Grand Ancestral Bloodlines
chapter-1937

Hope's mind was a mess, though she didn't know why. She had long been prepared for this inevitability. In fact, she needed it. It was only by having Ryu's child that she would be able to accomplish the things she needed to, but for some reason, when it was actually happening, she found herself unable to control her thoughts and emotions.

She began to cry inexplicably, but before Ryu could even comfort her, she began to laugh… then she began to cry again.

Ryu's lip twitched. If he didn't know better, he would have thought that this woman had been possessed.

Suddenly, she hugged Ryu tightly as though she was trying to fuse them into one. If not for Ryu's breakthrough, she would have crushed him. After all, Hope was an Omniscient Sky God as well, having finally broken through all those years ago thanks to tying her Fate to Ryu's.

Clearly, she had either completely forgotten this or hopefully realized he was strong enough now, or Ryu at least hoped the latter was the case. If not, she could have crushed his entire body. He had had enough of women shattering parts of him because they were too strong. One time was already one time too many.

Ryu smiled, patting her back. "Silly little woman, shouldn't you at least check if you're pregnant or not before crying and laughing like this?"

"Ah!" Hope realized that she hadn't even checked first, so she looked inside her body. Then, she all of a sudden deflated.

She wasn't pregnant yet. It seemed that the previous injuries to her body were worse than she thought.

The way her Yang Essence Pill worked was by releasing a male's Yang Essence into her womb over a long period of time. That way, high-level cultivators didn't need to have sex at the perfect time, or have sex for months or years on end, just to conceive a child. Instead, the pill would do all the work.

This was probably why the pill she thought would be a big hit was such a big flop. It turned out that cultivators actually quite liked to have sex. But that was only part of it.

The real reason was that low-level cultivators didn't have poor enough birth rates to need to rely on such a pill. Having a kid or two every few decades was already more than enough.

The existences that really needed this pill were the highest echelons of the world and there was certainly a market for it. The main issue was just that Hope had been hiding away from exactly those people for much of her life, not wanting to die an early death for the crime of not being of their world.

This aside, the main point was that this pill was meant to be used when the woman's body was in an optimal state, but Hope's body had simply not been for a long while. It could be said that while she was unconscious, her body had never been in an optimal state for conception, so barely any of the Yang Essence had been used up at all.

Suddenly, Hope began to blush again when she felt the pill rotate in her womb for the first time, releasing some of Ryu's Essence into her. It seemed that it had finally decided that she was in a good state so the race toward conceiving started now.

A shudder went through Hope as she finally relaxed. This was good, an excellent step. The final barrier holding her down in this world was finally alleviated.

"Ryu, I think I'm going to breakthrough to Godhood."

"… What?" Ryu's eyes widened, but he couldn't say much before Hope suddenly kissed him.

Her breath smelled like orchards and her lips were impossibly soft. This wasn't the first time Ryu had felt them, but now that she was awake, it was like a completely different experience.

Hope suddenly pulled away, a slight blush on her face.

"Watch me," she said softly.

Suddenly, Hope burst into the skies.

Ryu was in a bit of a daze. He almost touched his lips with a finger before he caught himself from doing something so embarrassing. He didn't even quite understand why he was in such a daze until Hope had already torn through the barrier of Lordship and was rocketing toward Sovereignty.

'I see…'

For Hope to say that she wanted to become a Dao God now, and kiss him right afterward… it was just in too great a contrast between what he had experienced with Ailsa.

One seemed to grow distant from him upon becoming a Dao God, and the other wanted him to witness it to draw them closer.

It wasn't fair to Ailsa to even compare these two matters. After all, Ailsa had made it all the way on her own, while Hope, quite literally, could not cultivate if not for Ryu's interference. It made sense for Hope to be far more reliant on Ryu than Ailsa was…

But the one thing that Ryu had never truly understood was that emotions were rarely, if ever, so rational. Hope made him feel a childish innocence he hadn't had in a long time, and at the same time, she stroked a piece of him that he could never get rid of…

His ego.

What kind of man would be unmoved if a soon-to-be Dao Goddess wanted to be with you?

But it also made Ryu understand that his anger, at least in part, was quite shallow of depth. He was in one part enraged because Ailsa was no longer treating him like she should her husband. But there was an equally large part of him that was infuriated solely because she had bruised his ego, without regard for the reason why.

It seemed that he would only allow his wives to be willful insofar as his ego could take the beating. He had allowed Elena to embarrass him in public, Mae had quite literally tried to kill him in the past… but then, funny enough, he didn't even want Sarriel anymore because she looked down on the ego he took so much pride in.

Ryu was a hypocrite, but he was also a proud hypocrite. He was aware of the contradiction of some of his actions and thoughts… he just didn't care.

But this was the first time he wondered if it was the right way to do things.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Hope's aura soared again and she crossed into Sovereignty, continuing to charge ahead faster and faster.

The limiting factor of Hope's cultivation had always been the world's rejection of her. Now that there was Ryu's Yang Essence in her, although she wasn't officially pregnant, she now had an anchor in the world.

As such, all those years of accumulation burst forth in a single rush. Her Dao broke through continuously and her body became a sieve for the world's power.

BOBOOM!

The booming cadence of the Tribulation Lightning layered on top of one another and in that moment, Hope finally broke through the final barrier, shooting into the Dao God Realm.

Three stacks of Tribulations appeared high above her head and the first strikes began to rain down. However, from just a glance, Ryu knew what Hope was doing.

No matter how much accumulation you had, breaking through three such powerful Realms when you had been a Transcended for so long before, and hardly had any experience in the Omniscient Realm, was a no-go. This didn't mean that Hope would die, but her foundation would certainly be shaky.

If she moved into the Sovereign Realm, it would still be salvageable, but by jumping to Godhood, it was like she was cutting off her future path…

Unless she refined her path.

She was going to become the Favor Alchemy God… wouldn't it be inappropriate if she didn't display to the world what exactly that meant?

Hope opened her arms wide and a twinkling aura of stars began to form around her. These stars connected into a Constellation that formed an enormous Cauldron in the skies. This cauldron was simply gorgeous, looking as though it had been carved out of crystal and diamonds of starlight.

And Hope was right in the middle of it.

When the first Tribulations began to descend, horrors of all elements and kinds, they began to pour into the Runes of the cauldron, and just like that…

Hope began to refine herself into a pill.

Ryu watched this in a bit of a daze and with hints of pride flickering in his eyes. He had never before felt his pride hinge on the actions of someone else. His pride in the Tatsuya Clan only went insofar as he loved his family members and would uphold their honor, but he never really felt pride for coming from the Tatsuya Clan, per se…

He always hinged his arrogance and pride on his own abilities, never that of someone else's.

But right now, watching Hope, that was exactly what he felt.

That feeling only grew when she descended from the skies on a river of stars, her beauty unmatched and untouchable… and it grew feverish when she fell back into his arms.

A hint of shy expression was on her face and she seemed to have completely forgotten that Wobbling Fairy was still there.

Her eyes said things that the rest of her body didn't need to.

An unknown sensation burst from Ryu's chest and he closed his eyes, wanting to laugh at himself.

She wanted to become a Dao God first before truly becoming his wife… she wanted him to take her right here and now…

And for some reason, he had a hard time doing so.