The fool had been looking for love this entire time… when she loved him enough to sacrifice all of humanity just to give him the chance to cultivate again.
What hurt the most—what truly twisted the knife—was the fact that he wasn't even angry about her taking his cultivation. He didn't resent her for it, didn't blame her, didn't hold it over her head.
He was just upset that no one would ever truly love him for who he was, instead of the act he had to put on to get people to care about him in the first place.
***
(Flashback)
Ethan, who was nothing more than a small child at the time, frowned as the results of his talent assessment came back empty. No affinity for Qi, no spiritual roots, no pathways that could carry cultivation energy.
He was a cripple—completely and utterly talentless. But as someone who had read more than enough cultivation stories in his past life to know how these things worked, he had half-expected this outcome.
Trash protagonists were a staple of the genre, after all. What he hadn't expected was how real it would feel when it actually happened to him. Still, rather than wallowing in it, his mind was already turning, already calculating. Now the question is... is it possible for a cripple to make a name for himself in a cultivation world?
His eyes drifted across the room and landed on Ellen, who was standing a short distance away, watching him with a cold and emotionless gaze that looked far too old for her young face. He smiled at her, wide and bright, a plan already forming behind his eyes.
'She's a genius... I wonder if I can get her to eventually find a way to help me cultivate?'
"Why are you smiling?" Ellen asked coldly, her voice flat and suspicious.
"Nothing, just realized how perfect we are. I handle the family business, and you be the big buff powerhouse." Ethan said with a grin that stretched from ear to ear, as though having his future as a cultivator stripped away before it even began was nothing more than a minor setback in an otherwise solid plan.
"By the time I'm that strong, you would be long dead." She said with a sneer, the words coming out harsh and blunt in the way only a child who didn't yet understand the full weight of what she was saying could deliver them.
"True… So, I will have your back the best I can while I'm around. We're twins," Ethan said, holding out his small fist toward her. She frowned, looking down at the fist for a long moment, then glanced around at the many people surrounding them—nobles, servants, family members—all watching the interaction between the genius and the cripple with varying degrees of interest and contempt.
"Whatever." She snorted, turning on her heel and walking away without returning the gesture. But as she walked, she clenched her own fist in secret, hidden at her side where no one could see.
Her mind—not even eight years old—was flooded with memories that no child should have been able to carry. She remembered the womb. She remembered how Ethan had shaken in agony as she unknowingly absorbed everything from him—his talent, his potential, his future—pulling it all into herself while he suffered in silence beside her.
She hated his smile. She hated how easily he accepted the fact that he was a cripple and immediately shifted all of his focus toward making her strong, not knowing that she was the reason he had nothing in the first place.
"I'm sorry," Ethan said, jogging up behind her, and his words made her freeze mid-step. She turned her head to look back at him, confusion breaking through her carefully maintained coldness for just a moment.
"We promised to be immortals together, and I broke my promise…" Ethan started, but he was forced to stop when she turned around without a word and walked away from him, faster this time.
Ethan reached out a hand to stop her, his fingers stretching toward her shoulder—but he caught himself before making contact and let his arm fall back to his side.
He stood there alone for a moment, then slowly looked around the room. The people who had been friendly with him just hours ago—before the test, before the results, before the word "cripple" had been stamped onto his future—were now looking at him with entirely different eyes. Disdain. Mockery. Pity. Some didn't even bother to hide it, their expressions shifting the moment they realized the fifth prince had no value to them anymore.
He looked past all of them, searching for the two faces that mattered most. His father was already rising from his seat, his back turned, preparing to leave the room as though his son's humiliation was simply another item crossed off the day's agenda.
And his mother—their eyes met for just a fraction of a second before she looked away, jerking her gaze to the side as though the sight of him physically hurt her. She left the room almost immediately after, her pace quick and unsteady, like someone fleeing from something they couldn't bear to face.
***
Flashback End.
Within his cell, Ethan sat there in silence for some time, lost in a place inside his own mind that no one else could reach.
That was when he looked up, a slight shift in the air pulling him back to the present. He felt a gaze on him—heavy, uncertain, and laced with something he had felt from this particular person his entire life.
His mother was standing outside the cell, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, unable to meet his eyes.
"You heard all of that… I guess you're going to kill me this time." Ethan said softly, his voice completely empty—no anger, no sarcasm, no charm. Just hollow words from a hollow place.
She looked up at that, biting her lip hard enough to leave marks, her gaze flickering toward Ethan's face before darting away again. The son whom she had wished had died.
