There was a spring in her step as Hope moved through the halls of the sect. The name had bothered her once, so different from the rest that she was sure it was made so people knew her status. Not anymore, she was named such because she was different, she was at the pinnacle of power, and 'this top sect of the realm' had nothing in it but rabble. She guessed the only reason it was at the top was that her lord had deigned to make it his home. This was why she was so irked one of this rabble had put fear in her. She may still be a whelp but her opposition was a decrepit old man and do not remove this loathsome being would put a permanent stain on her honor.

She moved through the halls at a leisurely pace, building the anticipation for the kill. Yes, she could simply move in and kill her prey but what would be the fun in that. The other party did not know and it gave her a special tingle at the mere thought the man would die in despair realizing he was a frog in a well, killed like the pest he was.

Her visage was much more monstrous now, two horns sprouted from the top of her head and angled back, combined with the jagged spikes on top, it gave the illusion that she was wearing a crown of bone. The most inhumane features though were the large reptilian tail and the two leathery wings that sprouted from her back completing her draconic. Yet with all these features there was a magnetic beauty to her form, one that demanded obedience and broke no quarter.

One might ask why nobody was sounding any sort of alarm at the presence of what looked like a monster beautiful as she was. The reason was simple a celestial phenomenon was going on at this moment and almost every being in the realm was looking up in the sky at the Heavenly horror that now became the moon became.

Today was supposed to be a full moon but mere minutes ago it shifted. What was once a massive glowing silver circle hanging across the sky was now a massive eye. That too of a dragon and if the effect was only cosmetic it would have been a different matter but that was not to be the case, essence in the air felt many folds thicker and while it may have been a boon for cultivation but it was so thick and so pure that it suffocated most. Countless lives were lost this night and many more would be lost before it would be over. It dominated the realm like a lofty god toying with the whole realm.

One might ask why a mere Qi condensation monster could be the source of such divinity. For that matter how did a mere gift which is essentially a bonus you gained at birth that provided some sort of permanent passive benefit turns someone from a mere mortal to what amounts to a reality-altering monster?

There are a couple of reasons for this, all of which combined to give this terrifying final product. If nobody got the hint, Hope melded with Simon on a much deeper level to the point it could be said they shared souls. This gave Hope access to three terrifying soul abilities as she had access to Simon's soul: God's mist, Divine augmentation, and star platform.

It could be said that it was the fault of the first two that her transformation did not span years but days as her soul had gained a much weaker version of the two first two abilities. As you might have noticed God's mist and Divine augmentation change your soul and physique on a non-intrusive level passively to make you a more 'perfect' version of yourself, that is a big reason why Simon was so powerful despite his inability to equip any manuals. How does affect our Hope here? well, through a work of fate she was born with the tiniest bit of a true dragon-like 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% of one. Even that tiny fragment made her so lucrative to cultivators that she was confined and used for years. God's mist and divine augmentation kept modifying her passively that she went from that to a 100% true dragon in about a month. That should give just how powerful these two abilities were that a 'weaker' version of them had that strong of a passive effect, to put into perspective it would take at least peak cultivators of the upper realms to have any hope of making such abilities and even then it would be a very rare thing.

That was not even the end of it see, like many divine beasts Hope did not gain soul abilities but instead had a bloodline as well as an additional source of power. Cultivators had two avenues of power; their soul or their body unless they practiced some unique cultivation method. Simon, for example, drew most if not all of his power from his soul. True dragons as a divine beast innately had a third source of power, namely their hoard. Now, normally it would need to be in place in the realm she inhabited to be able to draw from it, this is where the third soul ability the star platform came in. If we were to talk in gamer terms for a minute since rings existed that had a pocket realm inside themselves one could see how dragons could cheese that to become absolutely unbeatable. To combat this there was a heavenly law that made sure the hoard needed to exist in the same realm as the dragon.

You see, unlike the first two, the star platform was in a league of its own. The heavens decreed all realms that could generate life must exist in the heaven myriad tapestry, all pocket realms still existed inside the tapestry. The only beings that could against this law of the universe were the gods themselves. Only they could make realms in the void of existence past even the nether realms. Simon normally would never have been able to do something reserved for the gods themselves but as someone who traveled from one universe to another, he was uniquely able to understand the void and combined with the flash of divine insight that specifically thought of realms allowed him to make such a marvel. The person himself did not realize the power he wielded in his mind it was a powerful pocket realm. Coming back to the talk of hoards, even this would not be enough to overturn heaven's law. Hope did not gain her own star platform because despite the first two being so powerful Simon's third ability was truly infinite and a weaker version of infinite was still infinite. Because Hope was both a cultivator and divine beast which in itself is a paradox she needed a third soul ability and instinctually she thought of the star platform as her hoard. Since fate had all but given up trying to stabilize the flow of reality through so many violations she was able to turn the star platform, a part of the lord's soul and a micro-universe unto itself, into her hoard as her third ability. The downside was that she would not be able to make any hoards in of the existing plains but when you had practically infinite power to play with who cared. Currently, Hope's biggest weakness was that her body was still too fragile to bring nothing but the tiniest amount of power out otherwise her body would explode from the excess.

To add icing to this supermassive cake, the minimum power even the weakest divine beast could be was at the fourth stage of cultivation, something this realm simply did not have the power to deal with because the lower realms could not have cultivators past the third stage of cultivation. To combat this, she was simply made a temporary realm lord to allow heaven's law to absorb the excess power but this made her what amounted to a minor god in this realm which resulted in the celestial phenomenon as the current realm lord lost his title and as such immediately withered away as it was the power of the realm that sustained him past his mortal lifespan. Simon made a mess of things on a scale larger than the tiny cultivator could even comprehend.

What was sad though was that Hope as a person was probably no more. After all, her body and soul went through great change but her mind was not equally developed and was not ready for the change. The problem lay in the fact that she was a divine beast now. If a cultivator was 99.99999999.....% divine beast and 0.00...001% cultivator they would still be classified as a cultivator and follow a cultivator's path. But two abilities with six mythic functions each would not be so shallow as to not refine her completely and leave things half finished. Hope's memories were still there but now she thought more from the perspective of a proud dragon instead of a normal lovable female mortal who just started on the path of cultivation.

One could only pray Simon fared better because, remember, like she had gained a fragment of his soul he too gained a fragment of hers, unlike Bai Qing who had gained a much tinier fragment that gave her power while acting as a leash at the same time. The future was truly uncertain.