Chapter 144 - 98 : Blood Is Still Blood (2)

Chapter 144: Chapter 98 : Blood Is Still Blood (2)

Ethan looked down at his hand and slowly flexed his fingers. The strange spatial energy was still moving through him, and every moment remained a quiet struggle between destruction and repair, with his Living Blood continuing to fight the damage and use whatever remained available to keep his body from collapsing completely.

He had grown slightly more accustomed to the pain, but that did not mean it had become any easier. It was simply becoming familiar, settling into something he could endure without reacting to every wave of it.

In some ways, that was almost worse.

Ethan had lived in the cultivation world long enough to forget what a place nearly empty of spiritual energy felt like. He had cultivated, travelled, and fought across this world, from the village to the mountains and along every road he had taken, and everywhere he went, spiritual energy had simply been there. It was such an ordinary part of the world that he had never needed to stop and think about it.

It was much like breathing. Not everyone stopped to appreciate the air around them. It was simply there, so constant and familiar that its presence was easy to overlook. Only when it became scarce, when someone was trapped somewhere with little oxygen or suddenly found themselves struggling for air, did they truly understand how much they had been taking for granted.

Spiritual energy had been the same for Ethan.

And somehow, despite coming from Earth, where spiritual energy had existed only as an idea in fiction, he had accepted its presence without ever truly stopping to consider what it meant. He had questions about cultivation, questions about his body, questions about techniques, even questions about the Immortal Ring.

Yet he had rarely questioned the world itself. Perhaps there had simply never been a reason to. Until now.

Ethan slowly looked around the cave. The place felt empty, though not lifeless. It was simply lacking something he had grown so accustomed to having that he had forgotten it was there at all.

His expression grew solemn.

He tried to circulate his Qi again.

The moment he did, pain tore through him.

His muscles tightened.

He stopped immediately.

No.

His Qi was not an option.

Not yet.

The spatial energy inside him made that path too dangerous.

And the spiritual energy around him was far too weak to compensate.

If he had been an ordinary cultivator...

Ethan’s gaze hardened.

He might never recover.

If he even survived the injuries in the first place, a normal cultivator could not rely on a body that continuously repaired itself with Living Blood. That was what made his situation different.

Ethan’s gaze shifted toward the man sitting across from him.

Lucian.

The stranger who had saved him.

An ordinary human, at least as far as Ethan could determine. He could sense no obvious cultivation or even the signs of Body Tempering, yet this same ordinary human had carried him through the forest while wounded himself.

Ethan studied him quietly.

There were two possibilities. This could simply be an isolated region within the cultivation world, perhaps a forbidden area or a place where spiritual energy had somehow been drained or suppressed. Ethan could not dismiss that possibility.

He had never explored the entire cultivation world. He knew the territory controlled by the Azure Cloud Sect . He knew of Scoundrel’s Ridge and the regions controlled by the Crimson Purge Sect and some of the lands belonging to the Lunar Echo Sect from the maps and information he had gathered, but those places were only fragments of a world far larger than anything he had personally seen.

There were countless regions beyond his knowledge, and this could simply be one of them.

But there was another possibility.

Ethan’s thoughts returned to the spatial rift, to those tears and the sensation of space itself breaking apart around him. If he had truly passed through some kind of spatial boundary, then perhaps he was no longer where he thought he was.

But Ethan did not allow himself to settle on that conclusion. There was simply too little information. He needed to recover first, then understand this place and learn what kind of world, or perhaps region, he had entered. Only after that would he know whether he had merely fallen into some strange corner of the cultivation world or whether he had left it entirely.

His fingers tightened slowly against his knee.

Whatever the answer was, one thing was already clear. He needed energy, and Qi was not an option. The spiritual energy here was too weak to be of much use, while the strange energy inside his body was already consuming his Living Blood. That left him with only one reliable source.

Blood.

Ethan’s eyes shifted slightly, and a faint calm settled over him. At least he was not completely stranded.

Spiritual energy might differ from one world to another. Cultivation methods could change, and even the laws of a place might be different, but as long as life existed, there would be blood. Blood was still blood, and life was still life.

His path had never depended entirely on spiritual energy. He could use it, and it could make things easier, but he did not need it for every step. As long as living creatures existed here, Ethan still had a way to survive.

He looked toward the cave entrance as rain continued to fall over the unfamiliar forest. For the first time since opening his eyes, he allowed himself to seriously consider that he might not have simply fallen into an unfamiliar place. He might have fallen out of his world entirely.

If that was true, then the rules he had spent so long learning in the cultivation world might no longer be enough to tell him how this place worked.

He would have to learn them again, from the beginning.

His attention shifted back to the man sitting across the fire. If Ethan truly had to learn everything about this place from the beginning, then there was no better way to start than by asking someone who was born here. A native would know things he could not learn by simply looking around, and from what Ethan had observed, the young man did not seem like an ordinary villager. His clothing and manner suggested some connection to a better-off family, perhaps even a noble household. If that was the case, he might have received more education and know far more about the surrounding lands than an ordinary commoner.

For now, the young man was the most useful source of information Ethan had.

Ethan straightened slightly against the cave wall. The movement sent a dull ache through his body, but he ignored it. The young man had already done more for him than most people would have done for a complete stranger, yet Ethan had not even properly introduced himself.

He looked toward him.

"Forgive me. Where are my manners? I was spacing out."

Ethan’s voice was still rough from the pain within his body, but some of its steadiness had returned. He looked toward the man across the fire. "I didn’t have much of an opportunity to introduce myself earlier. My name is Ethan."

Lucian looked at him for a moment before giving a small nod.

"Lucian Veymont."

There was a brief pause before he added, "Heir to the Veymont family."

The words carried a quiet pride. It was simply a name he was proud to bear.

Ethan continued looking at him with the same calm expression.

"Lucian Veymont," he repeated. "Thank you once again for saving me, Lucian."

Something about the response caught Lucian’s attention.

There was nothing wrong with Ethan thanking him, but the way he had said his name, then moved on without the slightest change in expression, left Lucian with a strange feeling. It was almost as though the name Veymont meant nothing to him.

Lucian’s brows furrowed slightly.

For a brief moment, he wondered if Ethan was pretending not to recognize the name. But the more he looked at him, the harder that explanation became to believe. There was no hesitation in Ethan’s expression, no sign that he was hiding anything. He genuinely seemed to have no idea who Lucian was.

That was strange.

From the moment Lucian had found him in the forest, surrounded by wolves, there had been something unusual about this man. Even after waking, Ethan carried himself differently from an ordinary traveler. There was a quiet strength in him, a confidence that did not seem to come from status or appearance. In fact, it reminded Lucian of the kind of presence he had sensed from some of the formidable martial experts he had encountered.

Even now, with Ethan sitting against the cave wall, his clothes torn and stained with blood, that feeling had not disappeared. He still carried himself with an unusual calm, as though he trusted himself completely and had little reason to be shaken by his current circumstances.

Perhaps he came from another region.

There were plenty of influential families beyond the territory controlled by the Veymonts, so it was not impossible that Ethan had simply never heard of them.

Lucian let the matter rest.

Across from him, however, Ethan had already noticed the change in his expression.

The reaction told Ethan enough. The Veymont family was clearly important in this region, and Lucian’s response suggested that he had expected the name to be recognized. If Ethan wanted to understand where he had ended up, then someone like Lucian, an heir to a noble family who clearly knew the area well, was probably the person worth asking.

Ethan shifted his attention back to him.

"Then, Lucian, perhaps you can tell me something else, where are we ?"