Chapter 127 - 89 : Looking Back (1)

Chapter 127: Chapter 89 : Looking Back (1)

Back on Earth, swords like this had always carried a certain appeal. He had never been the kind of person who spent all his time thinking about cultivation or weapons, but he had seen enough movies, games, and stories to know that the katana had always held a particular place in people’s imagination. Its shape, the way it was carried, the simple movements associated with drawing it, all of it had a certain appeal.

And now he had found something that actually looked like one.

Ethan could not deny that it had influenced his decision.

Practicality had played its part. His short dao had been destroyed during the battle, and he needed another weapon. The sword gave him more reach, and being a magic weapon made it far more useful than an ordinary blade.

But if he was being honest with himself, the fact that it looked cool had certainly helped.

A faint smile touched his lips.

His short dao had been familiar, and the sword’s balance was noticeably different. Its longer reach changed his movements, while the curved blade required him to adjust the way he controlled each swing and changed direction.

Still, it was a magic weapon.

And unlike his broken dao, this one could actually last.

Ethan turned the sword slightly, watching the morning light slide along its edge. The blade was clean and sharp, its surface reflecting the surrounding trees in a thin, distorted line.

It would take some time to become familiar with it.

But that was fine.

He had chosen it for more than one reason, and he had spent the past week practicing with it whenever he had the time

He had spent the past week practicing with it, not trying to master the weapon, but simply becoming familiar with its weight, balance, and reach. The difference from his short dao was noticeable, especially when changing direction or adjusting the distance between himself and an opponent.

Ethan picked up the sword and turned it once in his hand, letting the blade catch the morning light.

The sword had come with a scabbard, long and slightly curved to match the blade. Its surface was a deep midnight black, dark enough that it seemed to swallow much of the light that touched it. There were no unnecessary decorations, only a simple dark-metal fitting at the mouth and a matching end cap that gave the whole thing a clean, plain yet dark mysterious appearance.

It suited the sword.

Ethan slid the blade smoothly back into its scabbard. The soft click as it settled into place drew a satisfied smile from him.

"Neat."

He looked down at the sheathed sword resting at his side, his gaze lingering on it for a moment. There was a quiet satisfaction in the way he looked at it, as though he was still enjoying the fact that he finally had a sword that looked exactly like something he would have chosen for himself.

He lowered his hand, letting the sword rest naturally at his side.

His gaze remained on the flames, but his thoughts had already drifted back to Wailing Mountain. Not to the fighting itself, but to what he had done afterward and the mistake hidden within that decision.

Looking back now, Ethan could not help but feel that he had been too naive. He had actually believed that killing most of the cultivators and deliberately leaving one survivor alive would be enough to scare the others away. If that survivor returned and told the others what had happened, surely they would think twice before coming after him. At the time, it had seemed reasonable.

He had even seen later events played out like the result he wanted. The few cultivators who came after him afterward had been more cautious, and for a while, Ethan had blindly allowed himself to believe that his little plan had worked.

But he had overlooked something he should have understood. These were rogue cultivators pursuing a bounty, moving through the cultivation world in search of opportunities that could help them advance. For people like them, the chance to obtain spirit stones, pills, magical weapons, or other cultivation resources could be enough to justify considerable risk. Killing a few people would not necessarily make the rest give up. If anything, the reward waiting at the end could make them even more determined just like a locust swarm decending on a harvest ready field.

He should have at least grasp that much from all his time reading all manner of stories on cultivation and how cruel its world could be.

Yet somewhere along the way, Ethan had treated everything he had read as little more than fiction. Stories written for entertainment, ideas that might have worked in a novel but could hardly be relied upon in a world like this. Perhaps that was why he had dismissed them so easily.

Looking back now, he realized that had been a mistake.

This world had given him nothing to work with. He had no teacher to guide him, no mentor to explain the rules of cultivation, no mysterious old man hiding in a ring, no heavenly treasure waiting to reveal its secrets, and no convenient system telling him how everything worked. Aside from the dormant Immortal Ring that had brought him here and only responded to things Ethan could not begin to understand, he had been left to figure everything out on his own.

His knowledge of cultivation novels might have been unreliable. Some of what he remembered could have been completely wrong, and even the things that were correct might not apply exactly the same way in this world. But it was still something.

It was his only reference.

His only window into a world he knew almost nothing about.

He could have used those stories as a starting point, tested what seemed reasonable, and discarded whatever proved false. Even if only a small part of what he remembered turned out to be useful, that small advantage could still have helped him avoid mistakes like the one at Wailing Mountain.

Instead, he had simply cast it aside.

Perhaps that small bit of awareness was exactly what he had been missing.

And perhaps that was why he had underestimated them so badly.

Or perhaps it was because he had begun to grow a little too confident in himself.

There was nothing wrong with confidence. Ethan knew that. After everything he had survived, believing in his own ability was necessary. But somewhere along the way, confidence might have quietly crossed into something else.

Pride.

He had never consciously thought of himself as the protagonist of this world. He had never looked at himself in the mirror and told himself that the world revolved around him. Yet perhaps, somewhere deep in his mind, he had started to see things that way without realizing it.

Ever since he had transmigrated, his circumstances had followed a strange path. He had arrived in a cultivation world with the Immortal Ring, then been transformed into something this world had never seen before. He became a vampire, discovered that blood could help him grow stronger, and was soon mistaken for a demonic cultivator by the Azure Cloud Sect.

Then everything seemed to fall into place around him.

He ran.

The sect pursued him.

Cultivators came after him.

He fought them, drank their blood, and grew stronger from every encounter.

Even the hardships seemed to push him forward. The more people came after him, the more opportunities he had to obtain blood and resources. What should have been a desperate struggle for survival had begun to resemble the kind of path he had read about in cultivation novels, where the protagonist was constantly thrown into danger only to emerge stronger than before.

And Ethan had been following that path. Perhaps that was where the thought had quietly taken root. He had arrived in this world, gained a power that no one else possessed, been forced into one dangerous situation after another, and somehow continued growing stronger through each of them. Maybe he really was different. Maybe these encounters were simply opportunities for him to grow, and no matter how dangerous things became, he would always find a way through because this was his story.

The thought was ridiculous when he looked at it from the outside. Yet perhaps, somewhere in the back of his mind, he had actually started to see things that way. Maybe his entire life in this world was just another story being written somewhere, with some unknown author deciding what trouble would come next and how the protagonist would overcome it. Perhaps somewhere, someone was reading about Ethan’s journey just as he had once read about the protagonists in cultivation novels, watching him struggle, survive, grow stronger, and move from one dangerous situation to the next.

Maybe Ethan had simply started believing, without ever admitting it to himself, that he was that protagonist.

And if he was the protagonist, then surely the story would always find a way to keep him alive.

That quiet assumption might have been where his confidence had begun to turn into something else.

He had never said any of those things aloud. He might not have even consciously admitted them to himself. But as his cultivation rose from his initial Early Qi Refining and then to Mid Qi Refining, that belief could have been settling deeper within him, disguised as confidence.

He had survived every danger so far, killed the cultivators who came after him, and grown stronger from their blood.

So when another group of rogue cultivators appeared, perhaps some part of him had simply assumed that the same pattern would continue.

That was where the difference had begun to show, though Ethan had not noticed it himself.

He had survived every danger so far, killed the cultivators who came after him, while growing stronger at the same time. Each success made the path ahead seem a little less threatening, and perhaps that was why he had started taking certain things for granted.

Wailing Mountain had shown him how dangerous that could be.