From Under One Person: Sincere Journey Through the Heavens

Lin Jiu gave the order, and noticing Hua Jie's corpse and the other motionless bats, he instructed Wen Cai to burn them as well, lest anything go wrong.

"Uncle Jiu, let's search this dilapidated church again to see if there are any other strange corpses or items left behind. If there are, let's burn them all to prevent anyone else from finding this place and causing any more danger in the future," Jiang Liu suggested.

"Alright."

Lin Jiu agreed, and together with Jiang Liu, they searched the church and found a door leading to the cellar.

The two exchanged a glance, opened the cellar door, and entered. They found a secret room with few furnishings, including a square stone bed and a bookshelf.

Lying on the stone bed was a female corpse, exactly like the vampire, with red eyes, sharp teeth, and withered skin, looking like a dead tree.

Seeing this, Lin Jiu picked him up without saying a word, ran out, and threw him into the fire.

Jiang Liu walked to the bookshelf, took down a yellowed book, opened it, closed it immediately, and sighed, "It seems I need to relearn foreign languages."

At this moment, Lin Jiu came down again, took a book from the bookshelf, flipped through it, and glanced at the dense tadpole-like characters. He also felt a headache coming on and said, "Do you recognize the characters on it?"

"I know a small portion of the words, but if you asked me to translate—"

Jiang Liu was somewhat embarrassed. "I can only guess and make assumptions, and the final content may be completely different from the original meaning."

"Then take it back to Tingting to see. Didn't she study abroad? She should be able to understand the words on it."

In fact, Lin Jiu's first thought was to burn the book as well, but then he thought again and realized that they couldn't be too resistant to Westerners' cultivation methods.

It wasn't for the sake of practicing Western methods, but because the foreigners had already used cannons to open the gates of the Qing Dynasty. In the future, those Westerners might also enter China and cause conflict with these native foreigners... Most Westerners look down on the Chinese, and most Westerners will certainly look down on them as well.

We must be vigilant!

Understanding the methods of Western supernatural beings will enable you to have countermeasures should you encounter conflicts with them!

The saying "Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated" perfectly illustrates this principle!

After the bodies were burned to ashes and no trace remained, Lin Jiu nodded in satisfaction and told Wen Cai to go back and inform the others. He then went to the Ren family with Jiang Liu and the books.

The Ren family's business plummeted after the death of their patriarch, and they lost ties with many wealthy families. However, this also meant that Ren Tingting, the current head of the household, was no longer as busy as Ren Fa had been in the past.

Now, the ironworks that the Ren family built elsewhere is managed by Xiu Huabai and is back on track. The local pottery factory has been sold to other merchants, and the money was used to open a clothing factory. Ren Jiating herself is a clothing designer who personally designs men's and women's clothing that combines Western simplicity with Eastern traditional charm.

When Jiang Liu and Lin Jiu arrived at the Ren family home with that pile of foreign books, Ren Tingting happened to be returning from the clothing factory in town and quickly invited them inside.

After learning their purpose, Ren Tingting flipped through the books and said to the two, "Most of them are classics, not really related to Western cultivation, such as: *The Wizard of Oz*, *Master Barrett*, *Treasure Island*, etc..."

She looked through the books for a while before finally finding a copy of "Alchemy" and a copy of "The Philosopher's Stone" among the many books.

Among them, "Alchemy" describes the basics of alchemy, which requires understanding the classification of materials and potions. The method of cultivation is similar to what Jiang Liu had guessed before. Instead of going through the Three Gates and Nine Apertures and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, it uses a certain method to construct magic circuits to cultivate magical energy. Complex magic circuits can construct alchemical arrays and create alchemical items for use.

The Philosopher's Stone depicts the use of alchemy to create items that grant immortality and the ability to turn lead into gold.

However, no alchemist throughout history has succeeded in creating the Philosopher's Stone. The Philosopher's Stone they created could not grant immortality or turn lead into gold, but it was still an excellent alchemical item that could greatly enhance magical effects and could even be used to inscribe alchemical runes.

However, the creation of the Philosopher's Stone is quite complicated, and even powerful alchemists and magicians find it difficult to create it perfectly.

"Western methods are really strange. Instead of using the body's natural meridians to open up acupoints and circulate Qi, they construct additional pathways for Qi circulation..."

Lin Jiu frowned, having finally come to understand the difference between Qi cultivation and alchemy, but he had little clue how to deal with the Western superhumans who might confront them in the future.

