Chapter 42 : A Cultivator Among Ordinary People

Chapter 42: Chapter 42 : A Cultivator Among Ordinary People

The moment he stepped outside the compound, the sound changed. He Noticed things he hadn’t paid much attention before.

The road behind him had been noisy, but the city was something else entirely. Voices came from every direction: merchants calling out prices, wheels rolling over stone, horses stamping against the ground, metal striking metal from somewhere deeper within the streets, children weaving between adults, and shopkeepers standing beneath hanging signs. The smell of cooked meat mixed with spices, sweat, leather, smoke, and horse manure.

Ethan’s eyes moved constantly. He did not stare. He observed. The streets were wider than those in the settlement he had left behind, but they were also more complicated. Side roads branched into narrower lanes, and those lanes opened into courtyards, markets, workshops, lodging houses, and more streets. People moved with purpose. Some hurried. Some bargained. Some carried goods. Some carried weapons. And among all of them were cultivators.

Ethan noticed one near a shop entrance. The man was not dressed extravagantly and looked little different from an ordinary traveler, but people gave him space. Not much. Just enough. A shopkeeper lowered his voice while speaking to him, two passing pedestrians shifted aside without being asked, and a child was pulled gently away from his path. Nobody announced who he was. Nobody needed to.

Ethan understood. That small change in behavior said more than any explanation could have. A cultivator did not need to be famous to be treated differently. He simply needed to be recognized as one.

Ethan looked down at his own hands. He had crossed that invisible line already, but barely. His body had changed, his strength had changed, and his perception had changed, yet he still felt like the same man who had once watched cultivators arrive in a village and wondered what it would be like to stand where they stood. Now he was standing there, and nobody knew. That thought interested him more than it frightened him. He did not want everyone to know. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

He had no intention of trying to understand the entire place in one afternoon. That would have been pointless. A city this large had layers. He would learn them gradually. His immediate concerns were simpler: food, a place to sleep, cultivation resources, money, training, and information.

He eventually found a modest lodging house on one of the busier streets. It was not luxurious, but it was clean enough, and more importantly, it had a stable attached to it. That solved two problems at once. After paying for several days, he made arrangements for the horse .

"I’ll need it looked after for several days. Water regularly. Feed properly. And don’t work it unless necessary."

The man gave him a brief look.

"Long journey?"

"Several days."

"Then it’ll need rest."

Ethan paid the agreed amount. Simple. Clear. No assumptions. Once that was settled, he stepped back in to his room. Ethan left his belongings in his room and returned to the streets. The city continued moving around him.

He walked without rushing, observing the flow of people and the unfamiliar streets until he saw a wooden sign hanging above a broad doorway.

Stone Reed Hall.

Below the name were several painted symbols showing basic stances. Ethan stopped. He remembered the man from the merchant group: the sword, the stance, the simple correction. Your feet first. The lesson had been brief, almost embarrassingly brief, but it had revealed something important. Strength alone was not enough. He could swing a blade. He could overpower an ordinary man. He could endure more punishment than he once could.

But none of that meant he knew how to fight. The man had shown him positioning. That was all. Yet Ethan had already begun thinking about it. Distance. Balance. Timing. Efficiency. Stamina. How much movement was necessary. How much was wasted.

He stepped through the doorway. The hall was not what he had expected. There were no grand displays and no mysterious masters sitting above everyone else. Just people training. Some were practicing basic footwork, others worked with wooden swords, and a few were repeating the same movement again and again under the supervision of instructors. The sounds were almost monotonous. Step. Turn. Strike. Recover. Again. Ethan watched for several minutes before approaching the nearest instructor.

"I want to learn the basics."

The man looked him over.

"Have you trained before?"

"A little."

"How much?"

"Not enough to call it training."

The instructor smiled faintly.

"Then start at the beginning."

Ethan paid for a short period of instruction. He did not expect the hall to turn him into a swordsman. That was not its purpose. He wanted fundamentals, something he could study, something he could practice, something that could turn the weapon in his hand from a piece of sharpened metal into a tool he understood.

The lesson began simply. His feet were corrected first, then his grip, then his shoulders, followed by the position of his body. The instructor stopped him several times.

"Too much force."

Ethan adjusted.

"You’re leaning."

He corrected himself.

"You’re thinking about the blade instead of your position."

Ethan paused. That one stayed with him. He had spent so much time thinking about the weapon that he had neglected the body carrying it.

The lesson continued. Nothing spectacular happened. No sudden revelation. No miraculous sword technique. Just repetition. And Ethan preferred it that way. He could work with repetition. After the session, he returned to his lodging.

Before eating, he opened his travel journal and wrote down the city, the road, the gate, the behavior of the people around cultivators, the training hall, and the corrections he had received. Then he added another section.

Blood Tempering.

He stared at the words. The strange phenomenon had saved him. That alone was not enough. Depending on something he did not understand was unacceptable. He closed the journal, then sat down. His breathing slowed as Qi moved through his body. The cultivation resources he had purchased before leaving had already begun to diminish, but he still had enough to continue. He cultivated quietly while the city outside never truly became silent. Even late into the night, distant wheels rolled over stone, someone shouted in the street, a door opened, and a horse moved inside the stable below.

Ethan remained seated. He could feel his body changing little by little. Not dramatically, not enough for anyone watching to notice, but it was progress. And that was enough.

The next morning, he returned to Stone Reed Hall. Then the morning after that. He did not rush. He trained, cultivated, ate, recorded, and explored. Slowly, the enormous city began to feel less like an unknown world and more like a place he could navigate.

During one of those walks, Ethan stopped at a small medicinal stall. Bundles of dried herbs hung from wooden racks, along with roots, leaves, powders, and bottled extracts. His eyes moved across the labels until one description caught his attention: a reddish-brown herb used in small quantities to support blood circulation and physical recovery. Ethan looked at it for several seconds before buying a small amount. Not because he expected it to transform his cultivation, but because he wanted to observe. His blood tempering was still poorly understood. If something affected blood, perhaps it was worth studying. Perhaps not. He would find out.

That evening, the journal gained another entry.

Blood-related herb acquired.

Effects : unknown. Test carefully.

Ethan closed the book. Outside his window, the city continued moving. Cultivators walked among ordinary people. Merchants chased profit. Workers returned home. Children played beneath buildings far older than they understood. And Ethan sat quietly in the middle of it all.

He was a cultivator. Barely. A weak one. An inexperienced one. But a cultivator nonetheless. And for the first time, he was beginning to understand what that actually meant. It did not mean standing above everyone else. It meant knowing that the world was larger than him and deciding to learn it piece by piece.