During the entire process, young Roy’s face burned a deep, uncontrollable crimson. These were his mother and his sister, and he loved them fiercely—but he was also a teenage youth sitting at the absolute peak of his biological libido, and the sight of their bare, shapely bodies being intimately handled in the small room was an overwhelming sensory assault. Despite his immense guilt and shame, his body reacted entirely on instinct, his shaft hardening into a furious, heavy erection beneath his trousers.

Ethan noticed the rigid bulge in the boy’s pants instantly, but his amethyst eyes remained entirely neutral. He didn’t say a single word, nor did he offer a mocking look. He understood the raw mechanics of a young cultivator’s biology all too well. Maintaining his calm, professional focus, Ethan finished tying the final sash around Mary’s waist before picking her back up into his arms.

"Grab Louisa," Ethan instructed smoothly, nodding toward the younger girl, who had already drifted into an exhausted sleep against the wooden stool. "Let’s go find a proper inn."

Roy nodded frantically, swallowing hard as he carefully scooped his sleeping sister into his arms. With Ethan leading the way, the small group stepped out of the ruined, blood-soaked cottage.

The cool night air swept through the narrow, unlit alleys of the outer residential district as Ethan and Roy walked in silence. The heavy, rhythmic sound of their boots echoing against the cobblestones was the only noise breaking the quiet of the slums. In Ethan’s powerful arms, Mary had completely surrendered to her exhaustion, her head buried deeply against his shoulder, her breathing slow and shallow. Behind him, Roy carried Louisa, his face still flushed but his expression rapidly darkening as the adrenaline of the slaughter began to fade, leaving behind a cold, bitter reality.

Ethan kept his gaze fixed on the path ahead, his amethyst eyes cutting through the darkness with perfect clarity. "Those imbeciles inside," Ethan murmured, his low baritone cutting through the silence without a hint of emotion. "Who exactly were they, Roy? They didn’t look like common street thugs looking for a random house to rob." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Roy tightened his grip on his sister’s legs, a sharp, choked gasp escaping his throat before he could control it. He swallowed hard, the taste of residual copper from his previous injuries still lingering in his mouth.

"They... they were the local usurers, Brother Ethan," Roy whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of lingering fear and profound fury. "The Black Market Loan Syndicate. A few months ago, Louisa fell terribly ill with a corrupting spiritual fever. After my father died on the eastern ridge, our family had absolutely nothing—no savings, no spiritual stones, and no way to afford the medicine to purge the cold poison from her meridians. To keep my sister from dying right in front of us, my mother had no choice but to sign a blood ledger with them for a baseline loan of one hundred low-grade spirit stones."

Ethan didn’t interrupt. He simply adjusted Mary slightly, his fingers shifting against her waist as he listened, his mind instantly mapping out the predatory economics of a frontier town under a major sect’s jurisdiction.

"The interest was a literal trap," Roy continued, his knuckles turning white as he held Louisa tighter. "Every single month, the debt doubled. If we couldn’t pay the mounting balance, they threatened to drag Louisa and my mother to the lowest, most depraved local brothels, and sell me off into the deep mining pits as a branded manual slave until the debt was cleared. We were supposed to have until the end of the grand selection to find the funds... but everything changed this afternoon."

"The exchange hall," Ethan deduced smoothly, his lips curling into a faint, freezing smile in the dark.

"Yes," Roy nodded frantically, a bitter tear leaking from his eye. "The moment you walked out of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion’s treasury with over a thousand medium-grade spirit stones, the news flooded the market. The usurers didn’t just hear about it; they realized we suddenly possessed a supreme fortune. They didn’t want the original low-grade stones anymore. They immediately inflated the interest, claiming our total debt had magically skyrocketed to exactly one thousand medium stones, all the entire haul from the monkey troop."

The boy’s breathing grew ragged as the memory of the intrusion flashed across his mind. "They didn’t even wait for us to return to the commercial street. They smashed through the rear kitchen window while my mother and Louisa were preparing dinner. I tried to draw my sword, but their enforcers completely broke my ribs and threw me through the front glass like trash. The boss... the boss said since we were suddenly ’wealthy aristocrats,’ he was going to take the thousand stones as the principal payment, and then he was going to take my mother and sister as the ’bonus interest’ for making them walk all the way to our house."

rhythmically against the dirt as they finally approached the brightly lit lanterns of the town’s central commercial avenue.

"A classic frontier leverage play," Ethan thought internally, a dark, deeply amused spark flickering within his restricted core. "The moment a sheep grows a golden fleece, every wolf in the forest discovers a legal reason to tear its throat out."

He had deliberately left a mountain of corpses in that alleyway earlier to warn the mercenaries, but it seemed the financial sharks of the Black Market syndicate had been too blinded by the scent of a thousand medium spirit stones to realize that the youth backing the widow wasn’t just a lucky amateur—he was an absolute disaster walking on two legs.

"Do not worry about the blood ledger, Roy," Ethan said aloud, his voice entirely tranquil as he caught sight of a high-end, multi-story inn with protective spiritual arrays glowing around its reinforced wooden pillars. "In my world, a debt is only valid if the creditor possesses the pulse required to collect it. Since their entire leadership core is currently decorating your living room floor, your account with them has been thoroughly settled."

Ethan remained silent for a long moment, his boots clicking

Roy looked up at Ethan’s profile, staring at the sheer, unyielding confidence radiating from the youth’s flawless features. The suffocating weight of a lifelong debt that had kept his family trapped in absolute terror for months had been completely erased in a matter of seconds by a single horizontal sweep of a plain iron blade.

"We will stay at the Golden Pavilion Inn tonight," Ethan instructed smoothly, stepping toward the grand entrance as the high-tier attendants rushed forward to assist them. "Rest well, cultivate your core, and let the town whisper. Tomorrow, the wolves will realize what happens when they try to bite a dragon’s tail."

-------------------

From this moment forward, to avoid confusion regarding cultivation ranks, I will include this footer with the current established levels.

Note: These are only the ranks mentioned so far to avoid spoilers.

Body Refinement Realm

Skin Refinement / Bone Refinement / Organ Refinement

Spiritual Gathering Realm

Spiritual Perception / Spiritual Mist / Spiritual Condensation

Spiritual Core Realm

Core Solidification / Core Awakening / Spiritual Collapse (Half-step Spiritual Core)

Spiritual Soul Realm

Spiritual Soul Awakening / Soul Nourishing / Soul-Core Fusion

Golden Core Realm

Prime Fusion / Core Perfection / Core Destruction

Spiritual Sea Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Dao Manifestation Realm

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??

Spiritual Transcendence

Stage 1 ?? / Stage 2 ?? / Stage 3 ??