Ten days had passed since the so-called "accident" had occurred in his hut, and Ethan had settled into what could generously be called a routine.
Every morning, he dragged himself out of his makeshift bed and trudged to the Ancestral Tomb to fulfill his cleaning duties.
The work was backbreaking and soul-crushing, involving hours of scrubbing ancient stone surfaces, clearing away debris that seemed to regenerate overnight, and maintaining pathways that led deeper into the tomb complex than he was permitted to explore.
The physical demands were immense. The tomb’s stone surfaces were covered in a thin layer of ice that reformed constantly due to the extreme yin energy, making every surface slippery and treacherous.
His hands had become raw and cracked from the constant exposure to the frigid conditions, and his back ached perpetually from bending over to clean the intricate carvings that adorned every surface.
Even after ten full days of consciousness and diligent work, Ethan was still struggling with some of the more physically demanding aspects of his duties. Moving the heavy stone debris that accumulated near the tomb entrance required strength that his current physical cultivation level could barely provide.
The ancient carvings seemed almost malevolent in their resistance to cleaning, as if the yin energy was actively working to undo his efforts. Some days it felt like he was fighting a losing battle against forces far beyond his comprehension.
Despite completing his daily obligations without fail, Ethan had not made a single friend among the other residents. It wasn’t for lack of interest from the other side—many cultivators from the Serene Mirror Lake village had approached him out of curiosity about the new physical cultivator who had just been dumped into their frozen community.
They would come by while he worked, asking questions about his background, his crime, and his cultivation level with the casual interest of people who had little else to occupy their time.
The cultivators of the village had been genuinely excited to learn that a fresh face had been sent to their exile, which had initially confused Ethan greatly.
When he first arrived, he had assumed that everyone in this place would be hardened criminals—dangerous individuals who had committed murder, treason, or other serious offenses against the sect.
The idea that prisoners would be happy to see new arrivals had seemed absurd.
That assumption, he learned through conversations with various residents, had been accurate decades ago but was now laughably outdated.
In the distant past, the Serene Mirror Lake village had indeed housed genuinely dangerous criminals—rogue cultivators who had slaughtered innocents, traitors who had sold sect secrets to enemies, or madmen whose cultivation had driven them to commit unspeakable acts.
At this point in time, however, the village had devolved into nothing more than an exile point for people who had happened to offend higher-ranking members of the Azure Origin Dao Sect.
It was essentially a dumping ground for political prisoners and social outcasts rather than actual criminals.
A disciple who questioned an elder’s decision too publicly.
A servant who accidentally witnessed something they shouldn’t have.
A cultivator whose talent threatened someone in a position of power—these were the "crimes" that now warranted exile to this frozen wasteland.
Most of the residents were almost completely innocent of any real wrongdoing—their only crime had been being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, or simply existing as an inconvenience to someone with sufficient authority to make them disappear.
The stories Ethan heard from his fellow exiles were depressingly similar: minor infractions, misunderstandings, or simple bad luck that had resulted in decades-long sentences.
The truly tragic cases were those who had tried to fight back against the injustice they faced.
These brave but ultimately foolish souls had been given exponentially larger punishments—sentences of more than one hundred years that were essentially death sentences disguised as imprisonment.
Their defiance had been met with crushing retribution designed to serve as an example to others who might consider challenging the sect’s authority.
One man Ethan had spoken with briefly had been sentenced to one hundred and fifty years simply for demanding a formal hearing to contest his original ten-year sentence.
It was exactly this systematic abuse of power that had prompted the elder he’d met on his first day to sigh wearily and comment that "the sect sends anyone to this place now."
Even someone who had presumably spent years witnessing the steady stream of exiles could recognize how far the standards had fallen and how corrupted the justice system had become.
The social dynamics within the village were complex and often contradictory.
On one hand, the shared experience of injustice created a sense of camaraderie among the residents.
They understood each other’s pain and frustration in ways that outsiders never could. On the other hand, the hopelessness of their situation bred a kind of bitter resignation that made forming genuine connections difficult.
Why invest emotionally in relationships when everyone was slowly dying or going insane anyway?
The only person Ethan had gotten to know by name was Kael, who had turned out to be one of the strongest residents in the village despite his obvious mental instability.
