Ryu stepped over a pile of corpses, his expression indifferent.
In truth, they had been more powerful than his restrained self, but now that he had Little Silk at the Fifth Order, even Tenth Order Common Beasts weren't their match.
Little Silk relied on Bloodline suppression to deal with those powerful beasts, something that obviously wasn't possible against humans, however that didn't mean that she herself wasn't strong. She could still output the power of about a Seventh to Eighth Order Common Beast.
And, since beasts tended to be more powerful than humans, when she worked in tandem with Ryu, their strength was far more than what these pinnacle Path Extinction Realm disciples could handle.
Of course, Ryu relied on a few tricks and a sneak attack. But if they were going to stalk him for so long, he didn't mind teaching them a lesson they would forever be unable to regret.
Ryu unceremoniously snatched up their spatial rings and left their corpses behind, not even bothering to clean up after himself. He didn't feel the need to hide anything.
These people had actually followed him around for months just to die. It was almost as amusing as it was sad. Every second of cultivation was important, almost a quarter of a year was enough to make great progress in this world, and yet they squandered it on nonsense.
…
Ryu walked into the Radiant Star Sect, feeling several eyes on him. It seemed that there had been a bet about whether he would return safely or not. A small minority was happy while the majority were grinding their teeth.
Without so much as a glance toward them, Ryu handed in his missions, an amount that would net him five years of complete freedom, and walked back to the technique tower. Now that he had such a deep well of knowledge, he should definitely pick his second technique. He had already decided that it would be a Soul Technique as well back then.
He used the mission rewards he had gotten to pay the entrance fee and stepped in, now beginning to scan the Soul Techniques one by one once again.
Ryu's soul was in the Ancestral Grade. By all rights, his combat prowess with it should be on a complete other level compared to most. What he was lacking was a method of utilizing it. If he had such a thing, even that young woman from before would have to obediently die if he said so considering her previous state.
If Little Silk could jump across Five Orders as a Sovereign Grade beast, he should definitely be able to replicate at least a portion of that.
Of course, Ryu understood that Little Silk could only truthfully jump Two to Three Orders, but he was also an Ancestral Grade Talent. So the value he received in return should be greater, at least in theory.
There were a few issues.
The first was that the soul wasn't like the talent of a beast. Little Silk's Sovereign Grade was holistic. Beasts only relied on their Bloodlines and nothing else. While they had souls, it wasn't considered a Pillar of their cultivation.
The second was that Ryu's Perfect Blackbody Soul wasn't exactly designed to attack. Its main function was absorption and adaptation.
Regardless, Ryu didn't believe that it would be any issue for his soul to suppress through even an entire Realm above it.
It had to be remembered that there were only five Mental Realm Cultivation Realms, so one Realm to it was the equivalent of a large jump in Qi Realm Cultivation.
Ryu sifted through all the techniques before he narrowed them all down to three. He already went through them all once, he just went through them one more time to see if there was anything his new knowledge could pick up on that he had missed before.
The first technique was [Decay Halo].
It entrapped an enemy's Mental Realm in a halo. This halo would perpetually sap away a person's Spiritual Qi over time. As the battle went on, unless the halo could be shattered via means of the soul, one's soul would be quickly drained.
The soul was the root of comprehension and focus. With one's soul quickly weakening in battle like this, your Inheritances, your Dao and your Focus Qi itself would all dwindle and become more difficult to use. If you lost all three, even if you somehow maintained consciousness, your battle strength would still be more than halved.
The requirements for this technique were incredibly high and stringent, and it also was an enormous drain on Spiritual Qi. It even said that the user would lose Spiritual Qi at the same rate as the target.
Unless you were supremely confident in your soul talent, no one would ever use such a technique. What was the use in halving your enemy's strength if your strength was also halved?
The second technique was [Swallow Six Senses].
This technique disrupted the soul and disallowed an enemy from processing information sent by their eyes. At the higher stages, you could take away smell, touch, hearing, taste and even proprioception, the deadliest of them all.
Proprioception was a sense related to one's ability to tell where their limbs were in space. If you lost it, even walking would be impossible, let alone fighting a battle of cultivators. This was truly a devastating technique.
But once again, its use requirements were incredibly high. The drain on Spiritual Qi was immense, and there was a chance at receiving backlash if your enemy's soul was stronger than your own. During this period of backlash, it would be you who lost the sense you were targeting.
The final technique was known as [Soul Chain Battlefield].
This technique was maybe the most fantastical of them all. It formed reaper-like chains when he was cast that pierced the forehead of your enemy and dragged their soul out.
Once this was completed, a soul link would be created and a battlefield would take form. While this battlefield was in play, the bodies of both the caster and the enemy would be unable to move and their souls would be forced to fight a battle to the death.
This technique was the most dangerous of them all and the potential backlash was direct death. With how fragile the souls were, very few dared to fight with theirs directly. Plus, the backlash of death wasn't only if your soul was destroyed by the enemy, if you Soul Chain missed the target or the enemy dodged, the likelihood of death was high!
As a result, this Soul Technique was also simultaneously classified as a Secret Technique. It was designed to be the final desperate attack of someone with no other options.
To Ryu, though, all three of these dangerous techniques were incredibly enticing, so much so that he wasn't sure which one to choose.