Traveling through time to cultivate immortality: a life and death test

Liu Xing stretched his limbs as far as he could, adding some resistance and slowing his descent. It was just free fall, but his speed continued to accelerate. The strong wind stung his face, and tears flowed uncontrollably. He opened his eyes and searched hard, hoping a crooked tree would catch him and save him. But to no avail. The cliff was smooth and slippery, without even a vine, leaving no place for support.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a waterfall, as if it was flowing out from the cliff below. After a while, he saw a pool of water at the bottom of the cliff. The waterfall was about ten meters high and fell into the pool.

"I'm saved!" Liu Xing cried with joy. He'd spent the past three years working tirelessly to learn swimming, so diving was a natural for him. He immediately began his plum blossom steps, stepping his right foot over his left, leveraging the momentum to ascend. While he couldn't truly ascend, the effort did slow his descent a bit. Then, he adjusted his position to allow himself to land smoothly in the pool.

"Splash!" Liu Xing dived into the pool with standard diving movements, without much splash.

The pool was bottomless, and Liu Xing fell in, unable to see the bottom. He quickly surfaced, swam to the shore, and observed the surrounding environment.

It was a valley about the size of a football field, with a pond occupying more than half of the area. There were a dozen or so jujube trees, and the rest was covered with weeds and vines. He noticed that the vines looked a bit like sweet potato leaves, so he pulled one out and found it was indeed a sweet potato. He washed it in the pond water and ate it raw. He was indeed hungry.

Looking back, the valley was surrounded by sheer cliffs, the tops stretching as far as the eye could see. He circled the valley, confirming there was no way to climb up, unless a Xiantian realm expert could use their weapons to leverage their power and leap out in stages along the cliffs. Despair welled up in his heart, he leaped from one dead end to another. Heaven truly had treated me like hell.

Undeterred, Liu Xing searched again, but still found nothing. He only found a few animal skeletons, presumably those that had accidentally fallen and died. The valley was so small that the edge could be seen at a glance. He stared blankly at the waterfall, his mind racing. What should he do? Was he trapped here to death? As he stared, a flash of enlightenment seemed to dawn on him.

“When living water comes, even if the pool does not rise, there must be a way out.”

Seeing hope, Liu Xing jumped into the pool again and began swimming around. He discovered numerous silverfish, large and small, some as large as two feet long. He swam around and around, unable to find an exit. He dove back in, but the pool was bottomless, and with his current strength, he couldn't reach the bottom. This exhaustion left him exhausted. As darkness fell, he caught a fish and grilled it; it tasted delicious. But Liu Xing had no appetite at all, feeling filled with frustration and anxiety.

After eating and drinking, Liu Xing gradually calmed down. Since he couldn't leave for the time being, he decided to stay alive and slowly find a way out. It was early autumn, and the weather was a bit chilly. How could he survive in this wilderness? He began to think about food and survival strategies.

He had just used the tinder he had created by hitting the rocks with his dagger to start a fire, so he wouldn't have to eat food raw anymore. There were too many silverfish in the pond to eat them all. Besides, the dates were ripe, and the sweet potatoes in the wasteland were ripe too. He needed to find a dry place to dig a cellar and store them to prevent them from rotting and becoming inedible. He didn't know how many years he would be stuck here, so he needed to ensure a long-term food supply, which meant planting sweet potatoes. He had just checked, and the sweet potatoes he had were poorly managed and growing wildly. The potatoes were small and had a low yield. He needed to reclaim this wasteland, clear the weeds, and plant sweet potatoes to ensure a good yield. The valley was littered with stones, so he could build a stone house to shelter from the wind and rain.

Thinking about this, I had been trying to escape again today and was extremely nervous. Now I was sleepy and tired, so I lay down beside the fire and fell into a deep sleep.

When Liu Xing woke up, it was already noon. What he had to do today was to dig holes and collect food. He selected some hard stones, used a dagger to cut them into the shape of a hoe and a shovel, and cut branches to make handles to make simple tools. He started digging a cellar on the edge of a cliff far away from the pool. After three days of digging, he finally dug out two cellars of about one cubic meter, which he used to store dates and sweet potatoes respectively. He was exhausted. The next month was spent collecting food, firewood, and reclaiming wasteland. He also built two stone houses, one for a bedroom and the other for storing miscellaneous items. The problem of survival was temporarily solved.

During this time, Liu Xing continued to practice martial arts. He rose in the mornings to practice swordplay, found time to swim in the pond and practice holding his breath, and meditated in the evenings. Life had returned to normal, but being trapped here inevitably left him feeling melancholy. Every evening, he would take out his bamboo flute and play a tune. The melodious sound was filled with loneliness and sadness.

Time flew by. Over a month had passed since he arrived at the tiankeng. He had searched every inch of the valley floor countless times. After dinner one day, he sat on a rock, watching the waterfall cascade down again and again, a bit lost in thought. He noticed a small platform at the waterfall's outlet. Unaware of what lay on it, he thought about going up to take a look.

The next day, he found some branches, made a ladder with vines, and began to climb up. He climbed onto the platform, which was very small, only big enough for him to stand on, and even turning around was difficult. He looked at the outlet of the waterfall, which was a spring that looked like a knife-like opening, and the water flowed out from it. The spring was very narrow, not to mention a person, not even a hand could fit in, and the water seemed to be squeezed out. He stood up and observed the cliff. From a distance, he could not see anything unusual, but when he looked closer, there seemed to be a door-shaped crack in the stone. Because the stone wall was covered with moss, Liu Xing used a dagger to clean the moss and discovered the circle of cracks. This is a stone door, is there another world behind the stone door?

He pushed hard at the stone door, but it wouldn't budge. He knew he was too weak. The stone door must have weighed several tons, and even a master of the acquired great accomplishments wouldn't be able to push it open. Undeterred, Liu Xing fumbled here and there, trying to find the key. He tossed and turned for several days, climbing up every day to study the stone door, but still had no clue.

Darkness was approaching, and he could only climb down the ladder in disappointment, return to the stone house to rest, and come back tomorrow. He had been pondering for the past few days: if he were the owner of the cave, where would he set the switch? He wondered which master lived in seclusion here. "I've lived here for over a month, and there's been no sound. The stone door is covered in moss, indicating it hasn't been opened in a long time." This master must have left or suffered an accident in the cave. To cultivate in seclusion beneath the abyss, he must be an innate master. Are there peerless martial arts in the cave? Liu Xing indulged in his fantasies, seemingly forgetting that he couldn't even open the door.