Chang-le Village.
"Old Chen should be seventy-nine this year, right? He's practically got one foot in the grave, with no wife or children. How's he going to get by from now on?"
"Yeah, he's been waiting at the village entrance for sixty years. Who knows what he's waiting for?"
"I reckon Old Chen's got that lovesick madness the storyteller talked about. He's waiting for some girl in his heart. He came to our village when he was eighteen, just the right age to be a lovesick young man."
"Who could possibly be worth waiting sixty years for?"
A crowd of elderly men and women sat beneath the locust tree beside the big millstone, chatting idly. Their gazes kept drifting toward the old man at the village entrance, one hand on his cane and the other gripping a bundle of hawthorn sticks.
As if sensing their attention, the old candied hawthorn seller turned and waved his cane at them.
"Grandpa, I want one of Grandpa Chen's candied hawthorns!"
"Grandma, me too!"
The grandchildren beside the old folks started clamoring. They took copper coins from their grandparents' withered hands, then chattered as they ran toward the old man at the village entrance.
"Grandpa Chen, I want a candied hawthorn!"
"Me too, me too! Grandpa Chen, pick me one with the biggest hawthorn!"
Chen Xian, who'd been gazing into the distance, came back to himself. Looking down at the children crowding around him and clamoring for candied hawthorns, he couldn't help smiling with his weathered face.
"Heh heh heh, there's enough for everyone!"
He propped the bundle against the handle of the handcart by the roadside, took the warm copper coins from their little hands one by one, then plucked off tempting strings of candied hawthorn and passed them out.
Once the children got their treats, the racket stopped at once.
All that remained was the sound of tongues licking the sugar coating, along with the occasional muffled mutter of "So good!" and "Mine's even better!"
Chen Xian's smile grew broader, his old face blooming like a great yellow chrysanthemum.
He'd been making candied hawthorn for nearly sixty years. He was famous not only in the village, but even in Center Town.
But whenever he remembered that he'd been in this world for sixty years and was still selling candied hawthorn, his eyes couldn't help dimming.
"Am I going to sell candied hawthorn all my life, until they bury me?"
Chen Xian watched the children run back to their grandparents with their candied hawthorns held aloft. A pang of desolation rose in his heart.
He suddenly regretted not finding a wife when he was young, not having a child or two. Now that he was old, he didn't even have grandchildren to keep him company.
He didn't belong in this world. In his old age, that loneliness weighed on him even more.
And he was close to death. Did he really still have a chance to encounter that ethereal cultivation?
"System!"
At the thought, Chen Xian summoned it with a single thought.
A panel appeared in his mind—
[Name: Chen Xian] [Realm: Mortal] [Lifespan: Less than one year] [Skills: Candied Hawthorn Making (Mastered), Clothing Mending (Proficient), Crop Planting (Proficient)] [Active Traits (4/4): Few Illnesses and Disasters (White), Longevity and Old Age (White), Gossip Ear (Mortal), King of Verbal Combat (Mortal)] [Replaceable Traits: Little Sleep (Mortal), Sober After Hundred Cups (Mortal), Swift as Flying (Mortal), No Constipation (Mortal), Widow's Friend (Mortal)] [Copy Points: 42 (+1 point/year, no current bonus)] [Refinement Points: 660 (+1 point/month, no current bonus)] [Note: Trait Refining cannot be unlocked until you obtain a Yellow Grade trait or higher]
This was his cheat—the Trait Copying and Refining System!
It let him view and copy the traits of others, then apply them to himself to gain their effects.
He could only have four traits active at a time, but he could replace them every day.
Thanks to his current traits, he hadn't suffered a serious illness in the sixty years since he arrived in this world. He'd lived through famine and gone hungry, but never faced a disaster that threatened his life.
Even if he never found a cultivation-related trait, his traits could still keep him healthy and safe until he died of old age at eighty.
Living to seventy was rare, let alone in this ancient society. Eighty was already a ripe old age.
For an ordinary person, living to eighty without illness or disaster was practically a perfect life!
But Chen Xian wasn't content. He'd transmigrated with a cheat—a textbook protagonist setup. He shouldn't have to spend his life as an ordinary mortal.
His life should be tempestuous and grand, full of adventure and passion like a novel protagonist's, rising to the peak through challenge after challenge!
If he lived just like an ordinary person, wouldn't his transmigration have been for nothing?
After a surge of fervor, he looked again at the empty yellow-earth road beyond the village. Before long, his gaze dimmed.
He was old, with less than a year left to live.
He'd walked the dirt road to town hundreds, even thousands, of times when he was young.
He'd also visited every one of the dozens of nearby villages.
He'd never seen a cultivator, or even a single traveler from beyond the area.
He'd once thought of leaving and seeing what lay farther away.
But this was an isolated settlement deep in the Hundred Thousand Mountains. He'd asked the only centenarian in Center Town, and the old man's answer was that no one had ever made it out of the mountains.
His conversation with the centenarian had extinguished his hopes of leaving the mountains.
But it had given Chen Xian another kind of hope.
The centenarian had said that, when he was young and working in the fields, he'd seen several experts flying through the sky on swords.
The old man's father had also told him a story.
He said there was a cultivator sect in the Hundred Thousand Mountains called the Mystic Cloud Sword Sect. Everyone there knew spells. They could slay Mountain Lords and demons, and even split mountains and sever rivers with ease!
After hearing the story, Chen Xian's heart had soared. He'd been desperate to join the Mystic Cloud Sword Sect, learn spells, refine his traits, and become a dashing great sword cultivator.
And so, he waited and waited...
The centenarian had been buried for nearly fifty years, and now Chen Xian's own time was running out.
The sun was sinking behind the distant mountains. Another day was about to pass.
"Ah..."
Chen Xian shook his head and sighed. He couldn't tell whether it was his grand ambition keeping him waiting, or just an obsession.
If only he could see someone who cultivated with his own eyes before he died!
Then he'd know the centenarian and the system hadn't been stringing him along.
"Old Chen, it's getting chilly. Hurry home and bring in the laundry!"
"Remember to come to my place later for my grandson's one-month celebration. I want to see if you really can drink a hundred cups without falling over!"
"Hahaha... Tie Zhu, you've got no chance against Old Chen! I've already seen it for myself."
The old men beneath the locust tree called out to Chen Xian.
Chen Xian smiled and waved back at them.
He thought it over and replaced [Few Illnesses and Disasters (White)] in his secondary trait slot with [Sober After Hundred Cups (Mortal)].
Drinking too much and feeling sick afterward was no big deal, but failing to catch the gossip over drinks—or losing a drinking contest because he couldn't talk circles around the other person—was absolutely out of the question.
Then he reached over and plucked a candied hawthorn from the bundle, muttering, "I'll head home and bring in the laundry after I finish this one."
"Crunch!" His teeth sank into the big hawthorn at the top. The sugar coating cracked crisply, and he let out an "Ow!" before spitting into his palm. An old tooth, mixed with broken bits of sugar, lay there.
There was no blood. It was a tooth that had been ready to fall out on its own.
Chen Xian casually tossed it into the dirt. He ran his tongue over the gap in his upper-right gum and ruefully stuck the half-eaten candied hawthorn back onto the bundle.
"Ah, looks like I haven't got many days left."
He let out a long sigh, holding his cane in one hand and the bundle in the other, and slowly made his way into the village.
Chen Xian hadn't gone far when a sharp cry suddenly rang out behind him: "You vile beast!"