Chapter 137 - 94 : Helpless

Chapter 137: Chapter 94 : Helpless

He forced himself to look around.

Darkness surrounded him, broken only by the steady fall of rain. Heavy drops poured through the canopy, striking leaves and branches before reaching the forest floor, while water ran down Ethan’s face and mixed with the blood around him. The air was cold and damp, carrying the earthy smell of wet soil and crushed vegetation.

The trees were enormous. Their thick trunks disappeared into the darkness above, while their branches intertwined into a dense canopy that blocked most of the sky. Every few moments, thunder rumbled somewhere beyond the forest, followed by another flash of lightning that briefly illuminated the trees in stark detail. For that instant, Ethan could see the towering trunks, the tangled branches, and the rain falling through the gaps between them.

Then the light vanished, and the forest returned to darkness.

Ethan slowly turned his head, his gaze moving through the dark forest as he tried to understand where he was. He still could not remember. Yet beneath the confusion, a faint sense of relief settled over him. At least he was out of that terrible space. Whatever had happened after he entered the strange spatial passage, he had escaped it. But where he had ended up was another question entirely. His mind felt foggy, as though the pain he had endured had clouded his thoughts and left large pieces of his memory difficult to grasp. He could remember fragments, but much of what had happened between the cliff and here remained unclear.

Even through the fog in his mind, one thing was clear: something was terribly wrong inside his body.

A strange energy was still raging through his body, moving through his meridians and tearing into his inner organs with every surge. Ethan could not control it. He could barely understand it. Whatever had happened while he was falling through that strange space, some of that energy had followed him through the passage and entered his body.

His Living Blood was fighting it.

He could feel the response each time the foreign energy caused damage. Living Blood rushed toward the affected area, repairing torn flesh and damaged tissue almost as soon as the injury appeared. But before the healing could fully settle, the strange energy surged through again, tearing apart what had just been restored.

The process continued inside him, an endless struggle between destruction and recovery. His Blood Seed strained to produce enough Living Blood to keep up, but Ethan could feel the pressure building within it.

He clenched his teeth against another wave of pain.

So that’s why I haven’t died yet.

His body was fighting for him.

But he could not tell which side would break first.

A faint sensation suddenly touched his awareness.

Ethan focused on it, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. His Blood Perception was still there, but it felt much weaker than usual. The pain and the fog in his mind made it difficult to concentrate, yet he could still sense several traces of vitality moving through the darkness.

They were moving together. Ethan was familiar enough with the feeling to recognize them immediately. These were ordinary wild animals, their vitality too weak and chaotic to belong to cultivators, and there was nothing unusual about them.

Normally, a pack of wild animals would not even deserve his attention. A Body Tempering cultivator could deal with them easily, and to Ethan, they should have been even less of a threat.

But that was normally.

Right now, he had to find a way to stabilize himself.

Ethan tried to move his body first. Nothing happened. Even that small effort felt like too much for him. He drew a slow breath and turned his attention inward, trying to circulate his Qi through his meridians.

The moment he attempted it, agony erupted through his entire body.

It was as if something had ripped open every damaged channel inside him at once. Pain tore through his meridians with such force that his mind went blank. His vision disappeared behind a sheet of white, his body convulsed, and a strangled cry escaped his throat before his consciousness nearly slipped away. He immediately abandoned the attempt, breathing hard as the pain slowly receded to its already unbearable level.

His hope of using Qi vanished with it.

His meridians were simply too damaged. The strange energy was still surging through them, and forcing Qi into those broken pathways would only make the destruction worse. Ethan remained still for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts through the pain.

Then he thought of his Living Blood.

He reached for it.

A response came almost immediately, but not in the way he had hoped. His body trembled as he felt the Living Blood already moving through him, struggling against the foreign energy. It was not simply repairing the damage. Every time the strange energy tore through his body, the Living Blood rushed toward the injury, only for the destruction to begin again moments later.

Ethan clenched his teeth.

Then another thought came to him.

The storage ring.

His blood reserve was inside it.

If he could access the ring, he could at least replenish what his body was using. He focused on the ring already resting on his finger and tried to reach it with his consciousness.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Still nothing.

A cold realization settled over him.

Even the storage ring was beyond his reach.

His body could barely move. His Qi could not be circulated without sending him into agony, and he could not access the reserves that might have helped him endure this. For a moment, Ethan simply lay there in the rain, staring into the darkness as the weight of his situation finally settled over him.

He could not circulate his Qi. His body had barely enough strength to move, and even the reserves inside his storage ring were beyond his reach. His weapon was in there too, which meant that, for now, it was no different from having none at all.

Even his Living Blood was being pushed to its limit.

For a man who had survived everything that had been thrown at him since coming to this world, the helplessness was almost difficult to accept. He had become a vampire, the first this world had ever seen, yet here he was, barely able to move in the middle of a dark forest.

A mortal could kill him right now. A hunter with a knife could end his life before he could even fight back. Even a wounded beast would be enough to finish him in his current state.

And as if to prove the point, the pack he had sensed earlier was still moving through the darkness, drawing closer. If they kept coming, they would eventually find him lying here, bleeding and barely able to move. To them, he would be nothing more than an easy meal.

The thought was so absurd that Ethan almost laughed.

What a joke.

After everything he had survived, after becoming something that should have stood above ordinary mortals, this was where he had ended up.

Lying helplessly in the rain, bleeding into the earth, with his life hanging on whatever could survive inside his broken body.

A sound came through the rain.

A howl.

Ethan’s attention immediately shifted toward it.

Another howl answered from deeper in the forest, followed by another from somewhere farther away. The sounds carried strangely well through the storm, rising above the steady drumming of rain and disappearing into the darkness between the trees.

Wolves.

Ethan remained still, his Blood Perception reaching toward the approaching vitality signatures. They were getting closer. He could hear them now, the faint snap of branches and the wet crunch of leaves beneath their paws. They were not wandering through the forest at random. The entire pack was moving in his direction.

His mind began to work through the possibilities.

The crash.

That was the most obvious reason. His fall had struck the ground hard enough to shake the surrounding forest. If their den or territory was nearby, the disturbance could easily have drawn their attention. Then there was the blood. Rain could wash away some of its scent, but not necessarily enough to hide it from animals with keen senses.

And Ethan’s blood was not ordinary blood.

Even in his current condition, his body carried the vitality of a Late Qi Refining cultivator, along with the changes brought by his vampire nature. To ordinary beasts, that kind of blood might be no different from a rare meal. Their instincts could be telling them that something valuable was nearby.

Whatever the exact reason, they had chosen to come despite the storm.

Ethan listened as the sounds drew closer.

Under normal circumstances, a pack of wolves would barely register as a threat to him. But now, even turning his body was a struggle, and there was little he could do if they reached him. The howls drew closer through the rain, followed by the steady sounds of paws crushing wet leaves and branches snapping in the darkness.

Ethan’s body tensed.

They were coming for him.

Another howl sounded.

Closer.