Sixty Years of Bitter Waiting

Chang-le Village.

"Old Man Chen must be seventy-nine this year, right? He's got one foot in the grave, no children, no wife—how's he going to get by from now on!"

"Yeah, he's been waiting at the village entrance for sixty years. No one knows what he's even waiting for."

"I reckon Old Man Chen caught that lovesick madness the storyteller talks about. He's waiting for some girl in his heart. He came to our village when he was eighteen, right at that age of youthful infatuation."

"What kind of person would be worth waiting sixty years for?"

A group of old men and women sat chatting by the large millstone under the locust tree, their gazes frequently drifting to the old man at the village entrance. One hand gripped a walking stick, the other held a straw bundle studded with candied hawthorns.

The old man selling candied hawthorns seemed to sense their attention. He turned and waved his walking stick at them.

"Grandpa, I want some of Grandpa Chen's candied hawthorns!"

"Grandma, me too!"

The grandchildren beside the old folks started chattering noisily, then took copper coins from their grandparents' withered hands and ran toward the old man at the village entrance.

"Grandpa Chen, I want one stick of candied hawthorns!"

"Me too, me too! Grandpa Chen, pick me the one with the biggest hawthorn!"

Chen Xian, who had been staring into the distance, snapped back to reality. Looking down at the children clamoring around him to buy candied hawthorns, a smile crept onto his aged face.

"Hehehe, there's enough for everyone, enough for everyone!"

He leaned the straw bundle against the handrail of a cart by the roadside, took the warm copper coins they handed him one by one, and plucked off strings of tempting candied hawthorns to pass into their hands.

Once the children got their candied hawthorns, the noise immediately died down.

All that was left was the sound of tongues licking the sugar coating, punctuated by occasional mumbles of "So good" and "Mine's better."

Chen Xian's smile grew even wider, his old face blooming like a golden chrysanthemum.

He had been making candied hawthorns for nearly sixty years. He was famous not just in the village but even in the town.

But then he thought about how he'd been transmigrating here for sixty years and was still selling candied hawthorns.

His eyes dimmed.

"Am I going to sell candied hawthorns my whole life until I'm buried in the ground?"

Watching the children run back to their grandparents, holding their candied hawthorns, Chen Xian felt a pang of desolation.

He suddenly regretted not finding a wife when he was young, not having a son or daughter. Now that he was old, he didn't even have a grandchild to cling to.

He hadn't been a native of this world to begin with, and in his old age, that loneliness grew even stronger.

And he was about to die. Would he ever really have a chance to touch that elusive cultivation?

"System!"

With that thought, Chen Xian called out in his mind.

A panel appeared in his mind—

[Name: Chen Xian]

[Realm: Mortal]

[Lifespan: Less than one year]

[Skills: Candied Hawthorn Making (Mastery), Clothing Mending (Proficient), Crop Cultivation (Proficient)]

[Equipped Traits (4/4): Few Illnesses and Disasters (White), Longevity and Old Age (White), Gossip Ear (Mortal), King of Talk (Mortal)]

[Replaceable Traits: Little Sleep (Mortal), Sober After Hundred Cups (Mortal), Swift as Flying (Mortal), No Constipation (Mortal), Friend of Widows (Mortal)]

[Copy Points: 42 (+1 point/year, no current boost)]

[Refining Points: 660 (+1 point/month, no current boost)]

[Note: No Yellow-grade or higher traits obtained. Cannot unlock trait refining function.]

This was his golden finger—the Trait Copying and Refining System!

It allowed him to view and copy trait attributes from others and apply them to himself for corresponding effects.

He could only equip four traits at a time, and he could swap them out every day.

Thanks to his current trait attributes, in the sixty years since he'd transmigrated, he had never suffered a major illness. Though he'd encountered years of famine and gone hungry, he'd never faced a life-threatening disaster.

Even if he never obtained cultivation-related traits, with his current trait attributes, he could live to eighty without illness or disaster and die a natural death.

