?1820 Flaws
Life and Death.
Now that Ryu thought about it, he rarely tried to prehend things that were too plex. It could be said that his Dao and Spacetime were his two most plicated paths, but one existed as a focused attempt to make prehending other things much easier, and the latter came to him naturally courtesy of the mysterious Zu Ancestor Visualization.
When Ryu took a step back and realized this, he found it all to be a bit amusing. He had all this talent in prehension, yet he usually spent it on the easiest concepts to understand.
All things considered, Fire and Lightning were just elements, and they were among the easiest paths to prehend. His Weapon God Auras were also relatively straightforward. The paths were already carved out by others, and there were also so many to observe, so how could it not be easier? In fact, the only times he had tried to deviate from those paths, he had ended up having to abandon it not just once, but twice over.
The first time he abandoned it was when he chose to give up dual wielding spears, glaives, and halberds in exchange for a pair of great swordstaffs instead.
Then the second time he chose to abandon them was when he gave up weapons entirely for a path of close bat.
It was rare for Ryu's self-reflection to be so self-deprecating. But after seeing how pathetic he was in his other lives, it was difficult to continue taking himself very seriously.
Once again, even until now, Ryu had still yet to pletely shrug off those thoughts of doubt. Even now, he was still trying to refine his Temperament and leap over that hurdle.
That said, all of this wasn't entirely Ryu's fault. He did have exceptional prehension, and everything came to him naturally… or more accurately, he had no choice but to take the paths that came the quickest to him because he had spent far too little time cultivating.
The first thousand years of his life were a testament to what he could do when he really had time to focus on something and find drive.
Until now, Ryu rarely had to put in much effort to progress in the ways of Formation Mastery, Alchemy, Ruin Mastery, or even Blacksmithing all because the foundation he had laid in his first thousand years of life had been far too sturdy.
But in this life, he had had nowhere near that amount of time.
He wasted the first 14 years of his life stuck in the Tor Clan. Then since then, he hadn't even experienced two decades in the cultivation world just yet. And of that time, over ten years was spent stuck in a black hole where it was impossible to prehend anything, while of the remainder half of that time, yet another half of it was spent in Sacrum which was far inferior to the worlds that he was currently in.
All things considered, Ryu had had maybe a bit more than half a decade to truly bask in these plete worlds of cultivation.
When that was put into perspective, his progress was astonishing, and it also made one understand just why he was so frustrated.
Objectively speaking, he had made great progress in just this last day. pared to another True Sky God of his level, he had made years of progress in just 24 hours.
But he still felt unsatisfied because it wasn't as fast as he was used to, and the paths he was trying to understand likewise weren't as simple and straightforward as he expected them to be.
Having thought this through, Ryu exhaled a slow breath and his heart returned to a state of calm.
Before, he had felt that the fact there were decades between now and Title Stele was far too much. He even felt that in that time, he might have already bee a Dao God and it wouldn't even be worth his time any longer to participate.
Well, he had never said as much in so many words, but he could see his heart now as clearly as if it was a reflective mirror before his eyes.
He was too rash, too impatient, too obsessed with rocketing forward at the fastest speed, and not concerned enough with laying a solid foundation.
He had had some thoughts like this before, actually. Back during when he met the female blue Fire Giant, he realized that he prehended things far too easily and not every breakthrough in his Dao was one that he should readily take.
What if he accidentally prehended an inferior path and just casually took it because he was too arrogant to double-check? By the time his Dao soared past a level where it could still be molded and changed, would he still have the time to regret?
By then, it would already be far too late.
Ryu exhaled a slow breath and soon his heart was as calm as a lake.
He realized now that it wasn't just that he liked climbing tall mountains, but he liked doing it quickly.
Reflecting on his past lives, when he felt like he couldn't progress, he often gave up. It was easy to say that you should just work hard when you had momentum. But if you were grinding your wheels in the mud, what truly separated great people from those that were inferior was just how much lack of progress you could take.
Could he stare at an immovable wall and still press on?
Or would he give up the moment he realized that there was truly no pressing beyond that Realm?
'Have I ever truly pulled out all of the potential of my cultivation Realms? Or was I far too obsessed with taking the next step, and the next step?'
Ryu exhaled another breath.
He entered a state of meditation and his mind became still.
He had never been perfect. He had always had flaws.
It was about time he started fixing them.
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