Beneath the crescent moon, the Martial Emperor waved a hand without looking back. Her tall figure gradually vanished among the trees along the bank, disappearing into the wilderness. Where she went, Ronan did not know. Their information-heavy exchange had come to an end.
Ronan stood where she had been, elbows resting on the railing, alone and still amid the shifting moonlight and shadows.
After a while, he suddenly laughed.
By the standards of independent thought, the Martial Emperor's final words had hardly been pleasant to hear. Ronan did not take them as an insult, though.
He did not mind what she had said in the slightest.
"Not himself," a "container," and all that... What was wrong with putting it that way?
That was exactly what he was.
Container or creation, he had always followed the path laid out by his grandfather and father, building his foundation on Format Theory, then learning and absorbing the knowledge and power of the Tian Yuan Civilization.
Even with the Demon Rune thrown in as an unexpected variable, he had still taken shape more or less within that framework.
His parents had given him his body, and his thinking had formed within the framework of Format Theory. Through both, he carried and displayed the results of three generations of research along this path. What was wrong with that? Why would it be a bad thing?
In the end, he was simply a Genetic Species. That made inheritance and transmission the very heart of the matter. Without them, how could a life as brief as a morning mushroom's or summer cicada's ever comprehend the passing of months and years?
If anything, Ronan was grateful to the Martial Emperor for reminding him again, for clearing his head before the world's praise and fear persuaded him to credit