If Scarlett and Ethan were in the outside world instead of the Black Forest, they could've cultivated the normal way. The normal way, you ask?
Cultivation Methods were a thing. It lets you sit down, relax, cross your legs, and meditate to gain more Essence. Of course, that was the tip of the iceberg. There were hundreds of thousands of different kinds of cultivation methods.
Dual Cultivation—Cough. Cultivating by the way of sex and nightly debauchery. Alchemical Methods, hmm, smelling the refined essential essences that pills leave behind to improve in cultivation or more, Totem Methods.
Paths to the top of the mountain were infinite in the ways of cultivation.
Sadly for Ethan and Scarlett, they could practice none of those methods. They had some amazing enough methods, sure, but sadly for the duo, the Black Forest had corrupted World Essence, and cultivating that was totally negative for them both.
