From Under One Person: Sincere Journey Through the Heavens

Liu Quan was arrogant and would likely disdain lying. It's probable that during the "possession," he was truly entangled in a spiritual conflict with the snake monster of Ping Mountain, causing his spirit to exhibit snake-like characteristics after possessing Luo Laowai...

Thinking of this, Jiang Liu suddenly realized that the Xuanjiao Serpent was very likely to exist in a cave connected to the outside world somewhere between the two Bagua formations of Wengcheng and Wuliang Hall!

Only in this way can the formation be activated to entangle Liu Quan's reunited broken spirit with the spirit of the Xuanjiao serpent.

Even if I had figured it out, finding the cave where the Xuanjiao Serpent was hiding would not be easy—I suddenly felt a little envious of Sun Wukong in "Journey to the West" for his ability to summon all sorts of mountain gods and local deities for questioning at any time by chanting incantations.

"Why are you so sure?" Lu Jin asked, puzzled.

"Because I encountered a ghost in the underground palace..."

Jiang Liu told Lu Jin everything about Liu Quan, except for the part that might involve his own background. "The Wengcheng and Wuliang Hall were both designed and built by him, and they all originated from Liu Quan. His purpose—I guessed right, was to be resurrected through a body."

"This is unbelievable!"

Although Lu Jin believed Jiang Liu's previous guess, she found it absurd after the other party actually confirmed it.

"There's no way around it, that's the truth. It was that Deputy Yang who wanted to take advantage of the situation to climb the ranks. You can see Luo Laowai's corpse now a sickly skeleton..."

# Chapter 166 The Collapse of Bottle Mountain

Buzz!

At that moment, the earth trembled, and the entire Bottle Mountain shook slightly.

Jiang Liu and Lu Jin's expressions changed, and they leaped down the mountain at great speed, finding Li Muxuan, who was also running towards the south side of Ping Mountain.

Bottle Mountain is cracked and tilting to the north. If an earthquake causes Bottle Mountain to collapse, it is very likely that Bottle Mountain will tilt to the north, while the south side will be safe.

How could an earthquake have happened?

After running several hundred meters away, Li Muxuan watched in horror as the southern half of Bottle Mountain slowly tilted northward. "The people over there are definitely dead! Wait! Our luggage and alchemy furnace are all on the south side!"

"Don't think about those things now," Lu Jin shouted. "Life is more important."

"It is said that the area around Old Bear Ridge was originally a desert... When we went to the barbican before, the last trap was a plan to prevent future generations from being buried by the yellow sand."

Jiang Liu's eyes were solemn. "Liu Quan, who built the barbican, couldn't have had large amounts of yellow sand sent here from deserts and other places. Fine sand in deserts and wastelands is also unsuitable for construction. So it can only be as the local legend says, that there is a large area of ​​desert underground."

The barbican was originally hollow, but it was dug open and a mechanism was triggered, and now it's covered in yellow sand.

This resulted in hollow spaces beneath other strata.

Ping Mountain, though cracked by the earthquake, managed to stand firm, perhaps because the yellow sand beneath was compressed into a very thick layer of soil. However, now that the outer wall is buried by the sand, the rest of the mountain has become hollow, causing it to lose its balance. From that moment on, the mountain began to slowly tilt in a way we couldn't perceive, until it has now completely lost its equilibrium.

Boom!

The large portion of the bottle-shaped mountain that had been tilting northward collapsed completely onto the northern slope, shaking the earth so much that even with their Qi circulating throughout their bodies, Jiang Liu, Lu Jin, and Li Muxuan still found it difficult to stand.

Don't guess!

The vast majority of the warlords, soldiers, and bandits in those mountains must have perished there.

Making a fortune by tomb raiding?

dream!

In truth, this was trouble they brought upon themselves. If they hadn't dug open the barbican and insisted on triggering the mechanism, causing the yellow sand to pour in and thus making the Bottle Mountain unbalanced, how could the Bottle Mountain have collapsed?

Thinking this way, another thought arose in Jiang Liu's mind: Was the Heavenly Dao in the dark also driving all of this to happen?

unknown--

Gazing at the rising gray-yellow smoke, Jiang Liu's ears twitched slightly. Hearing the shouts, he gathered his Qi and ran into the smoke.

On the still-standing, sword-like cliff face, Chen Yulou, Hong Guniang, and Kunlun were clinging to a centipede-shaped mountain-hanging ladder. However, the mountain-hanging hooks on the ladder had broken, and the entire ladder had landed on a pine tree on the side of the cliff that was perpendicular to the ground.

