falling from the Perfect Sky God Realm down to the True Sky God Realm.
If Ryu had been awake to see this, he would have been shocked to an extreme. This wasn't the normal Sky God Realms he was used to. This was a Sky God Realm that could only be found in the True Martial World!
If he put this together, he would finally realize why the Shrines were so valuable. The weakness of Sacrum stemmed from how incomplete their laws and Daos were, something that was rooted in the weakness of their Heavens.
Simply put, the Heavens of Sacrum couldn't compare to the Heavens of the True Martial World.
However, somehow, and for an unknown reason, Sacrum had manifested Shrines with perfect Laws and Daos.
Over the past 900 million years, Ryu's mother had been meditating on the Ice Laws that superseded even the Ice Laws of the True Martial World in perfection! It was no wonder her cultivation had improved.
Not only had she been able to go back and resolidify her foundations, she was even able to progress to the Perfect Sky God Realm in such a short time!
Xalvador, who had been planning on leaving, being quite aware enough to know that his daughter didn't want to see him right now, turned back and raised an eyebrow.
Just now, he had felt a threatening aura that could have killed him. But, just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, being replaced by an aura he was fairly confident he could kill in a few moves now.
Feeling curious, he turned around and took a step. When he reappeared on the Shrine Plane, his eyes lit up. He didn't seem to realize or care about what was going on with Ryu as he appeared before Himari.
"You…"
Xalvador looked Himari up and down, his eyes glowing fiercer and fiercer with every pass. He didn't seem to notice his daughter still crying on the ground, nor did he care that he had just killed her son. His mind was on other things entirely.
"… You are worthy to be my 16th wife. I don't care what men you've had before, virgins are boring regardless. But from now on, you aren't allowed to even touch another man aside from me, do you understand?"
Himari, whose gaze was still focused on her son's face even after Xalvador had appeared, only now looked up.
The piercing cold of her eyes covered Xalvador in a thin sheet of ice.
Xalvador retreated explosively, but in his hurry, he neglected his mother-in-law.
When he finally stopped, his expression warped. Over his shoulder, Mistress Holy Wing had become nothing more than an ice statue. He knew instinctively that it didn't matter what he did, she was finished.
Mistress Holy Wing was dead.
"This world is Sacrum. It is the territory of my Tatsuya family, ruled by my husband Titus Tatsuya and prepared for my son, Ryu Tatsuya, to inherit. This isn't a place scum like you can act as they please.
"The only reason I let you live is because it is my son that will be taking your life in the future. But if you insist on speaking such foul words in my presence, it'll be my husband that first cuts off your tongue.
"Scram now before I make you scram."