Chapter 143 - 98 : Blood Is Still Blood (1)

Chapter 143: Chapter 98 : Blood Is Still Blood (1)

Lucian blinked.

For a moment, he wondered if he had imagined it.

The stranger’s voice was rough and weak, carrying the strain of someone who was still in pain. Yet there was a calmness to his tone that caught Lucian off guard. Even now, after everything he seems to have endured, there was no fear or panic in his voice.

"Thank you for saving me."

Lucian’s eyebrows lifted.

"You were awake?"

The stranger gave a small nod.

"Not fully."

Lucian stared at him.

"You knew what was happening?"

"I could hear you. I could see some of it."

Lucian’s gaze sharpened.

"Even when you couldn’t move?"

The stranger nodded again.

"I couldn’t do anything."

His eyes shifted briefly toward the cave entrance.

"I saw the wolves. I saw you hesitate. You were already running from something, yet you still chose to help me."

Lucian remained silent.

The fact that the man remembered was difficult enough to accept. But he had been aware of everything around him while lying helpless in that crater, unable to even lift a hand.

The stranger’s gaze returned to him.

"If you hadn’t come, I’d have ended up as food for the wolves."

Lucian said nothing.

He looked at the man again, trying to reconcile the person sitting in front of him with the helpless figure he had found in the crater.

Lucian looked at him again, and the thought settled uneasily in his mind. The stranger had been conscious the entire time, aware of everything happening around him while lying there unable to move. Lucian could only imagine what it must have been like, watching the wolves close in while knowing there was nothing he could do to stop them.

Exactly. Lucian is minimizing what he did, while Ethan is refusing to let him minimize it. So the important thing is not that Lucian’s words came quickly, but that he says them with a quiet, almost dismissive modesty, as though what he did was too ordinary to deserve praise. Ethan, meanwhile, recognizes the sacrifice behind those words and calmly pushes back. That creates the emotional exchange underneath the dialogue rather than simply reporting it.

I would refine the passage like this:

Lucian looked at him for several seconds.

His gaze drifted unconsciously to the blood stained clothes again, then to the smooth skin beneath them before returning to the stranger’s face.

"I didn’t do much."

The words came quietly, almost dismissively, as though Lucian wanted to brush aside the significance of what he had done.

The stranger looked at him.

"You fought for a stranger."

Lucian looked away.

"Anyone would have done the same."

"No."

The answer was calm.

"You were already being hunted. You were injured. You could barely carry me."

The stranger’s eyes remained on him.

"Yet you still did it."

Lucian said nothing.

The words left little room for him to dismiss what he had done.

He looked toward the fire instead.

The flames moved gently in the darkness, but he could still feel the stranger’s attention on him. There was nothing threatening in it. If anything, the steady presence of that gaze made Lucian feel as though the man was quietly trying to understand why someone would risk himself for a person he did not know.

Lucian found himself wondering the same thing about the stranger.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

The stranger’s gaze drifted down to Lucian’s arm. It lingered on the fresh strip of cloth wrapped around the bite, noticeably cleaner than the blood soaked one Lucian had worn earlier.

"Your wound."

Lucian glanced down at his arm.

"What about it?"

"You changed the wrapping."

Lucian looked at the strip of cloth for a moment.

"The other one was soaked with blood."

The stranger’s gaze remained on the clean cloth.

"You washed this one before wrapping it."

Lucian gave a small shrug. "I didn’t want to leave it covered in blood and dirt."

"You seem to know what you’re doing, you did a good job with it."

"A little."

The stranger was quiet for a moment.

Something in his expression subtly changed. His breathing slowed, and his attention became more focused, as though that small detail had made him realize something he had not considered before.

Lucian noticed the change immediately.

"Is something wrong?"

The stranger did not answer. He closed his eyes, and Lucian watched as the fire crackled quietly between them. Rain continued whispering beyond the cave entrance, filling the silence for several seconds.