Kunlun is on the left, while Partridge Whistle and Chen Yulou are on the right, forming a perfect balance.

The pine tree was two hundred meters above the ground, and there was nothing below to cushion its fall. If it fell straight down, even extraordinary people like Kunlun and Hong Guniang would be severely injured.

In contrast, Partridge Whistle, Old Foreigner, and Flower Spirit were much luckier. When they fell, they used the Dragon Binding Rope to entangle themselves around an old tree on the mountaintop. Partridge Whistle was also wearing a Digging Mountain Armor on his arms. When the mechanism was triggered, the Digging Mountain Armor popped out barbs made of gold and iron, which could be embedded in the cliff.

The three men had already climbed to the top of the mountain, but the Dragon Binding Rope was not long enough to hang down. The Centipede Mountain Ladder carried by the other lucky survivors could not climb down either!

Jiang Liu arrived at the cliff and unleashed his magnetic field, repelling the surrounding gray-yellow smoke. After seeing the situation on the cliff, he leaped up, using his magnetic field to attach to his legs and feet, and using the Qi transformation method of the Ninefold Reversal of Life to lighten his body. He grabbed the rocks on the cliff and quickly leaped and climbed upwards.

The three, who had been in despair, saw Jiang Liu leaping up like a monkey and a glimmer of hope for survival appeared in their eyes.

After reaching a point 200 meters above the cliff, Jiang Liu extended three inverted force fields that enveloped Chen Yulou, Hong Guniang, and Kunlun, and then quickly jumped down.

"what!"

Chen Yulou shouted, filled with fear and unease.

Just forty or fifty meters above the ground, Jiang Liu's eight extraordinary meridians suddenly trembled, and the magnetic field around his body rapidly spread outward, forming a spherical membrane with a diameter of more than fifty meters. Hong Guniang, Chen Yulou, and Kunlun, who were inside, could no longer feel the rapidly descending fierce wind, and only felt their bodies slowly descending!

This is a reversal of the natural order!

"A true immortal!"

Chen Yulou noticed that his movements had become extremely slow, and he exclaimed in surprise.

Jiang Liu, however, was not feeling well.

This is a vertical drop from a height of two hundred meters. Even when using superpowers, physics must be considered. There is no terrain below, like a snow-capped mountain slope, to help him dissipate the inertia of the fall. He has to bear it all himself.

The moment he landed, Jiang Liu immediately dissipated the magnetic field and clasped his hands together. He then activated one of the four methods of the Innate Talisman Diagram, the Life-Saving and Death-Avoiding Technique, consuming a Water-Fire Yin-Yang Qi Pill condensed in his Void Aperture to transfer all the inertial damage to his internal organs.

But this one move caused him to consume nearly half of his internal energy!

Although this method of avoiding death and prolonging life can transfer all the harm to the body, the severity of the harm is directly proportional to the amount of Qi consumed when using this method.

"call--"

After meditating for a quarter of an hour, Jiang Liu recovered considerably. Seeing Chen Yulou's dejected expression, he explained why Ping Mountain had tilted. He then added, "President Chen, you should probably stop tomb raiding in the future. This calamity is not a matter of timing or fate, but rather a matter of cause and effect."

"You reap what you sow. You didn't listen to my advice and left the city, triggering the mechanism that allowed yellow sand to enter the city. This caused a hollow space to appear underground near Bottle Mountain, ultimately leading to Bottle Mountain's complete imbalance and collapse today."

Chen Yulou was lucky to survive, and after witnessing Jiang Liu's magic that could almost make people fly, he dared not refute anything anymore.

only--

If he doesn't raid tombs, what else can he do?

After this ordeal, he returned defeated. How would the remaining brothers of Changsheng Mountain view him? And how could he rally the hundreds of thousands of bandits, warlords, and soldiers in the area?

"General Manager Chen, you have the four methods of 'observation, listening, questioning, and palpation,' so you must be well-read. You should know very well that the warlord era will inevitably end someday. And because of the strength of the West, a dramatic change is taking place in China, a change unprecedented in history."

Jiang Liu said in a deep voice, "Those who have connections in both the legal and illegal worlds have existed throughout history, but I am certain that as time goes by, there will be less and less space for such people to exist on this land."

Now this calamity—

Why not treat it as a ceremony to say goodbye to the past?

