Disoriented would be the word Simon would use to express his emotions at that moment. It felt like all the pieces were there just too jumbled to make heads or tails of anything. He half wanted to go to his star platform but they were currently occupied by two extremely fertile females and he was not in the mood to breed at the moment.

He slapped his head trying to get these thoughts in order. Making children was out of the question, any children they had would be owned by the sect as was custom. A growl escaped him at the thought of his progeny being subservient to anyone but him. They would all die if they so much looked at his children the wrong way

Simon grabbed his head with both hands trying separate his thoughts from whatever was influencing him. For the first time in who knows how long he sat down to just meditate by himself.

Though this was not something he preferred to do, avoiding it like the plague, he was very good at it. Within some very monotonous minutes, he opened his mind's eye and looked inwards to what was going on that was causing these odd lapses.

As his awareness outwards dimmed his inward sensitivity increased.

He opened his eyes once more and instead of the carnage that surrounded him, he was now sitting cross-legged on a sea of blue while the sky a dark void while being heavily dotted with shining blue lights similar to stars.

Coming here was always an experience; he peered around to see what was happening inside his soul, and what he saw shocked him. He had been here quite a few times before despite his hesitance and there was one extremely massive change that he was not expecting one bit.

The fragment of Bai Qing's soul was present as it always was, a crystalline statue of her was present in his soul from the moment he had bonded her as it lay a small distance away from him.

The difference now was a truly massive dragon lay sleeping around him as he was sitting nestled in her craned neck. Like everything else the being was mono-colored but unlike everything else which imitated the blue of his soul, it was a deep shade of red. That was not all, an uncountable amount of essence threads joined from the dragon to him all over his ethereal body, unlike the one that joined the statue.

This was where he was sure the changes he was suffering were coming from. His usually completely blue visage was now dotted with numerous spots of red, all connected to the sleeping dragon, which indecently had spots of blue where they connected.

That was not all though extremely strong the single tether could be broken though it would cause some massive damage to his soul. Unlike that, the threads joined were extremely weak but regenerated instantly when he forced his will to break one. The dragon was pretty much a part of him now as the threads felt very personal with none of the barriers put in place by the technique to stop any melding of personalities, devouring a soul often pushed characteristics and idiosyncrasies onto you which was why the techniques around them were so complex outside of the fact that they were very wrong to do.

This did not feel like that though, he felt connected to this beast so much so that it felt a part of him but at the same time there was individuality for him to realize that this was a separate entity. What was happening, however, since there were so many connections that they were all but sharing souls the mannerisms were bleeding over giving him these aberrant thoughts and actions.

Thankfully, putting mental wards would be enough to stave the leaking mannerisms and once his soul got accustomed to the changes even the problems he was suffering should abate completely. At least that was the hope, some mannerisms may linger and his hope with the wards was to not allow any of it to become ingrained.

Now that he had that sorted what he wanted to know was where did this massive thing even come from. A true dragon, as the bond allowed to know instinctively, was something that could only exist in middle realms at the very least. He had no first-hand knowledge but from all the books he read on the mythos they needed much higher essence density than what the lower realms could afford.

That was including the fact that he did not understand how he could have come into contact with one much less have such an intimate truly eternal bond.

It hit him all at once and he started to talk to himself to ground his rapidly expanding thoughts.

"Wait did hope not have minuscule amounts of draconic essence as her gift?"

"How the fuck could that turn her into a true dragon, it would require something to not only refine the essence but also absorb the muck that is world essence and transform it..."

"I did not place any boundaries or walls between us when I activated my cultivation technique. What if my powers started refining my soul and body? What if it affected both of us? Wait..."

Coming out of his monologue he tried to peer into the dragon beyond its grand display and find anything familiar he could latch onto. Sure enough, feelings and memories that were not quite his yet he had grown accustomed to flooded his mind.

"What have I done?"

He did not know but intended to find out because he could still feel the presence of Hope in his star platform and there was no time like the present to get the answers he was looking for. He teleported into the space with a great load of trepidation hoping that in his blind arrogance with messing with things that were frankly quite outside his understanding, he did not fuck something up.