Ryker listened to the cat lady as she began to speak. Even when she didn’t go into much detail, it was hard to not feel as though the world was crashing down from above.

  He had known that it was ridiculous to even attempt what he was doing, but he also knew that he had no choice.

  After taking the prison and capturing the cat lady, his fate was set in stone. There would be no hiding in the hidden worlds this time. He would have to face the music, and the rest of the world would likely have to follow him; otherwise… they would all be finished.

  He realized as much from the very first word the cat lady spoke that there simply wasn’t a chance for him. In fact, another person might have already given up in despair.

  Just this woman’s Clan alone, the so-called Regalis, had billions of Ascendeds. The number was so large that she didn’t even bother to put an exact number on it because maybe even the Clan higher-ups wouldn’t know the exact figure.

  If it was just a matter of billions of Ascendeds, that would be fine… except for the fact that the vast majority of them would have at least one Dao.

  Even if these existences weren’t as powerful as Ryker had been as a First Ascended, they would certainly be several times more powerful than a usual Ascended in this Iteration.

  But that was only one of the issues.

  Even if they didn’t have Daos, they benefited from the Daos.

  The world they lived in had stronger Spirit Energy because their laws were actually complete. The techniques they practiced were most often passed down from existences who had comprehended the Dao in one form or another, so their foundations were sturdier. The skills they used would be more powerful by extension by at least a level, even if you were talking about the most common of the dregs. And as though all of that wasn’t bad enough…

  Even if all of that was stripped away, they still outnumbered their Iteration by an impossible degree.

  Their Iteration only covered a single galaxy, but Ascendeds were rare. As much as Ryker had looked down on the Enlightenment Realm experts of the Federation’s Iteration, that was only something he could do because he came from the Valorian Clan.

  There were still quite a number of Ascendeds if you ignored the percentage, but that number was in the order of hundreds of thousands to millions if they were lucky. That was an entire three orders of magnitude away from the cat lady’s lowest estimates, and she was still talking about just her Clan as well.

  This didn’t even mention the Valorian Clan or Adonis Clan of the outside world, who would surely have their own shocking foundation.

  The number of Elevateds and Mythics beyond this didn’t even need to be hashed out in the same way.

  The good news? Their world struggled with movement through the Ascended Realms as well.

  The bad news? They did so not because of lack of energy, but because they always strove to improve their Daos first; only then would they be able to break free of the shackles of their laws.

  It turned out that the Daos brought their own share of troubles as well.

  Though it made the cultivators far more powerful, it didn’t allow a casual accumulation of energy to allow breakthroughs.

  In this Iteration, people were most often stifled by lack of energy or lack of talent to absorb said energy fast enough to trigger the momentum for a breakthrough.

  In their jailer’s world, even poor talents had an abundance of energy around them that they didn’t know what to do with. The issue was the bottlenecks that came with the suppression of the Daos.

  Unless one had a Dao strong enough to pierce through the veil, they would end up suppressed to their cultivation realm for life.

  There were pills that one could take to replace the Dao, but these were last-ditch efforts, as using them would almost guarantee that upon success, no future improvement would be able to be made.

  The only way to circumvent this issue was the so-called Ascended Maelstrom. Geniuses who managed to fill their Circles before reaching the Ascended Realms could use the momentum of their breakthrough to break through several Realms in one go.

  This finally explained to Ryker what it was he had experienced. But there were obviously differing levels to this matter as well.

  There were many ways to “fill” one’s Circles that didn’t necessarily equate to truly filling one’s Circles.

  Ryker’s, for example, could be considered a quasi-perfect fill. If he had managed a perfect fill, let alone the Third Mythics Realm, he would have entered the God Realm directly….

  Well, he would have run out of energy before that, but he would have had a chance to continue the momentum of his breakthrough if he was willing to sacrifice a few things.

  Starting at that baseline, a so-called “Perfect Fill” was first only possible when one had Nine Circles to begin with. Then, all 81 Circles had to be unlocked through the Enlightenment Realm. Following this, one had to fill each Circle with perfected Daos, meaning unlocking all of their Paths.

  Ryker obviously hadn’t managed to do the last. He was still lacking in several Paths, and his last two sets of Daos relied on the same Dao separated into differing sets of Circles.

