Countdown 48:00:00.
Qing Chen looked up at the 600-meter cliff in front of him.
His teacher previously told him, ‘600 sounds like a very small number, but once you stand in front of that sheer mountain cliff, you'd understand just what kind of challenge 600 meters is for the climbers.'
A 222-story building.
The Willis Tower.
The KVLY-TV mast.
The Central Tower of Hai City.
He silently raised his head to look at the top.
Here, his memory was of little use.
Because he had never seen the cliff in its entirety before, he couldn't devise a climbing route with his photographic memory.
No wonder his teacher said that in order to climb this mountain, he needed to have the courage to go on without regrets.
This was the longest of all the shortcuts a human could take to reach the sky — just a glimpse of it could tell you of its infinite majesty.
But danger loomed as its companion.
Qing Chen didn't bring a safety rope, because Knights were prohibited from using it when they challenged the Life and Death Stage. Should you fall from such a height, the only result would be death.
At this moment, Qing Chen was looking down at his right thigh with a wry smile. He had tied a rope around it, but blood was still oozing out of the wound.
His stomach was burning with hunger, as if a fire was scorching inside.
The boy wondered, could this be an excessive joke from his teacher? In this condition, he might not even be able to climb up to 20 meters, let alone attempt a cliff over 600 meters!
However, Qing Chen would never back down.
Once, in Prison 18, when Qing Chen was doing push-ups to the point he was barely able to lift up his arms, Mom Ye said to him, ‘Imagine that you're pushing the earth.'
Another time, when Qing Chen asked Li Shutong what this particular Life and Death Stage was called, Li Shutong answered, ‘Gravitational Attraction.'
Because as an insignificant human being, he had to break away from the pull of gravity if he wanted to reach the sky.
Go on ahead and climb. There was no more turning back.
Qing Chen limped towards the cliff, but as he got closer, he spotted a line of words engraved at the foot of the cliff.
Only faith and time remain for eternity
Qing Chen instantly lifted his head, and all of a sudden, he could see the lines on the palm of this ‘giant', the white traces seeping in between the cracks of the rocks.
Those were the marks left by the chalk powder on the hands of the previous generations of the Knights, just like a ladder of ascension leading straight to the sky.
He didn't need to memorize anything else; he only needed to follow the ‘footprints' of his predecessors.
As he looked at the white imprints in front of him, he recalled the warm breeze blowing by the big willow tree. It was as though those old men who had lived resplendently in their generations were smiling as they said to him,
Climb it up, climb the mountain, watch the snowfall, and go chase your dream.
Walk the road we have walked, and become a newborn Knight.
Qing Chen's nose was sore.
The boy didn't know when his life started to turn out this way, but he could only rely on himself to survive.
He couldn't afford to eat, so he learned how to endure the hunger.
He couldn't afford his school fees, so he learned how to earn the money.
Whenever the class held a parent-teacher meeting, he was the only one sitting by himself in the classroom.
One time, he really couldn't get enough money to pay his school fees, so he had to go to his maternal grandmother's house to ask for help.
As a result, she coldly asked him, ‘Why didn't you go to your father?'
Later on, Qing Chen felt that this wasn't a big deal. After all, there were a lot more people who had it worse than him.
So he learned to be strong.
But upon coming to the Inner World, he gained a teacher in Li Shutong. And upon arriving at the Forbidden Land, it was as if the whole world had banded together just to help him.
This feeling was so magical, so wonderful that it felt unreal.
It turned out that sometimes, it was okay to not be so strong.
No wonder Li Shutong told him he must choose this place to unlock the first level of his genetic limits.
It wasn't because this was the only cliff that met the requirements of the Life and Death Stage, but because this was the path taken by the previous generations of the Knights.
Qing Chen smiled.
"Breathe."
Like morning clouds dyed vermilion by the rising sun, flame patterns bloomed on both sides of his cheeks.
The boy took out the bag of chalk powder Li Shutong had given him and tied it to his waist.
He stretched out his hand to grab the nearest crack and started climbing up the palm of the ‘giant'.
But at this moment, he felt the surge of an odd sensation.
The instant he started using the breathing technique, his abdomen emitted a warm current that swept across his body. Like the rolling waves of a warm river, it flowed through his blood vessels and penetrated into his muscles and bones.
The wound on his thigh stopped bleeding, no longer hurting.
