Free Web NovelChapter 27: Evan’s Life On Earth
The blinding glare of the arena and mountain fog vanished, replaced by the memory of a grey, suffocating world.
Before Evan ever laid eyes on the Vampire Academy or the Sect, before his aperture held a roaring, monstrous sea of silver Qi, he was just a boy living under the heavy of Earth, or more specifically the non-magical world.
On Earth, Evan’s life wasn’t measured in cultivation ranks or spiritual paths; it was measured in centimeters of space and the exact volume of his footsteps.
The day always started the same way: with a violent rattle against the thin plywood of his door.
’Get up, boy! The floor isn’t going to scrub itself, and the grease from last night’s dinner isn’t going to magically disappear!’
His Aunt Sarah’s screech cut through the cold morning air like a dull saw. Even without seeing her, Evan knew exactly what she looked like at 5:30 AM, her hair pinned back tightly, her face permanently twisted into a mask of bitter resentment, wrapped in a faded, floral bathrobe. She treated Evan’s presence in her house as an unpaid debt, a curse inflicted upon her family by his deceased parents.
Evan opened his eyes, staring up at the water-stained ceiling of his room. It wasn’t a proper bedroom; it was a converted utility closet tucked beneath the stairwell of his aunt and uncle’s suburban house. It smelled of damp insulation and laundry detergent.
Slowly, ensuring his joints didn’t make a sound against the creaking springs of his thin cot, Evan sat up.
He didn’t complain. He had learned years ago that on Earth, a single sigh of frustration was considered an act of rebellion, and rebellion was met with a swift, heavy palm.
He slipped on a pair of over sized, faded jeans, hand-me-downs from his cousin, Cedric and an old grey hoodie that had worn thin at the elbows.
Stepping out into the hallway, the sharp smell of frying bacon hit his nose, making his empty stomach growl painfully. But Evan knew better than to look at the stove.
His Uncle Walter was already sitting at the kitchen table, his massive, heavy frame engulfing the wooden chair.
He was a large, imposing man with a thick neck and hands like slabs of raw meat, hardened by years of working as a factory foreman. He was reading the morning paper, a mug of coffee steaming beside him.
’You’re late,’ Walter rumbled, not even looking up from his paper. His voice was a low, dangerous growl that always signaled a storm.
’The driveway needs sweeping before the neighbors wake up. I don’t want your filth cluttering up the front of my house.’
’I’m on it, Uncle Walter,’ Evan said softly, keeping his eyes glued to the scuffed linoleum floor.
’Don’t talk back to your uncle,’ Aunt Sarah snapped, slamming a heavy iron skillet onto the counter. She pulled a single, stale slice of white bread from a loaf and tossed it onto a chipped plate.
’Eat that and get outside. And don’t think you’re touching the bacon. That’s for Cedric. He actually has a future, unlike you, you ungrateful leech.’
Evan picked up the dry piece of bread. He didn’t say thank you, because hypocrisy earned him a slap, and he didn’t complain, because hunger was a familiar companion. He chewed the dry crust as he walked out the back door into the biting, damp cold of a suburban autumn morning.
For the next two hours, Evan worked like a machine. He swept the concrete driveway, cleared the dead leaves from the gutters with his bare hands, and hauled heavy, overflowing garbage bins down to the curb. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
His fingers grew numb from the freezing wind, and his shoulders ached from the physical labor, but his mind remained strangely detached.
Even back then, long before he knew what cultivation was, Evan possessed a terrifying inner stillness. He didn’t cry, he didn’t rage; he simply observed, filing away every insult and every cold glare into a dark corner of his mind.
By the time he came back inside, his cousin had finally drifted downstairs. He was the golden child, spoiled, arrogant, and vicious. He took after his father, possessing a cruel streak that he loved to test on Evan whenever his parents weren’t looking.
He sat at the table, stuffing his face with eggs and bacon, deliberately dropping crumbs onto the floor Evan had just swept.
’Hey, orphan,’ he smirked, kicking a stray piece of sausage under the table.
’You missed a spot. Get down and clean it up.’
Evan looked at him. For a split second, a dark, icy spark flared deep within his black eyes, the same gaze that would one day make psychopaths like Bruce hesitate in the arena.
Cedric felt a sudden, inexplicable shiver run down his spine, his smirk faltering for a fraction of a second. But before he could process it, Evan simply grabbed a rag, knelt onto the cold floor, and wiped up the grease.
Let them have their day, Evan thought to himself, his fingers tightening around the cloth. The world is large. This house is small. One day, the walls will break.
The rest of the day was a repetitive cycle of psychological warfare. His aunt treated him like a plague vector, demanding he wash his hands three times before touching any doorknob, while his uncle used him as a sounding board for his frustrations.
If Walter had a bad day at the factory, Evan was slammed against the hallway wall for "walking too loudly." If Sarah burned the dinner, it was because Evan’s presence had ruined her focus.
He was a ghost in their home, tolerated only because the state provided a small stipend for his care that was a five hundred dollars, money that his aunt and uncle promptly spent on Julian’s private tutoring and expensive clothes, while Evan wore shoes with soles so thin he could feel every pebble on the asphalt.
When night finally fell, Evan was locked back into his utility closet.
He sat on the edge of his cot in absolute darkness, listening to the muffled sounds of the television downstairs and the loud, happy laughter of a family that explicitly excluded him.
His stomach ached with hunger, his bruised shoulder throbbed where his uncle had shoved him against the door frame earlier that afternoon, and his hands were raw and blistered from the yard work.
He had no base power. He had no magical rubber body, no hidden demon sealed inside his gut, and no necromantic shadows waiting at his beck and call. He was just a baseline human boy, trapped in a modern cage of quiet misery, utterly powerless against the cruelty of the people who were supposed to protect him.
But as he lay his head down on the lumpy pillow, staring into the pitch-black void of the closet, Evan didn’t feel despair.
Instead, a profound, monstrous emptiness bloomed inside his chest. He realized that the world didn’t care about tears, and it didn’t care about justice.
The only thing that mattered was power, the raw, absolute strength to make the world bend to your whim, to ensure that no one could ever put a hand on you again without losing it!
He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing into a calm, steady rhythm.
He didn’t know that within forty eight hours, the sky would tear open. He didn’t know he would be pulled into a universe of blood paths, bone paths, and sects.
He didn’t know that the fragile, powerless boy in the utility closet was about to inherit an A-rank talent capable of shattering the heavens.
All he knew, as he drifted off to sleep on Earth for one of the last times, was that if he ever got the chance to grasp true power, he would never, ever let it go.