Seventy years of life was rare since ancient times, let alone in this ancient society. Eighty was already a ripe old age.

Living to eighty without sickness or calamity—for an ordinary person, that was a perfect life!

But Chen Xian wasn't satisfied. He had transmigrated and had a golden finger—a textbook protagonist template. He shouldn't just live out an ordinary mortal life.

His life should be magnificent, just like the protagonists in novels—full of adventure and passion, climbing to the peak through challenges!

If he ended up just like everyone else, wouldn't that mean he'd transmigrated for nothing?

His heart surged with excitement for a moment, then his gaze drifted back to the desolate dirt road outside the village. Before long, Chen Xian's eyes dimmed again.

He was already old, with less than a year left to live.

This dirt road leading to the town—he had walked it hundreds, even thousands of times in his youth.

He had also traveled through all the dozens of nearby villages.

Never once had he seen a cultivator, nor even any outsider besides himself.

He had once thought of leaving, of going farther to see the world.

But this was a remote settlement deep within the Hundred Thousand Mountains. He had asked the only centenarian in the central town, and the answer he got was that no one had ever walked out of these mountains.

That conversation with the centenarian snuffed out his hope of leaving the mountains.

Yet it gave Chen Xian another kind of hope.

The centenarian said that in his youth, while working in the fields, he had seen several lofty figures speeding across the sky on flying swords.

The old man's father had also told a story.

He said that within the Hundred Thousand Mountains, there was a sect of cultivators called the Mystic Cloud Sword Sect, where everyone knew mystical arts, capable of slaying mountain lords and beheading demons, even splitting mountains and severing rivers with ease!

After hearing the story, Chen Xian's heart soared with longing. He wished he could immediately join the Mystic Cloud Sword Sect, learn the mystical arts, refine and upgrade himself, and become a dashing great sword cultivator.

And so, he waited and waited...

The centenarian had been buried in the earth for nearly fifty years now, and Chen Xian's own time was about to pass.

Watching the sunset slowly sink behind the distant mountains, another day was about to end.

"Ahh—"

Chen Xian shook his head and let out a long sigh. He could no longer tell whether it was his lofty ambition that kept him waiting, or if it was obsession at play.

Even if he could just see with his own eyes before he died that there really were cultivators in this world!

At least it would prove that the centenarian and the system weren't messing with him.

"Old Xian, it's getting cold! Come home and take in the clothes!"

"Remember to come to my place later for my little grandson's full-moon feast! I want to see if you old geezer really can hold your liquor!"

"Hahaha... Tie Zhu, you really can't outdrink Old Xian! I've seen it for myself."

The old men under the big locust tree hollered at Chen Xian.

Chen Xian smiled and waved back at them.

He thought for a moment, then swapped the [Few Illnesses and Disasters (White)] in his secondary affix slot for [Sober After Hundred Cups (Mortal)].

Drinking too much and feeling unwell was no big deal, but not being able to listen to gossip while drinking, or losing a drinking contest because he couldn't talk back—that was absolutely unacceptable.

Then he reached out, plucked a candied hawthorn stick from the straw bundle, and muttered, "I'll take in the clothes after I finish this one."

"Crack—" His teeth bit into the big hawthorn at the top, the sugar coating shattering with a crisp sound. He let out an "Ouch," spat into his palm, and an old tooth mixed with broken sugar shards appeared there.

No blood—it was a tooth that was about to fall out naturally.

Chen Xian casually tossed the tooth into the dirt, licked the empty socket in his upper right row with his tongue, and helplessly stuck the half-eaten candied hawthorn back into the straw bundle.

"Ah, looks like I don't have many days left."

Letting out a long sigh, he supported himself with one hand on his cane and the other on the straw bundle, slowly shuffling back toward the village.

Chen Xian hadn't gone far when a sharp shout suddenly rang out behind him: "Beast!"