The path of Qi cultivation is characterized by a diverse array of abilities, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, but its essence lies in internal self-cultivation and a focus on life itself. In contrast, the path of alchemy appears to be more about external tools, emphasizing the power and effectiveness of external practical abilities.

It's really hard to say which is better or worse.

Moreover, based solely on this basic alchemy manual and the instructions for crafting the Philosopher's Stone, he could roughly deduce that most Western supernatural beings were adept at using alchemy to create artifacts...

These should be different from the magical artifacts they use; they're easier to refine and can be produced in larger quantities.

These are all the results he can come to at this point.

"Tingting, I'd like to trouble you to translate all the contents of these two books into our language. I need to send them to our sect as a precaution," Lin Jiu instructed.

“No problem, Master, I’ll finish translating tonight,” Ren Tingting assured her.

"No need to rush, you can translate it whenever you have free time."

Lin Jiu didn't want his third disciple to be too overworked, so he quickly changed his mind.

"Don't worry, Master, these two books don't contain much information. We can finish them in one night." Ren Tingting smiled slightly and took out a notebook from the books, saying, "This seems to be the notebook that Franzuhas kept after practicing 'Human Transmutation'?"

"What's written inside? Sister Tingting, could you read it?" Jiang Liu wanted to understand why Franzuhas and Arthur had stepped into the taboo of human transmutation.

If possible, he also wanted to know how many of the "golden branches" left by the sacred tree were preserved in Europe after they drove the sacred tree and its people out, and what kind of experiments the Western supernatural beings conducted with those "golden branches"!

vampire--

This may just be one of the results of Western supernatural beings' research on the remains of the sacred tree.

Let me see...

# Chapter 189 Zhuogu Spring Well——

The handwriting is a bit messy...

Ren Tingting flipped through the notes page by page. "The content is not very coherent, it's like a collection of random thoughts, I just wrote down whatever came to mind... I'll read it first, and then I'll summarize it."

Fortunately, the notes were not long, and Ren Tingting finished reading them in just one hour. After sorting them out in her mind, she left the room and found Jiang Liu, who was taking advantage of this time to ask Lin Jiu about the Taoist division of the Twenty-Eight Mansions in the courtyard.

"The content is roughly as follows—"

Ren Tingting then revealed the summary: "Franzohas and Arthur came to Renjia Town to open a church and become priests, ostensibly to prove their loyalty to the church and spread the faith of God, but in reality, they were practicing a forbidden technique in alchemy: human transmutation."

Jiang Liu had already guessed this.

Ren Tingting continued, "Originally, they were just using vampire bats for experiments, but then something happened that forced them to quickly begin human experiments."

Their mutual friend, or rather, lover, a woman named Maeve, came looking for them.

Maeve, Arthur, and Franzohas were monks who entered the church in the same batch. Supporting each other through numerous adventures, they developed feelings for one another. However, both Arthur and Franzohas were mindful of the other's feelings and never confessed their love to Maeve…

Maeve came to them because she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness called 'cancer'.

"Kanse?"

Lin Jiu was puzzled.

"Um···"

Ren Tingting thought for a moment, unsure how to describe it.

Jiang Liu, however, knew the meaning of the word, cancer, and said to Uncle Jiu, "It should be a disease similar to 'accumulation,' 'massage,' 'esophageal obstruction,' or 'malignant sores.'"

In the traditional Chinese medicine system, this type of illness is caused by insufficient vital energy, stagnation of qi and blood, accumulation of phlegm and dampness, and internal accumulation of toxins.

Considering that Western alchemists do not cultivate life force, alchemy, even if it is not the forbidden method of transmutation, still involves frequent contact with various metallic materials, leading to long-term heavy metal poisoning and affecting the balance of the five internal organs.

The idea that the poisonous evil is lurking within seems plausible.

“Then let’s use ‘malignant sores’ as a substitute,” Ren Tingting continued. “Maeve, who had malignant sores, was beyond medical help. After coming to us, she was already on the verge of death within three to five days.”

Left with no other choice, Arthur and Franzohas took out the remains of the Tree of Life to begin their research, thus stepping into the taboo of human transmutation.

They succeeded!

However, perhaps influenced by previous research on vampire bats, they have also developed characteristics similar to bats—red eyes! Sharp teeth! And they also have the added disadvantage of being afraid of light, unlike vampire bats!

After the success, Arthur wanted to be more cautious, but Franzohas was unwilling to wait. He took Maeve to a secretly constructed church and began human transmutation experiments on her, hoping that she could recover.