The moment he was born lifeless—silent, blue, and still in the doctor's hands—she had expected it. She had braced herself for it. She had already mourned a child she was planning to bury.
But then he breathed. A single, shuddering gasp that filled his tiny lungs with air, followed by a cry so loud it startled everyone in the room.
That breath was something she had never expected, and it caught her so off guard that she didn't know what to do with the relief and the dread that hit her at the same time. From that moment on, she had planned to kill him.
It would be a mercy. He would be talentless—a cripple in a world where cultivation was everything. What kind of life would that be?
But she never got the chance.
It was the way he looked at her. The way his tiny face would light up the moment she entered the room, his eyes finding hers before anyone else's, as though she were the only thing in the world that mattered.
The way he laughed—the happiest, most genuine laugh she had ever heard—whenever she held him in her arms. The way he cried his lungs out every single time someone tried to take him from her, screaming and thrashing until he was back where he wanted to be.
He was a mama's boy through and through. While Ellen had been a normal baby—calm, quiet, unbothered by who was holding her—Ethan had been the opposite. The perfect child who wanted nothing more than to be near his mother at all times.
He couldn't sleep in anyone's arms but hers. He would cry if anyone else so much as tried to hold him, and he would grow restless and fussy if she was too far away for too long. How could she—a mother, regardless of everything else she was—kill a child like that?
She tried to harden her heart. She tried multiple times, steeling herself for what she believed needed to be done. But every single time, Ethan would do something that shattered whatever resolve she had built up.
The first time, he said his first words. "Mama." He was only two months old—far too young for that to be normal—and the shock of hearing that tiny voice call out to her had frozen her in place. She could still remember how he had reached both hands toward her, his small fingers grasping at the air, wanting nothing in the world except for her to pick him up.
The second time was while he was sleeping. She had stood over his crib, looking down at him, fully aware of the life he would grow up to live—the rejection, the mockery, the loneliness of being powerless in a world that worshipped power.
She wanted to end it before it began. But Ethan had stirred, his eyes fluttering open, and the moment he saw her face hovering above him, his entire world brightened. He smiled at her—that pure, unguarded, completely trusting smile that only a baby could give—so happy just to wake up and see her that it made her chest ache. She couldn't do it.
The third time was when he was playing on the bed. She had been sitting beside him, watching him closely, her thoughts dark and heavy, when he suddenly stopped what he was doing and crawled over to her. Without any prompting, without any reason she could see, he reached up with his tiny hands and cupped her face between his palms.
"Mama sad." He had said, looking at her with eyes that didn't understand anything, but on pure instinct and the bond between them… he had knew. How could she kill him after that?
The last time, she had been ready. Truly ready. Ethan was on the floor, crawling around and playing with the toys she had gotten him, completely absorbed in his own little world. She had risen from her seat, seeing her opening—his back was turned, his attention elsewhere.
This was the moment. But as she took her first step toward the door to summon the person who would carry it out, she stopped. Because behind her, she heard a sound—the soft, unsteady patter of something hitting the floor. She turned around, and there he was. Ethan was standing. On his own two feet, wobbling but upright, having just taken his very first step.
"Mama walk!" He had grinned, his face splitting into the biggest smile she had ever seen, so proud of himself that his whole body was shaking with excitement.
He was only four months old. She broke down right there on the spot, tears falling before she could stop them, her legs giving out beneath her. She couldn't do it. She couldn't bring herself to kill this child, no matter how many times she told herself it would be a mercy.
So she made a decision—she would let him live as he wished for whatever years he had, and she would carry the weight of that choice in silence.
But it crushed her. Every day, it crushed her a little more. She still remembered one morning in particular, a memory that refused to fade no matter how many years passed.
(Flashback)
"Mom, you don't need to cultivate any longer," Ethan, only three years old, said with a wide grin, puffing his small chest out as far as it would go while planting his feet wide and trying his absolute hardest to look as manly and imposing as a toddler possibly could.
"Oh, why is that?" She asked with a playful smile, resting her chin in her hand as she looked down at him.
"Because I will become a powerful immortal. Right, Ellen? We would be so strong that just saying our name would cause the heavens to shit rocks." Ethan burst into hearty laughter, the sound of it bouncing off the walls of the room, pure and unrestrained. Ellen, standing off to the side, nodded lightly at his words—a quiet, firm confirmation. This was a promise the two of them had made to each other, and as far as they were concerned, it was as good as done.