During one of their conversations... if Kael’s rambling monologues could be called conversations... he had mentioned with his characteristic pride that he was at the perfection of the Foundation Establishment realm, a level of cultivation that should have commanded considerable respect in the outside world.
This revelation had confused Ethan immensely.
If Kael, with his perfection of the Foundation Establishment cultivation, was considered one of the strongest people here, where were all the higher-level cultivators who had presumably also offended the Azure Origin Dao Sect? There was absolutely no way that the only people who had committed crimes or fallen out of favor with the sect were those whose highest cultivation level was perfection of the Foundation Establishment realm.
Surely there were Core Formation cultivators, Nascent Soul experts, or even higher-level practitioners who had run afoul of the sect’s leadership over the years.
The answer, when it finally came through careful questioning of other residents, was both logical and deeply unsettling.
Criminals and political prisoners with cultivation realms higher than perfection of the Foundation Establishment were sent to different places entirely—presumably locations even more horrible than this frozen lake of perpetual misery.
The implication was that there existed an entire hierarchy of punishment destinations, each more nightmarish than the last, carefully designed to accommodate different levels of perceived threat or offense.
Just how many of these hellish prisons does the sect operate? Ethan had wondered with growing dread. And what kind of place do they send the really powerful cultivators who fall out of favor? If this is what they do to Foundation Establishment cultivators, what happens to someone at the Nascent Soul level who crosses them?
The thought had kept him awake for several nights, staring at the ceiling of his hut while imagining punishment facilities so terrible that his current situation would seem like a vacation by comparison.
But despite the grim realities of his situation, the depressing company of his fellow exiles, and the constant psychological pressure of the yin energy slowly eating away at his sanity, Ethan was actually feeling something approaching genuine happiness today.
For the first time since arriving at this frozen wasteland, he was planning to do something purely for his own enjoyment rather than out of obligation, duty, or basic survival necessity.
He was going to try fishing in the Serene Mirror Lake.
The past ten days had been beyond boring—so mind-numbingly tedious and repetitive that they were literally killing his spirit day by day.
The same routine of cleaning, eating whatever meager food was distributed by the village’s supply system, attempting to make conversation with people who were either too depressed or too insane to engage meaningfully, and trying to sleep on his uncomfortable floor bed had been slowly driving him toward the same kind of madness he’d observed in Kael and some of the other long-term residents.
The boredom was almost worse than the physical discomfort.
At least pain was something to feel, something that proved he was still alive and capable of sensation.
The endless, gray monotony of his days was like a slow poison that sapped his will to live more effectively than any torture could have managed.
Fishing, he hoped, would at least help him pass some time in a more pleasant manner and keep his mind occupied with something other than endless rumination about his unjust fate, his impossible sentence, and the various ways his life had gone catastrophically wrong.
It might even provide a welcome source of fresh food if he was lucky enough to catch anything edible in the eerily still waters of the lake that served as both his prison and his home.
The idea had come to him when he’d noticed several other residents casting lines into the water from various points along the shoreline.
They seemed peaceful, almost meditative as they sat in patient silence waiting for bites. Some even appeared to be genuinely enjoying themselves, which was the first sign of actual happiness he’d witnessed since his arrival.
As he prepared his simple fishing gear—just a basic rod and line that one of the other residents had been kind enough to lend him, along with some crude bait fashioned from scraps of food—Ethan found himself genuinely excited for the first time since his arrival at the village.
It was a small thing, almost pathetically minor in the grand scheme of his fifty-year sentence, but it represented something precious and rare: a moment of normalcy, a brief respite from the grinding despair that had become his constant companion.
Maybe this won’t be so bad, he thought with cautious optimism as he walked toward the lake’s shore, fishing equipment in hand.
Maybe I can find small pleasures like this to help me survive the next five decades. Maybe there’s still hope for maintaining my sanity in this place if I can discover activities that bring me joy.
The morning air was crisp and cold, but not unbearably so.
The mist rising from the lake’s surface created an almost ethereal atmosphere that was beautiful in its own haunting way. For the first time since his transmigration into this world, Ethan felt a spark of genuine anticipation for what the day might bring.
He was excited to fish.