After Gale died and the Old Mistress was brought to the doors of death, many in attendance wanted to leave as quickly as possible, but no one dared to do so without making their well-wishes known. After seeing the Heavenly Couple's true battle prowess, they no longer harbored any thoughts of disdain or complacency. So, how could they leave without parting with presents for the young heir?
Elena giggled. "They were all scrambling to see who could curry the larger favor. That coupled with that evil plot of yours and the Tatsuya Clan reaped quite a few rewards."
Ryu smiled lightly. His so-called evil plot was just something he had said on a whim to vent some of his frustration. He had been planning to let them off the hook after allowing them to squirm a little, but it seems that even if he had been awake to do so, they wouldn't have dared accept his mercy.
"Just hand everything to the Clan Treasurers, I don't need such things anyway. It's better if the Clan can make use of them." Ryu's words seemed nonchalant and light, but Elena frowned, catching a double meaning within them.
"Are you trying to say that the Clan will need such treasures?"
Ryu was a bit surprised by how sharp Elena was. Truthfully, he should have long since been used to this by now. Elena had always been a free spirit who lived life as she saw fit, but with that came a deep sensitivity to those around her. She was so in tune with herself that she often reached out to others to share. It was a subconscious dream of hers for everyone to taste the freedom she had. Her heart was simply that large.
From the outside looking in, Elena and Ryu should have never been together. To call their personalities polar was inappropriate only because the description didn't go far enough. It wasn't a simple matter of opposites attracting one another because their dispositions were so different that they couldn't be considered mere opposites.
Still, what brought them together was exactly this virtue of Elena's. She saw Ryu as a man who seemingly had everything, yet was shackled more than anyone else. While others saw a pampered young master, she saw a frail heir with a shadow over his soul. While for Ryu… Maybe he was subconsciously attracted to this freedom Elena had, maybe he wanted to understand just what it meant.
Ryu was arrogant. He felt that he was beyond this arrogance, believing that he deserved a loftier label. But, did he? Wasn't his disposition just as shallow as the nine lettered title attached to him? How could such a seemingly strong individual could be so weak?
Ryu seemed to take pride in his will to fight. He seemed to find light where there was none and victory where there was only defeat. He repeated these feats countless times in his mere thousand years of life. Yet, this very same Ryu feared his ability to read fate. This very same Ryu refused to take his woman into his arms and give her the love she deserved. This very same Ryu accepted his mortality without an ounce of resistance.
How can both things be true in a single person? How can you claim to be above all things yet have such a profound weakness within you? How can you claim to be mighty when you're really so frail?
This was Ryu's life. He was a man without freedom. A man shackled by his own insecurities. A man unwilling to fight.
Ryu blinked at Elena's question, his vision slightly blurring. He felt a swarm of enlightenment bombard him. It was as though his life was laid out and its every scene could be easily picked apart by him.
The first thing Ryu realized was that his memory was never this good. As a mortal, he had never had perfect recall. Such a thing was reserved for those with the highest levels of cultivation and was also restricted by the complexity of the material being remembered. For example, an expert of his father's caliber could remember a common grade technique with a single glance, but an origin grade technique was something even Titus wasn't capable of memorizing.
'This… Is this the Origin Flame's doing…?'
"Ryu? Hubby?" Elena lay a delicate hand on Ryu's forehead when she noticed his breathing quicken. Could it be that the Origin Flame isn't as docile as records say? Why else would her fiancé have been unconscious for three days yet still react like this?
Ryu cleared his throat. "I'm fine." His voice carried a slight weakness, but it had a foundation of firmness. "I only meant that the movements of the Clans during that night were too odd. The most obvious was Gale's recklessness. That has to stem from somewhere. It's better to be safe than sorry. Too many Kingdoms in history have fallen during their absolute peaks…"
"Oh…" Elena's flashed with an odd light, but she didn't pursue it. "I knew you would say that about the treasures, but I kept a few for you that actually could be useful."
"Useful to me?" Ryu laid on the bed, looking up at the ceiling with a blank expression. "Are you sure?"
Elena giggled. "If your lovely fiancée says so, shouldn't you believe her? One is a Mystical Grade Treasure, another is an Origin Grade Treasure, and the last is a Unique Grade treasure!"
Ryu's eyes had been slowly closing before those last words left Elena's lips. But, the instant he registered them, they snapped opened with an added vigor. "What'd you just say?"
"I thought you weren't interested? Hm?" Elena looked away, pretending not to notice Ryu's gaze. In the void, Nuri's beautiful laughter sounded before she covered her delicate red lips and blushed. It was truly an odd sight considering no one could hear her anyway.
The grading of treasures was very similar to the grading of bloodlines. The only difference here is that the Sovereign Grade is replaced by the Mystical Grade. Aside from this, it follows the same pattern. Common, Black, Earth, Heaven, Mystical, Ancestral and Origin.
However, what's obvious here is that the Unique Grade isn't mentioned at all. This is because a Unique Grade treasure is impossible to properly categorize. It wasn't necessarily more powerful than an Origin Grade treasure either. In fact, in some rare cases, it wasn't even worth the Common Grade label.. Still, what one could never doubt was that the fact that these were all treasures that existed outside the bounds of heavenly laws.
