The winds howled in the valley and Chen Chen's heart was an expanse of hollowness. He felt as if he was a mayfly in the middle of a vast wide world, going where the wind took him.
Right at that moment, his leg got tangled up with some vines, his speed slowing down abruptly.
However, the vine broke very soon, and Chen Chen's fall continued once again.
Another strong gust of wind blew within the valley, making Chen Chen veer off to one side, hanging amidst countless vines.
It felt as though he was lying on a hammock.
"I am alive!"
Chen Chen heaved a sigh of relief internally. Although he felt as if his skeleton was falling apart, being alive was a blessing all on its own.
He didn't expect to fall from the cliff and remain unscathed in the first place.
Right as he was musing about this, a beam of light gradually appeared beside him. It was as if a lamp had been lit next to him.
Chen Chen turned around to look, realizing that an enormous blossoming flower in the seam of the cliff was bearing its fruits. The fruit was filled with some unknown matter, which was emitting a light that grew brighter and brighter with each passing second.
'This must be the opportunity… Right?' Chen Chen thought to himself, his eyes turning scorching hot.
He had never heard of luminous fruits, neither in his past life nor in this lifetime. This must be some kind of world's treasure, without a doubt.
Chen Chen suppressed the excitement within him and began questioning the system.
"Where is the most valuable item within the nearest ten meters located?"
"It is with you, host. I, the system, am the most valuable. I am a priceless treasure."
Upon hearing the reply, Chen Chen's face darkened, but he continued his inquiry with patience.
"What about the second most valuable item?"
"It is in the seam of the cliff one meter ahead, the Primeval Fruit of Ethereality. The fruit is only born once every three millenniums, and it disappears from the world within two minutes after being born.
"If consumed, it can alter the nature of the ordinary human body into one that is most suitable for immortality cultivation, the Primeval Ethereal Entity. One can then enter the primeval realm of qi training. Treasures like this are often hard to come by and much begged for, but only people with Big Opportunities will be able to obtain it."
Upon listening to the introduction, Chen Chen took a big gulp of air, staring at the evolving Primeval Fruit of Ethereality, his eyes ablaze.
In the meantime, he silently marveled at how miraculous destiny was.
If he hadn't dived from the cliff head-first, he wouldn't even have had a chance to get tangled by the vine.
And if he had been just a little bit late, he wouldn't have come across the strong gust of wind, and without the wind, he wouldn't have ended up in this spot.
Among the 24 hours within a day, if he had chosen any point in time from the rest of the 23 hours, 59 minutes and 50 something second to jump off the cliff, all that would have been awaiting him would have been death.
However, these few seconds gave way to life.
And that slim chances of survival happened to coincide with the two minutes in which the Primeval Fruit of Ethereality was born, only once every three thousand years.
The probability of coming across such an opportunity was infinitely close to zero.
The world was an immense place; no one knew just how many opportunities there were to come across the Primeval Fruit of Ethereality.
However, Chen Chen could be certain that if there were a hundred opportunities like this, 99 of them had been missed. After all, people with Big Opportunities weren't big cabbages. How could there be so many of them?
"From now on, all of these opportunities will be mine."
Chen Chen gave a soft sigh.
Gradually, the bearing process of the pristine white Fruit of Ethereality was complete. The light within it began to dim, and its appearance became ordinary.
Chen Chen did not give the Fruit of Ethereality a single chance to disappear from the world. He reached out and grasped it, and in less than ten seconds, he had swallowed the fruit like an animal devouring its prey.
Shortly after, a sense of ethereality began to effuse through him, emanating a celestial aura around Chen Chen out of nowhere. The discomfort from jumping off the cliff a while ago seemed to have vanished within seconds.
"Fabulous!" Chen Chen couldn't help but scream. In that moment, he felt as if the heavens were giving him a massage. It was comfortable to the extreme.
He could even feel some kind of metamorphosis happening inside him, very clearly too.
The wind in the valley no longer felt ordinary, but livelier and more effervescent than ever before.
A unique, light blue stream of air slowly entered his senses.
"Is this ethereality?"
As he perceived the distinguished streams of air, Chen Chen felt as if a door to a whole new world had opened up before his eyes.
With the shift in his thoughts, the streams of air entered his body like rivers flowing into an ocean.
In that moment, Chen Chen felt some switch inside of him being turned on as ethereality began spilling into his limbs and bones like a deluge that had unleashed from the dam, changing him with energy from head to toe.
This process went on for a full two hours.
When the first ray of daylight appeared at the edge of the sky, Chen Chen finally opened his eyes.
The world before him had become so much more vivid and exuberant. Chen Chen could even see the small, fine stones a thousand meters below the cliff. Such vision could be compared to that of an eagle.
The immense energy in his body made Chen Chen feel as if he could climb the steep walls of Black Wind Cliff with ease.
"The practice of martial arts is only an enhancement of skills; it cannot surpass the limits of mankind. Cultivation, however, is an enhancement of life status. The two of them are not at all on par with each other."
As he sensed the changes inside him, Chen Chen came to realize some things.
Shortly after, his back shuddered slightly and he sprung straight from the vine, holding onto the sheer precipice of the cliff.
...
A few minutes later, Chen Chen was standing on the edge of Black Wind Cliff once again. At this moment, his state of mind was completely different from what it had been last night.
Looking at the bottomless valley, not only did he not feel fear, he even had the spectacular feeling of being on top of the world.
"Host, you have completed the achievement of finding a Big Opportunity through the system for the first time. The tracking radius has increased from ten meters to fifteen meters."
Chen Chen's lips curled into a small smile when he heard the notification in his mind. He watched the sun rise in the distance, standing with his hands behind his back.
"System, let me ask you, who in the nearest fifteen meters has the highest status of cultivation?"
"It is you, host. Your current status of cultivation is the first tier of qi training."
"Good, very good," Chen Chen praised himself.
Before this, the county magistrate had been the only person in Shichuan County with some cultivation. Unexpectedly, he had risen as the second person in Shichuan County with cultivation.
Now that he recalled the people who were fighting last night, he found them rather ludicrous, as if it had been a group of children fooling around.
...
"That Lord Zhang must have run away."
Chen Chen looked around, not finding even a drop of blood or a single bloodstain. When he was dangling from the cliff wall last night, he had come up with his own conclusions because he could hear the sound of anything falling.
In fact, it would be quite unreasonable if he did not manage to run away. Lord Zhang had been granted such an opportunity, so how could he have been so easily finished off by a handful of killers?
He did not think about it any further. Chen Chen walked to the tree where he had hidden last night, grabbed the wok and the spatula, and quickly took off, running in the direction of Stone Village.
Last night, it took him two whole hours of running while being chased by wild wolves to reach Black Wind Cliff in a half-dead state. However, today, he saw the stone tablet at the entrance of the village after just half an hour of running. He wasn't even breathless and or puffing his cheeks. It was a breeze to him!
As he looked at the wok in his hand and the stone tablet in the distance, Chen Chen couldn't help but laugh.
The wok was still that same old wok and the village was still that same old village, but he was no longer the ordinary man he had been last night.