His hunger was gone, and in its place was an incomparably abundant energy.
Then Qing Chen came to a realization — this must be the real function of that white fruit. It actually required the use of the breathing technique to come into effect.
Those old men really didn't pull any punches in order to help him.
"Thank you," Qing Chen continued to climb up.
10 meters.
20 meters.
40 meters.
At this height, he saw a few words carved onto the cliff in small letters: Guo Qi rested.
To pause at this spot, you had to use the three-point stance to hang onto the cliff. In the middle of his break, this senior named Guo Qi actually freed up his other hand to write down his name with a dagger.
As if saying goodbye to his senior, Qing Chen smiled knowingly before continuing to climb up.
62 meters, Zhou Peng rested.
83 meters, Zhao Yongyi rested.
Qing Chen had never climbed to such a height before, but he wasn't alone in this journey.
Time and time again, he saw the writings left behind by his seniors and bid goodbye to each of them, tirelessly moving forward.
Like an endless power source, the white fruit constantly provided him with a steady stream of energy, alleviating even the fatigue in his muscles.
However, following the smell of his blood, Cao Wei soon arrived at the bottom of the cliff. He stood there in a daze, staring blankly at the precipice. It wasn't until this moment that he finally figured out the reason the boy kept running to the west.
His destination turned out to be the Great Cliff of Qingshan!
Among the few people who knew about this place, Cao Wei was someone who had done serious research into it.
He knew that scaling the Great Cliff of Qingshan was the Knights' rite of passage.
But he never thought he would one day witness it with his own eyes.
Cao Wei was struck with an extremely complicated mix of emotions. Once upon a time, he had also wanted to become a Knight.
Even transmigrators from the Outer World knew that Li Shutong possessed the best cultivation method there was, so needless to say, those from the Inner World were also very much aware.
Moreover, for a lot of people in the Inner World, it wasn't merely a cultivation path — the Knights also represented a kind of yearning and aspiration.
After a long silence, Cao Wei at last raised his crossbow and took an aim, shooting his arrow towards the cliff.
He had already belonged to the adult world; he couldn't afford to keep such a dream any longer.
With a sharp sound, the arrow cut through a distance of more than 100 meters, lodging itself beside Qing Chen's left hand.
Qing Chen was startled; he didn't expect the range of Cao Wei's crossbow to be so great.
Cao Wei unhurriedly loaded another arrow into his crossbow. In this day and age, there were very few people who still used such things. Rather than a weapon, it was treated more like a handicraft.
He spent a lot of effort to get this crossbow, because the rule of Forbidden Land No. 002 prohibited the use of firearms.
The second arrow landed below Qing Chen's feet, missing.
The third arrow landed beside Qing Chen's left hand, yet another miss.
This was the shortcoming of the hand crossbow. Generally, its effective range only covered up to 60 meters, and whether or not it could hit a target beyond 60 meters depended entirely on luck.
The wind speed, the recoil; there were too many factors that could affect the shot.
If a person could hit a target more than a 100 meters away using a hand crossbow, that would mean his skills were out of this world.
Furthermore, he was shooting at an upward angle, so even if his arrow could hit the boy, it wouldn't cause any serious injury.
But Cao Wei didn't care.
He knew how dangerous it was to climb such a steep cliff, and he only needed to distract the boy.
Once the boy lost focus, he would naturally fall down from the cliff.
As expected, the boy soon stopped climbing up. Cao Wei could feel the terror in his heart.
High up on the cliff, a moment of carelessness would lead him to his doom. Yet at such a crucial time, someone kept aiming at him with continuous shots of arrows. Nobody stuck in this position would be able to remain calm.
However, when Cao Wei shot his fifth arrow, he watched as the boy's figure instead turned steady.
The next moment, he hung on the cliff with a three-point stance and took out a dagger with his right hand, engraving three words onto the surface of that perilous cliff.
Qing Chen rested.
After he finished writing, the boy once again continued his climb.
He also stopped looking back at Cao Wei.
Cao Wei stared at this scene in a trance — he could feel the boy's silent yet condescending taunt at him.
Was this the successor the Knights have chosen?
Were you only able to become a Knight if you possessed such a character?
Suddenly, Cao Wei coughed out a mouthful of blood.
It was fortunate that he didn't trigger any rule.
Translator: Zee
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