# Chapter 167 The Dragon Pearl Under the Neck

After Jiang Liu's persuasion, Chen Yulou finally mustered some courage and joined them in searching for the survivors.

In the end, of the nearly one thousand people brought by Chen Yulou and Luo Laowai, fewer than eighty remained.

Li Muxuan and Lu Jin found the alchemy furnace again, and the furnace was completely undamaged. It turned out that when the Bottle Mountain collapsed, it broke and formed an arched stone path about five meters high, which arched above the alchemy furnace. Only some dust and gravel fell onto the furnace.

This is indeed a fortunate thing.

In addition, at the site where Ping Shan collapsed, Chen Yulou and the remaining survivors discovered several large wooden boxes containing ancient Taoist scriptures.

Chen Yulou and the others didn't like it, but Jiang Liu, Lu Jin, and Li Muxuan liked it very much and took it, planning to bring it back later.

Chen Yulou has no objection.

Jiang Liu saved his life, and the iron rod, nine-foot nail, and laurel staff that Jiang Liu gave him could not repay him.

"There's a giant python!"

Just as Jiang Liu was flipping through a copy of the "Zhouyi Cantongqi," he suddenly heard someone shout. He immediately realized that one of the three evils of Ping Mountain was still a black dragon snake, so he put down the ancient book and went with Lu Jin and Li Muxuan to find the source of the sound.

From the collapsed rocks of Bottle Mountain, a large snake, as thick as a bucket and about six zhang long, with a fist-sized bulge on its neck, slowly emerged. Its eyes were lifeless and its body moved slowly, but its size was indeed awe-inspiring.

"It seems that Liu Quan was not lying. Because his spirit was entangled with the spirit of this Xuanjiao Serpent, the soul of the Xuanjiao Serpent was damaged and could not recover in a short time. Furthermore, due to the collapse of Ping Mountain, its body was also violently shaken and would be difficult to recover for a while."

Seeing that the Xuanjiao serpent's aura was weak, Jiang Liu knew that he could take advantage of the situation again.

Without a word, Li Muxuan, holding his laurel staff, plunged it into the black dragon's eye and then violently stirred it three times, turning its brain into a mess and ending its life.

Immediately, he took out a dagger, peeled open the bulge under the neck of the black dragon snake, and took out a round bead the size of a fist. He exclaimed with delight, "It really is a dragon bead!"

Jiang Liu also had some knowledge of things like dragon pearls and jiao pearls:

This pearl was transformed from the horizontal bone of the Xuanjiao serpent.

According to the legends of gods and ghosts, if a demon wants to speak human language, it must refine and destroy its crossbow bone.

But that's not actually the case. The fundamental purpose of refining the transverse bone is to obtain a human body for cultivation, not to be able to speak human language.

If a creature that has acquired Qi wants to speak human language, it is actually very simple; it just needs to imitate human pronunciation. Even ordinary parrots and mynahs can do that.

To cultivate oneself and circulate Qi throughout the body, one must press the tongue against the upper palate to connect the Ren and Du meridians, allowing Qi to circulate through the nine orifices and throughout the body.

The same reason.

Animals that have acquired Qi are also like this.

However, some animals cannot press their tongues against the roof of their mouths, thus preventing the connection between their Ren and Du meridians. For example, snakes can only use the Qi they obtain to refine a medium that allows the Qi to circulate throughout the body.

This is the origin of snake pearls, dragon pearls, and serpent pearls, and it is also why ancient books often describe "dragon pearls under the neck" rather than "dragon pearls in the belly"—the dragon pearl is located under the neck because it is a tool used by dragons and snakes to help them move around the universe.

If one were to disembowel a creature, the most valuable items that could be obtained from snakes or dragons would be snake gallbladders and dragon livers.

The dragon pearl taken from the neck of the black dragon snake is the medium through which it circulates its Qi, and therefore can be considered a natural magical artifact.

effect?

It's about transmitting Qi!

The dragon pearl, in its purest form, cannot enhance the strength of any superhuman, nor can it accelerate their cultivation. After all, human cultivation doesn't require this dragon pearl to assist in connecting the Ren and Du meridians, unless that person's Ren and Du meridians are severed or congenitally incomplete. In that case, it could be used as a medium, but one would have to carry around this dragon pearl for life, engaging in performance art—

Ok?

Thinking of this, Jiang Liu was stunned. He inexplicably thought of the murals and sculptures of gods and immortals in temples. Putting aside all the meanings, just looking at the images, they all seemed to be performance art.