  However, he had perfected four Daos and had even elevated them beyond the First Ascended Realm.

  It turned out that Daos were named much the same way the cultivation realms were.

  By comparison, there was also the False Perfected Fill.

  The weakest of this was when one used a Three-Circle Dao and separated its Paths throughout one’s Circles to trick the Daos into triggering an Ascended Maelstrom.

  This was precisely what the cat lady had done.

  She was only a 7th Circle Talent, so she had 63 total Circles. She took up nine of them with her one Path Dao of Spirit.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  With her 54 remaining Circles, she used her Six-Circle Dao of Darkness and separated them into nine streams. One Circle was blessed with three Paths, and it could be considered her strongest other than her Dao of Spirit Circles, and also nurtured her strongest beast. But the other eight sets of six Circles only received one Path each.

  This configuration of hers could be considered decent, and she definitely performed better than most, entering the First Elevated Realm in a single bound, before naturally cultivating to Second Elevated.

  She was considered a great genius, but she wasn’t the very best of the best.

  Every generation, there would be dozens who managed to make it to First Elevated like she had, a handful that made it to Second Elevated, and one or two that managed to make it to First Elevated with their Ascended Maelstrom.

  However… someone who could make it to First Mythic might only appear once every few generations.

  This time around, they had one. Not only did he make it to First Mythic, he made it to Second Mythic, making him a once in every ten generations sort of genius.

  A genius that could make it to Third Mythic, though… that hadn’t happened since the last time a Perfect Soul Talent appeared, and this Ancestor of theirs had long since disappeared, his life and death unknown.

  The problem was that in order to make it directly to the God Realm, one would have needed a combination of a Perfect Soul that could be so perfectly in tune with the Daos and Circle Talent that could match it.

  This Ancestor of theirs, however, had “only” been an 8th Circle Talent. As such, although he had a Perfect Fill, it wasn’t enough to reach the Peak of the Third Mythic Realm; it was only enough to enter by the skin of his teeth, let alone the God Realm.

  Unfortunately, Ryker had lost out on this opportunity, but there wasn’t much he could do about it…

  Especially when the information only seemed to grow more depressing.

  As one might expect, if the Ascended Realms could be sped through for so many, there was certainly more to be sought after in this path of cultivation…

  Though that was only a matter of relativity. Even if these geniuses managed to reach the Elevated Realm in a single bound, they would have to spend years catching their Daos up and then years more slowly progressing their Daos so that they could continue trudging through.

  It took the cat lady seven years for her Daos to catch up to her cultivation, and then another six years before she pushed past and reached the Second Elevated Realm.

  The good news for them was that thanks to the Ascended Maelstrom, until they caught their Daos up to their Cultivation Realm, the Daos would be far easier to sense.

  The bad news was that after this, they became like everyone else, only capable of slowly sensing the Daos in hopes to take one step after another forward.

  Well, not exactly like everyone else. After all, the fact they could have such a strong Ascended Maelstrom to begin with proved that they were geniuses. Those that assumed they only made it so far because of the Maelstrom were only stroking their own egos to make themselves feel better.

  And then there were the God Realms…

  It was said that if the Enlightenment Realm was the foundation and the Ascended Realms were the pedestals of Spirit Energy, then the God Realm was the stage for the soul.

  It was the slowest of the Cultivation Realms, even more so than

  the Ascended Realms that required a ridiculous amount of energy for even a single step forward, and it was divided into the very same Realms of Soul Talent.

  The Common Realm, the Refreshing Realm, the Refined Realm, the Tranquil Realm, the Soothed Realm, the Rising Realm, the Rushing Realm, the Vibrant Realm, the Resplendent Realm, and finally, a legendary Realm that not many were sure even existed…

  The Pure Realm.

  Each one of these levels was like a shedding, a complete evolution, and a shocking change to one’s power and ability, so much so that just the breakthrough from Common God to Refreshing God was a larger boost in strength than a breakthrough from the Ascended to God…

  And this didn’t refer to the Ascended Realm as a whole, but rather the Ascended status as it was below Elevated and Mythic.

