Simon's breakthrough had left a bittersweet taste in his mouth. Sure, he had broken through and gotten a stupendously overpowered soul ability as the crowning achievement of that incident. But, he was forced to bond with another woman without her or even his consent, it felt like what had happened was heaven's will and while most would celebrate such an auspicious event, lack of control irked him on some primal level he could not explain. And the ability he got was powerful sure but there was no immediate benefit to it. Without the ability to merge with any manual he would always be a step behind and he needed abilities like God's mist and Divine augmentation to level the playing field. His newest ability had come out of nowhere and he did not know how to use it in combat or if it was even usable in combat.

Sadly he was in no state to practice. For the last four days, he had been lying in bed as his body slowly healed the damage his own essence had caused. He did not even have time to speak to Hope before he fell flat on his face on that fateful day. When the high of his breakthrough had faded, he shifted back to the real world to know how she felt only to suffer a full body paralysis the moment he returned his body shutting down to heal.

The last few days had wreaked havoc on his dignity as he was treated like a cripple. The only saving grace was that he was known to be eccentric and nobody had bothered to inquire about him. Some parts of his body still worked fine and he had shuddered to think what the whores of the sect would do if they found out a Qi condensation was stuck in bed. He had forcefully used his God's mist to express that he was fine and all he needed was rest before it went back to reconstruct his devastated innards.

He was in a much better place mentally than physically and he had owed a lot of that to Hope, his lips could only slightly twitch as he tried to form a smile.

On that first night, as he was stuck to his bed with nothing to do but wallow in his guilt at what he had done, even Bai Qing's sleeping presence next to him was not good enough. What he did with Bai Qing was controlled and he had some leeway to free her in the future to free her if she wished it. Arduous did not even begin to describe how difficult, time-consuming, and resource intensive the task was but it was still doable, he had left that backdoor open. No such luck with Hope, Hope was stuck to him in a way so intrinsic that if he were not caught up with how wrong everything was, he would marvel at its majesty. If Bai Qing was like a sword bound to his soul Hope was now essentially one of his limbs. One had a small distinction while the other was intrinsically his.

Whilst he was in distress he had felt two soft hands clasping his free one that was dangling by the bedside. It brought him out of his reverie as he heard those soft nearly silent but fateful words, something he would commit to memory forever.

"Thank you. I know I am not the brightest or the strongest, and even when you had called me beautiful like a blooming flower I felt sad, I was just a flower to look at and one day like the flower I would wither away. At first, I was hopeful because my life was not worth living and someone had finally come to end it, then I was scared because you kept giving me things and helping me and loving me. I was scared because for the first time I wanted to live but I thought you were just fattening us up like a pig. Stupid I know but master, you have to remember my life was not a happy one. My parents..." sniff. "My parents sold me and my sister for some new farm animals because the harvest that year was bad and we were tight on money and it was hard to put food on the table. Did you know before you bought us we were cauldrons in a dual cultivation brothel where I and my sister were used daily and kept alive by pills fed to us. They... Hic! I wanted to die, but by some miracle in the sea of bound cauldrons we two were kept next to each other. As men... Hic! and women used me only the thought of my sister next to me kept me alive. Eventually, our essence had run out and we were sold as a pill herb to the shop you bought us from. Guess my gift was very great huh?" sniff!

Simon felt hot tears falling on my hand as her hands slightly trembled. he desperately wanted to hug the girl and committed a cardinal sin, got angry at Bai Qing for not doing something, and slept through her friend's sorrow. Unreasonable? sure but he was desperate. He felt God's mist slowly wrap around her in a soft embrace which at first shocked the girl before she melted in that familiar warmth that was her master's strength. He knew that she had a lot more to say but the rest could be said when she was ready. Now all she needed was a hug and a warm bed to rest her head. She was silently lifted and deposited on the other side of his prone form. At first, she stiffened before melting into him grabbing onto his arm in a fierce hug.

Unbeknownst to both of them, something truly great had happened just then. Simon did not have any God's mist to spare all of it was hard at work to fix his unique constitution. Simon had not used his own God's mist but instead used Hope's. None of them had realized it at that moment but they had just shifted fate and changed the rules of the universe slightly and only for a moment, something only the Gods or the demonic overlords could. The Heavenly realm was in an uproar thinking the demons had started some plot to overthrow them and vice versa for the nether realms. Something no one had grasped yet was that there was one more being implicated in this shift, a young phoenix who was silently crying on her bed unaware that she too was linked to this event.