Lin Fan sat at the base of the ancient oak, stunned into silence.
Two breakthroughs. In a single night.
He had accomplished more in the past hour than he had in the last three years of his miserable ration-stealing life. He was now a cultivator of the Fourth Layer of Qi Condensation. The thought sent a jolt of savage satisfaction through him, so potent it almost made him dizzy.
He was now on par with Senior Brother Zhang.
Zhang.
The name tasted like week-old congee in his mouth. Senior Brother Zhang, with his perfectly combed hair, his smug half-smile, and his infuriating habit of "borrowing" Lin Fan's meager spirit stones with the grace of a tax collector. Senior Brother Zhang, who used Lin Fan as a living training dummy to practice his "Flailing Willow Fist," a technique that involved an uncomfortable amount of flailing and a distinct lack of willow-like grace.
"The next time Zhang tries to demonstrate the 'Subduing the Weakling' stance on me," Lin Fan muttered to the uncaring trunk of the oak, "I'll show him the 'Arrogant Bastard Meets Pavement' technique."
He closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of the refined Qi coursing through his meridians. It was like switching from muddy ditch water to the finest spring water; everything was clearer, sharper, and infinitely more powerful. His senses, previously as dull as a rusty spoon, were now honed to a razor's edge. He could hear the faint snores of an elder in a hut three hundred paces away, smell the nectar of a night-blossom on the far side of the training grounds, and feel the tiny vibrations of a beetle crawling up the very tree he leaned against.
His Spiritual Sense, once a pathetic little bubble that barely reached the end of his own feet, had expanded like a balloon in a hurricane. It unfurled from his mind, a ghostly net that swept across the landscape. He could feel the cool night air, the life force of the trees, the slumbering energy of the earth beneath him. It was intoxicating. He was a god, perceiving his pathetic little corner of the world with newfound clarity.
He playfully pushed his Spiritual Sense outwards, past the elder's hut, over the disciple dormitories, and towards the craggy cliff that marked the sect's southern border. It was a place disciples were forbidden to go, rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a cultivator who tried to fly before he'd learned to walk.
As his senses brushed against the cliff face, he felt it.
A pull.
It was a gentle beckoning deep within his soul. It was a faint thrum of warmth, a whisper of immense spiritual energy waiting. It was like smelling the aroma of a roast chicken after three days of starvation. It was the universe screaming, "Hey, you! Yes, you, the handsome new genius! I have a fateful opportunity right here, just for you!"
Lin Fan's eyes snapped open, his heart hammering against his ribs like a drum solo. This was it. This was the moment every protagonist in every story he'd ever heard of had. The moment of discovery. The secret cave. The ancient inheritance. The legendary… stuff.
"System," he practically squealed in his mind, his voice trembling with a level of excitement usually reserved for discovering an extra meat bun in one's lunch. "Did you feel that? What is that?"
The calm voice of his recently acquired golden finger replied. [Analysis: A significant concentration of wood-element spiritual energy has been detected. Probability of a high-grade natural treasure: 97.4%.]
"Ninety-seven point four percent!" Lin Fan gasped, scrambling to his feet. "Those are protagonist-level odds!"
This was his destiny calling, and he wasn't about to let it go to voicemail. He glanced at the sheer cliff face. It was a straight drop of at least two hundred feet, a jagged wall of stone and thorny vines. For a mortal, it was a death sentence. For a Fourth Layer Qi Condensation expert, it was… still pretty much a death sentence. His newfound powers didn't include wall-crawling. Yet.
He sprinted back to his dilapidated room in the outer sect disciple dormitories, a hovel he shared with leaking roof tiles and a family of suspiciously bold spiders. He kicked open the flimsy door, ignoring the splintering crack it made. He was a man on a mission. A man of destiny didn't have time for things like "property damage" or "basic caution."
Underneath his lumpy straw mattress, past his life savings of three low-grade spirit stones and a very shiny rock, was his emergency tool: a thick coil of hemp rope. He'd "liberated" it from the sect's maintenance shed months ago, convinced it would one day be useful for something dramatic. Today was that day.
He slung the heavy rope over his shoulder and ran back to the ancient oak tree at the cliff's edge. With the grunts and heaves of a man performing a feat of legendary importance, he tied one end of the rope around the tree's most reliable-looking root. He gave it a solid tug. It seemed sturdy. Sturdy enough, anyway.
"Alright, destiny," he whispered, peering over the edge into the inky blackness. "Let's see what you've got."
He gripped the coarse rope, swung his legs over the side, and began his descent. The rough hemp bit into his palms, and loose pebbles skittered down into the abyss below. The wind whistled in his ears, carrying the scent of damp earth and something else… something sweet and impossibly ancient. His heart hammered with a cocktail of terror and exhilaration. Every few feet, he would use his Spiritual Sense to probe the darkness, homing in on the warm glow.
After what felt like an eternity of scraped knuckles and muttered curses, his feet touched a narrow ledge. His Spiritual Sense confirmed it: the source of the energy was just inside a fissure in the cleverly hidden behind a curtain of mossy vines.
He pushed the vines aside and a wave of concentrated life force washed over him, so potent it made the Qi in his own body sing. The cave was barely a hollow in the stone, but in its center, growing from a single crack in the floor, was a plant that defied belief.
It was a lily, but unlike any he had ever seen. Its stalk was the color of pale jade, and its single bud glowed with a golden light, pulsating gently like a sleeping sun. An intoxicating fragrance filled the small space.
"System… identify," Lin Fan breathed, his voice filled with awe.
[Item Identified: Thousand-Year Sun-Swallowing Lily. A spirit herb that absorbs solar essence for a millennium before blooming. Contains a vast and pure reserve of fire and wood dual-elemental energy. Extremely rare.]
"Thousand… Year…" Lin Fan's brain struggled to process the words. This was a lottery ticket, a get-out-of-poverty-free card, a one-way trip to the top of the cultivation world. He could feel the raw power radiating from it. This single plant probably contained more spiritual energy than the entire outer sect combined.
A grin stretched across his face, so wide it felt like it might split his cheeks. He began to cackle, a slightly unhinged sound that echoed in the tiny cave.