The sun blazed overhead. Though autumn had arrived, the air still held a trace of summer's heat.
In the classroom, Zhao Cheng propped his head up with one hand and idly twirled a pen with the other. The open book before him still looked practically new.
At the lectern, a tall, middle-aged man drew and wrote on the blackboard, sketching circles and squares freehand and displaying no small degree of skill.
As for Zhao Cheng, he was daydreaming. His body was in the classroom, but his thoughts had flown off to who knew where.
His thoughts were untethered. Though he looked vacant on the outside, his brain was in the midst of a storm, turning over all sorts of ideas that seemed profound but were actually meaningless.
At that moment, Zhao Cheng was wondering: if he treated the classroom as the outside, then would the vast universe beyond it become the inside?
The place where he sat would be the edge of the inner world. Perhaps all he had to do was reach out, and he could transcend the dimension of "inside and outside" and leap between dimensions.
After all, the window was right beside him.
Sunlight streamed in through it and fell on him. It was a little hot.
Zhao Cheng thought about reaching out, so he put down his pen, looked at his palm, and spread his fingers.
In the sunlight, his palm, not particularly large, looked translucent and lustrous, like some kind of jade.
Seeing that, Zhao Cheng's thoughts wandered again, jumping straight to the idea that "sunlight has a pretty good beautifying effect." The thought turned over in his mind, bringing up such unorthodox tricks as making fried chicken look like a beautiful woman. Zhao Cheng couldn't help smiling.
"Life like this isn't bad, actually!"
"I've lived more than twenty extra years, and I've even gone back to being a kid. This is a win-win—I've won big."
Zhao Cheng's thoughts shifted again, back to his previous life.
"I just wonder whether Old Zhang, Old Wang, and the others made it out alive."
Zhao Cheng was a transmigrator, but not in the conventional sense. Compared to taking over someone else's body, he was closer to being reborn through reincarnation.
He had merely changed worlds.
But Zhao Cheng's reincarnation hadn't gone smoothly. When he was born, he was no different from an ordinary baby. Only as he grew older did he start to experience an intense sense of familiarity upon suddenly seeing certain scenes, and gradually begin dreaming of fragments of memories from his past life.
It wasn't until half a year ago that Zhao Cheng finally broke through that barrier. It was as if the world had suddenly come into sharp focus. In an instant, he remembered everything; everything became clear.
The last image Zhao Cheng remembered from his previous life was snow falling in a vast, all-consuming torrent, surging toward him like a tidal wave in a deafening roar, laying bare the utterly savage might of nature.
The scene had been nothing short of shocking. And when you were right there in the middle of it, the sensations were something no recording could ever convey.
It was a beauty that surged and thundered with chilling violence.
The price of experiencing that beauty had been a little steep: one life, gone in an instant.
Of course, Zhao Cheng hadn't been the only one buried alive in the snow. Several of his friends had been with him.
Zhao Cheng knew exactly how he'd died. He just didn't know whether any of his friends had managed to work a miracle and survive.
After all, you never knew how luck would turn out.
The moment Zhao Cheng recovered his memories, he realized that he had transmigrated to another world.
This world was not only more than a hundred times larger than Earth, the world of his previous life.
More importantly, it possessed a kind of power that was almost supernatural.
It was only almost supernatural because this power wasn't supernatural in the strict sense. There was no spiritual energy in the air, nor were there any extraordinary particles.
No one could summon wind and rain, and no one could command wind, fire, and thunder.
But there were people who could temper their bodies and minds through special methods, gradually making their bodies "indestructible" and their spirits "immortal."
The strongest among them displayed all kinds of abilities that, through the lens of Zhao Cheng's previous life, were wildly "unscientific."
A wooden sword could cleave iron!
A flick of the finger could crack gold!
And even the traces they left behind held thoughts that endured through the ages!
To people in this world, these things were commonplace, no stranger than breathing.
People in this world found nothing strange about people gaining extraordinary powers through cultivation, either.
But for Zhao Cheng, a transmigrator from a world where everyone was ordinary, cultivation was a wondrous thing—almost inconceivable.
It was an undeniable gap in perception.
And it was precisely because of that gap that Zhao Cheng developed a longing for the "extraordinary."
It was only natural: the more you lacked something, the more you wanted it.
Only those who had endured hunger could truly understand the value of food. And Zhao Cheng, who had once lived in an ordinary world, had also developed an intense obsession with the extraordinary.
Many of the natives of this world didn't possess an obsession like his.
So, over the past six months, Zhao Cheng had cast aside his old laziness.
Perhaps it was because his memories from his previous life had awakened, or perhaps it was because he had transmigrated, but Zhao Cheng had a fair talent for cultivation. He wasn't one in ten thousand, but he was one in several thousand.
On top of that, he was driven and diligent in his cultivation. Over the past six months, his progress had been nothing short of meteoric.
In the real world, that meant his vitality had grown stronger, his body sturdier and more powerful, and his mind sharper.
At the same time, because of his transmigration, a strange change had taken place within him. He could sense every bit of progress he made, no matter how slight.
It was a very peculiar feeling, but not at all vague. It was as clear as breathing.
Besides that, Zhao Cheng could feel another kind of change. There was some sort of power within him—or perhaps some essential quality—that was "adapting" to this world.
It was hard to put that feeling into words. The best he could do was call it "adaptation."
Of course, it was possible that the power was adapting to this world. It was also possible that the world was adapting to the power.
But that question was just like Zhao Cheng's earlier musings about the "inside and outside" of the world: it seemed profound, but it wouldn't change anything about the situation before him.
As time passed, especially over the past few days, Zhao Cheng had begun to sense that this change was about to finish.
It might be complete in two or three days—or it might happen in the very next second.
Zhao Cheng was curious about what would happen once the change was complete.
Back when he had just awakened the memories of his previous life, he might have hoped to suddenly gain some heaven-defying power and slaughter gods and Buddhas alike.
Now, after half a year of cultivation, his strength hadn't improved much and he hadn't become some kind of superhuman, but his heart had settled down.
He also understood that cultivation was about cultivating the heart. Power that surpassed one's limits was like a child swinging a sledgehammer: one misstep, and you destroyed yourself.
So, though Zhao Cheng was curious and understood that this change would definitely benefit him, he wasn't going to imagine that it would suddenly grant him immense power or anything like that.
Because that wouldn't be a good thing.
The true essence of cultivation lay in subduing one's mind.
That was a Buddhist maxim, but it was also something Zhao Cheng had personally come to understand.