  The cat lady simply had no right to speculate about the Cultivation Realms of these existences. Although she was a genius, she only had small tidbits of information about this level. After all, even as someone who reached the First Elevated Realm with her Ascended Maelstrom, she was still not guaranteed to reach Godhood. Maybe only if she reached Third Mythic before her hundredth birthday would she receive some attention.

  This sounded shocking, especially since Ryker was a 22-year-old Third Mythic, and his father was only in his forties, as was his mother.

  But it also had to be remembered that his father didn’t have to face the bottleneck of Dao Suppression like the cat lady and the others would.

  Cultivation in the outside world might come with much greater strength, but it was likewise much harder every step along the way as well.

  And that only left Ryker mulling over the cat lady’s speculations.

  In her Clan, she knew of the existence of 18 Gods. From her speculation, she believed that they were all Common Gods.

  This sounded like good news, but it wasn’t.

  “Disappearing” Gods was a common phenomenon of her Clan. All Clans, for that matter.

  After a certain period of time, Gods would just slowly vanish into the shadows as though they had never existed.

  From the cat lady’s speculation, some of them would likely just die of old age. The God Realm was an odd one where unless you could become a Refreshing God, you were more likely to lose lifespan than gain it.

  The damage a Tribulation would do to your body was astronomical, and if you didn’t have a perfect breakthrough, recovery was often impossible.

  The world of Daos was far crueler than it was here.

  But she also speculated that a decent number of these Gods likely broke through. As for what happened after they became Refreshing Gods, the cat lady simply had no right to know.

  It was impossible to say how many more breakthroughs they would have.

  But if there was any ceiling by which to measure these things, the 8th Circle Ancestor who reached the Third Mythic Realm in a single bound was confirmed to have become a Vibrant God, two stages from a Pure God, before he vanished.

  He too had disappeared after becoming a Common God, but was forced to appear again due to a calamity that nearly struck their people.

  Since he was the one the Ancestors relied upon, this probably confirmed two things… first, that not all Gods that disappeared died, and second, that there was a good chance he was among the strongest if not the strongest.

  The enemy they faced at the time would surely be aware of their hidden strength at least in part. So they wouldn’t have attacked recklessly if they had a Resplendent God or a Pure God to rely on.

  However, once again… these matters were only speculation.

  Ryker listened calmly from start to finish. He hardly had to ask the cat lady any questions at all; she just poured out her answer without the slightest hesitation.

  He could tell why. He wasn’t a fool.

  She wasn’t worried about being seen as a traitor because she was certain of one thing…

  There was no way that Ryker could use this information to harm her people. If anything, this information was more likely to make him give up.

  Ryker had set a goal for himself initially…

  God Realm in six months.

  It was an insane goal, one without any logic or reason to it, a goal he thought was impossible.

  Now, with three months left, he sat at the peak of the Third Mythic Realm… only to find out that the goal he had been striving for was nothing more than a joke.

  What did it matter if he became a Common God if a mere Refreshing God could swipe him out of the sky with a casual wave of the hand?

  He could sense his fiancée’s grip tighten around his arm. It had done so several times during the cat lady’s explanation, and right now, if it wasn’t for the fact he had already become a Third Mythic, she would have likely snapped his arm in two.

  It was hard for anyone listening to these explanations to think anything other than they would have to accept their lives as perpetual slaves.

  Ryker stood from his bed, looking out the window to watch the stars and planets passing by.

  “Who’s the youngest in your Realm to reach Common God?” he asked, his back facing the woman.

  “… Probably Ancestor Regalis.”

  “At what age?”

  “57?”

  “What took him so long?” Ryker asked.

  A flash of anger flashed in the cat lady’s eyes, but realizing Ryker was only asking neutrally, she suppressed the thoughts. What was even the point?

  “He was a late bloomer. He wanted a perfect breakthrough, so he didn’t leave the Enlightenment Realm until the age of 33. He still ended up being faster than all of us.”

  “And the time between entering the God Realm and when he appeared as a Vibrant God?”

  “… I can’t be certain. It’s on the magnitude of thousands of years. Maybe tens of thousands.”

  The God Realm was the Realm of the Soul, and yet someone with a Pure Soul like her Ancestor still took so long to reach Vibrant Godhood…

  A smile curled Ryker’s lips, but no one could see it… nor the storm in his eyes.