All the while Ryu was being put through the wringer, Hope could only sit there in a nervous ss. He had gone through many cycles of injury and recovery, and he looked as though he had almost died several tis now.
How could she not be nervous?
The only thing stopping her from crying out was the fact that Ryu did seem to get a little better every ti he went through one of these cycles.
But no matter how much she tried to keep herself calm, it was nearly impossible to do so when her husband started blowing up like a balloon.
It sounded like bombs were going off in Ryu's body, or like a Heavenly Tribulation had been triggered right in her presence.
However, all the while, Ryu's eyes remained almost lightly closed and his face was entirely
expressionless. One could have thought that it was soone else's body undergoing such horrors and not his own.
That calm sort of sharpness seed to stir sothing within Hope.
She rembered the first ti she t Ryu. Then she rembered the first ti she learned that Ryu's Fate wasn't anything special at all. In fact, it was shackled and might have been even worse than her own.
Even now, she had no idea how Ryu had made it through with such poor Fate, and it hadn't made any sense to her until he exited the Dark Holy World they had just left the vicinity of.
With high affinity for Space... one was no longer bound by it.
With high affinity for Ti... training in a ti warp was possible for you when it wasn't for anyone else. It was an ability that most would absolutely kill for.
And with a high Fate affinity... could it be that you stood outside of its influence?
Was this the reason her scribe had fallen onto Ryu? Did it calculate this?
No...
Hope knew that that was impossible. She was called the Favor Alchemy God, but she knew her level, especially back then.
There was no way that she could calculate such a thing.
That ant that in all likelihood... it was Ryu that had acted upon her Fate rather than the other way around.
Hope almost laughed when she thought of this. And all the while, she thought that she was the one taking control of her own Fate and changing it.
If it was soone else, maybe she would have collapsed at this realization again, not much different. than how she had reacted the last ti, but since it was Ryu...
She looked down at his handso, expressionless visage and couldn't help but caress his cheek.
If her Fate was being controlled by her husband, then maybe she wouldn't mind too much.
She had realized sothing after she tied her Fate to Ryu's all those years ago. Her path to supremacy had already been cut out. The fact that she had taken such a way out indicated that she would never beco the Dao God that she hoped to be.
If she had wanted to maximize her potential, no matter how great her foundation was, she should have never taken on three Tribulations at once. That was nothing more than shooting herself in the foot.
However...
She knew that this was the right thing to do.
Trying to scrounge for every little bit of foundation when Ryu needed her protection would be far too selfish. And she also knew that given her husband's talents... what she was lacking in would likely soon be made up for.
Being the Favor Alchemy God ant more than just weaving your own Fate. In fact, because Alchemy was tagged onto it, it had almost never been about her own Fate at all.
Her role in the world was to create the greatest pills Existence had ever seen. She was ant to find her place in the world instead of forging it for herself. She was ant to rely on teasing apart the mysteries and unveiling them slowly, rather than creating new ones herself.
Whether it was the Title she had chosen or the path she had taken, she realized that her previous dreams were nothing more than pomp and circumstance in the mind of an immature child. However...
She gently stroked Ryu's check again, a light smile playing on her face.
She looked up for a mont, realizing that they had been found, but the calmness in her gaze didn't fade in the slightest.
She had only allowed Ryu to try so hard on his own because he knew that whenever he was pushed into a corner, he would force his way out. And this ti, he had managed to make it 90% of the way through.
In that case, she would cover the remaining 10%... and pretend as though she couldn't cover the full bill.
The funny part about all of this was that she had had a solution within a few minutes. However, she allowed Ryu to take the reins nonetheless.
Now that there were enemies here... she could give her husband's ego a light massage.
Hope waved a hand and the laws of the world solidified into runes. Magical energies swirled and her slender fingers looked as though they were plucking at the stars and gliding through the silvery rivers of Fate.
Then, she made a plucking motion.
In that mont, a pill condensed from the Runes and the skies above suddenly shook.
Hope smiled and then giggled to herself. Maybe she liked being patronized by her husband a little bit... but only just a little bit.
Now was ti for her reward.
She pressed the pill to her lips and then kissed Ryu.
Ryu was taken aback for a mont because he felt the dicinal effects pour into his body.
His eyes snapped open with hints of surprise in them, but he still couldn't move for a mont as his ridians rumbled.
All at once, his body shuddered and the Dark Seed qi vanished into the air.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Hope looked off into the distance, a sinister light in her eyes.
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