But just as he completed the human transmutation of Maeve, Arthur came to him and expressed his concerns:

The fragments of the divine tree are peculiar. Originally devoid of any life, they began to grow by absorbing the flesh and blood of the inhabitants, constantly assimilating their consciousness... One day, they will lose all consciousness and become vampire monsters with twisted heads and tails.

At this point, Ren Tingting abruptly stopped, "That's about it. The rest of the text was too illegible to read, so I suppose that Franzuhas had gradually lost his human consciousness. However, it was mentioned at the end that Arthur was researching how to condense and extract the alchemy from the remains of the divine tree that grew with their flesh and blood, in order to ensure that they would return to normal."

Jiang Liu is now confirmed!

Sister Hua must have gone to the church outside Renjia Town and obtained the alchemy manual that Arthur had placed elsewhere in the church, such as in the bedroom. Only then could she use her own Qi and blood to complete the final alchemy at the last moment of her life, extracting the golden branch of the divine tree that had been reborn in the vampire's body, and intending to use it to trick herself.

Fortunately, he had innate supernatural abilities to help him, and he used the "Eight-Nine Arcane Arts" to refine his life and death as lead and mercury, forcing out the spreading golden branches and threads. Otherwise, he might have really become the nourishment for the resurrection of the divine tree!

However, he also benefited from the misfortune. Not only did he receive the title of one of the Five Gods and complete the process of self-cultivation and sincerity, but he also truly embarked on the path of cultivation. Furthermore, he recorded the situation of the golden branch attaching to the flesh and blood tissue of the human body when it turned into fine threads. In addition, he obtained the basic methods for constructing magic circuits and alchemical array patterns. If he has the opportunity in the future, he may be able to further improve his cultivation path by resetting the nodes and replicating the scene that the fine threads once attached to his body with Qi.

After all, Jiang Liu also follows the "borrowing" approach in his cultivation. Anything useful, not conflicting with his own, and even able to compensate for his own shortcomings, he naturally takes and pieces it into his own cultivation system.

Is the world incomplete?

Is it beyond human capability?

Whatever!

He can simply remove the name of Nuwa and make up for it!

"Sister Tingting, thank you for telling us all this. Based on what we've experienced, we can now piece together the truth of what happened afterward," Jiang Liu said gratefully.

"No need to be so polite, aren't we friends?" Ren Tingting smiled sweetly. "Besides, you've helped me a lot, I don't know how to repay you."

"We are all cultivators, there is no distinction between you and me, why thank me?" Jiang Liu smiled, then he and Lin Jiu bid farewell to Ren Tingting and headed to the mortuary.

After resolving the issue of the "Western zombies," Jiang Liu and the others did not immediately bid farewell to Lin Jiu. Instead, they stayed for two days until the well was completely filled with water before preparing to leave.

Looking at the endless stream of clear spring water gushing from below, Lin Jiu finally breathed a sigh of relief and said to Jiang Liu, "Judging from the terrain, as long as it doesn't encounter an earth dragon turning over, this well can last for at least a thousand years. Why don't you give it a name?"

"name?"

Jiang Liu pondered for a moment and then said, "The reason for digging this well is that the streams and rivers near Renjia Town have been polluted by bats. How about calling it the Cleansing Spring Well to cleanse the filth from the streams? What do you think, Uncle Jiu?"

"Row!"

How could Lin Jiu not know that the name Zhuogou Spring came from "Journey to the West"? But what Jiang Liu said was indeed apt, so let's call it that!

After Jiang Liu and his group left, the wellhead was completed, and a stone tablet was erected beside it, inscribed with the three large characters "Zhuogou Spring." Behind the tablet was another inscription:

In the summer of 1924, an epidemic broke out in Renjia Town. Lin Jiu, a Taoist priest from Shangqing Maoshan, investigated and discovered that a demon was causing trouble, releasing bats into the river and polluting the water source…

Fortunately, with the help of four extraordinary individuals—Jiang Liu, Lu Jin, Li Muxuan, and Hong Guniang—and the assistance of Ren Jiating and Ren Tingting from Renjia Town, the evil spirits were eliminated! Renjia Town was restored to peace!

After Lin Jiu selected a site to dig a well, the extraordinary Jiang Liu named it after the characters "濯垢" (wash away dirt) from the Journey to the West.

Clear spring water, sweet and invigorating!

Cleansing the body brings purity, and so does the mind!

# Chapter 190 Return to the Territory of the Three Ones Sect