Then the stranger’s brow tightened.

His body suddenly stiffened, and one hand moved toward his chest. His breathing became uneven.

Lucian leaned forward instinctively. "Are you alright?"

The stranger did not respond. His fingers tightened against his chest, his jaw clenenching as his expression tightened with pain. It was more than ordinary discomfort. Whatever he was experiencing looked severe enough to make him forget Lucian was even there.

Lucian half rose.

The stranger’s body trembled slightly.

Then, just as suddenly, he stopped and opened his eyes.

"That’s strange."

The words were barely more than a mutter. ℴ

Lucian remained silent as the stranger closed his eyes again. Whatever he had been attempting, he tried once more.

This time, the reaction was worse.

The stranger’s body tensed violently. His jaw tightened, and a restrained sound of pain escaped him as his breathing broke.

Lucian’s hand moved toward him again, but he stopped himself. The stranger was already trying to control whatever was happening, and there was little Lucian could do without knowing what he was dealing with.

After several seconds, the stranger finally gave up. He leaned back against the stone and began breathing slowly. Each breath came out measured and deliberate, gradually settling into a steadier rhythm.

Lucian found himself watching those breaths without meaning to.

Once.

Then again.

Only when the stranger’s breathing had fully steadied did Lucian relax slightly.

There was something wrong with the man. That much was obvious.

From the outside, he looked almost untouched, but whatever was happening to him certainly wasn’t staying on the surface.

The stranger rested his head against the cave wall, his expression becoming distant. After a moment, his gaze shifted toward the entrance.

Lucian followed it.

There was nothing there except the rain.

Yet the stranger wasn’t really looking at the rain. His attention seemed fixed on something beyond it, as though he were searching for something Lucian could not see.

For the first time Since waking in this cave, Ethan felt that something was fundamentally wrong. It wasn’t an immediate danger or was it about his body still been ravaged by spatial energy. At least, nothing about it felt threatening.

Just... wrong.

He had been surrounded by spiritual energy for so long that he had stopped noticing it. It had become so familiar that he barely gave it a thought anymore, as natural as the air around him.

Like air.

On Earth, he had never needed to think about oxygen every time he breathed. It was simply there. He breathed, and his body received what it needed.

The cultivation world had been much the same. Spiritual energy was everywhere, though some places held more of it than others. In regions where it was especially abundant, even ordinary people could benefit simply from living there. Their bodies could become healthier and their vitality stronger, all from growing up in an environment saturated with spiritual energy.

But it had always been there.

Ethan had grown so accustomed to spiritual energy that he rarely paid attention to it anymore. It was simply part of the world around him, always present, always within reach.

Only now did he realize how deeply he had taken it for granted.

He focused his senses.

Nothing.

Ethan frowned and concentrated harder, searching through the space around him. For a moment, there was still nothing. Then, faintly, he caught something.

There.

A trace of spiritual energy.

So weak and scattered that he had almost mistaken its absence for the truth.

It existed here.

Barely.

Ethan carefully reached out with his senses and drew a tiny amount toward himself. The response was so faint that he almost wondered if he had imagined it.

He tried again.

Very little came.

It was like reaching into a river expecting to find water, only to find that the riverbed had been left damp after the water was gone.

Ethan stopped.

There was spiritual energy here.

But compared to what he had always known, there was almost nothing left.

His eyes opened.

For a moment, he simply sat there, taking in his surroundings—the cave around him, the fire burning nearby, the sound of rain beyond the entrance, and the unfamiliar forest stretching into the darkness outside. Everything looked the same, yet somehow it felt different now.

He had simply been too busy surviving to notice. The fall, the spatial rift, those tears in space, the force that had dragged him through them, and the strange energy still ravaging his body had left little room for anything else. Then came the forest and the wolves, along with the very real possibility that he might end up as their next meal. Survival had consumed his attention so completely that he had never once stopped to think about something as ordinary as the air around him.

Not until now.