"Father! Father! This big brother is opening his eyes!"
"Father! That big brother is opening his eyes! Please come and have a look!"
The anxious, almost panicked voice of a child echoed beside his ears, dragging Ethan back from an endless abyss of darkness. His consciousness surfaced slowly, as if it were being pulled up from the bottom of a deep ocean. Everything felt unbearably heavy—his eyelids, his limbs, even his thoughts.
Opening his eyes felt like an impossible task.
When he finally forced them open, his vision was nothing but a blur of light and shadow. The world swayed faintly, as if he were lying on unstable ground. He blinked rapidly, rubbing his eyes with sluggish movements. After several breaths, the haze gradually faded, and his sight returned.
The first thing Ethan realized was that he was lying on a hard surface.
The second thing he realized was that this was not his clinic.
He found himself inside a small, cramped hut. The space was so confined that he could see almost everything without even turning his head. The roof was low, supported by uneven wooden beams darkened by age. The walls were made of mud bricks mixed with straw, cracked in several places and patched crudely with dried clay. A faint smell of damp earth and old wood lingered in the air.
With a single glance, Ethan could tell that this place was extremely poor.
It reminded him of the slums he used to see in television dramas back on Earth—places where people struggled just to survive another day.
"Where the hell am I?" Ethan muttered weakly.
Fragments of memory suddenly surged into his mind.
Running endlessly through the city.
Escaping relentless pursuers.
Crossing into an unfamiliar village.
And then—
Those eyes.
"Wait…" His breathing grew uneven. "Didn't I die?"
His heart thumped violently as the memory returned in terrifying clarity.
A blood-red sky.
Colossal, shattered buildings standing like broken tombstones.
A sea of corpses—countless cultivators, all dead without exception.
And above everything else…
A pair of eyes.
Eyes so vast that they seemed to contain an entire galaxy within them.
"And that pressure…" Ethan whispered, cold sweat soaking his back. "How could something like that exist in this world?"
He clenched his fists subconsciously.
"Under that kind of pressure, my soul should have shattered instantly. I shouldn't be alive."
More questions poured into his mind.
"And those ruins… they weren't illusions. They felt real. The blood belonged to cultivators—powerful ones."
No matter how hard he thought, he couldn't find answers.
Just as panic threatened to overwhelm him, a familiar translucent interface appeared before his eyes.
A system notification.
Ethan froze.
[User was subjected to a Soul-based attack from the Soul God]
[Under prolonged exposure to Soul God pressure, the user's soul has undergone a significant transformation]
[Because of the Soul God's pressure, the user's Soul attribute has been tempered and strengthened]
[Soul: +2.0]
[Current Soul: 3.1]
Ethan stared at the text, his mind momentarily blank.
"Soul God…?"
The words echoed ominously in his thoughts.
What kind of existence could be called a Soul God?
And how terrifying must it be if its mere presence could annihilate cultivators without effort?
Ethan's Soul attribute had always been abnormally high. This wasn't arrogance—it was a fact backed by the system's strict requirements and continuous refinement. Even among the strongest experts in Phoenix Feather City, he was confident that his Soul strength was at least comparable.
And yet…
"I still almost died," he muttered bitterly.
Against that pressure, survival itself was nothing short of a miracle.
His gaze drifted around the hut again, confusion deepening.
"If cultivators die the moment they enter this place… then how are these mortals still alive?"
The Blissful Village.
A mortal settlement existing peacefully in the middle of a cultivation world.
The absurdity of it all made his head ache.
"Does the Soul God's pressure only target cultivators?" Ethan wondered. "Is it selective?"
Another strange detail caught his attention.
The Spiritual Energy.
It was everywhere.
Even while lying still, Ethan could sense it clearly. The Spiritual Energy here was unbelievably dense—far richer than anything he had felt in Phoenix Feather City. It saturated the air, the soil, even the walls of the hut.
Yet the people here were mortals.
No cultivation. No Inner Energy.
"How does this even make sense?" Ethan whispered.
Before he could think further, the sound of footsteps reached his ears. Moments later, the wooden door creaked open.
A middle-aged man entered, followed by a young girl around ten or twelve years old. The man had rough, calloused hands and skin darkened by years of labor. His eyes were tired yet kind, carrying the weight of a difficult life.
"You're finally awake, young man," the man said gently. "You've been asleep for three days."
"Three days?" Ethan repeated in shock.
To him, everything had felt like mere moments.
The girl stepped forward quickly. "Big brother, you were lying near the village entrance! You were bleeding and not moving at all. Father and I thought you were dead!"
"We brought you home and treated your wounds," the man added calmly. "It would have been cruel to leave you there."
Ethan slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. Apart from lingering soreness and mental exhaustion, his body felt surprisingly intact.
"Thank you," he said sincerely. "I'm sorry for causing you trouble."
The man shook his head. "It wasn't trouble. We only did what a human should do."
Those simple words struck Ethan deeply.
He observed them more carefully now. Their clothes were old and heavily patched, stitched together multiple times with mismatched fabric. The hut itself barely qualified as shelter.
They were undeniably poor.
"My name is Assane," the man said with a faint smile. "This is my daughter, Tilly. We live here in Blissful Village."
"I'm Ethan Hunt," Ethan replied. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too," Assane said. "I'm a farmer. I grow green vegetables for the village. What about you?"
Ethan hesitated briefly, then answered honestly. "I'm a cultivator."
Assane froze.
His face went pale as he stared at Ethan in disbelief.
"A… cultivator?" he stammered. "Y-your highness is a cultivator?"
Tilly's eyes widened, and she instinctively stepped back.
"But… how is that possible?" Assane continued, clearly shaken. "How could a cultivator enter this village and still be alive?"
That sentence made Ethan's heart skip a beat.
"Still be alive?" he repeated slowly.
Leaning forward, Ethan spoke in a low voice. "When I entered the village, I was attacked by a terrifying pressure. I saw a pair of enormous eyes. I nearly died."
He fixed Assane with an intense gaze. "But now, they're gone. You know something about this, don't you?"
Assane swallowed hard.
"Pair of eyes…" he whispered. "You saw them?"
Suddenly, he dropped to one knee, his expression filled with awe and fear.
"So the legends are true," Assane murmured. "The Fallen God truly exists."
"Fallen God?" Ethan asked sharply.
"Yes," Assane replied, his voice trembling. "The Legendary Soul God's Eyes."
Ethan listened intently, his pulse quickening.
"I don't know any legend," he said firmly. "I came from very far away. I know nothing about this Fallen God."
Assane looked up at him, eyes filled with shock and reverence.
"Then," he said slowly, "it seems fate itself has brought you here."