Chapter 006: The Arrival of Opportunities

The characters on the stone tablet were vigorous and powerful, each stroke seemed to contain a profound mystery. Lin Jiu only glanced at it for a moment before feeling dizzy and getting a headache.

She couldn't even bear to look at the inscription on the stone tablet.

Turning away, Lin Jiu didn't dare to try the water in the spring, and she couldn't help but complain in her heart about how far this abandoned place was from the imaginary fairyland or paradise she had in mind. She pushed open the door of the small building.

The interior of the small building looked to be about thirty to forty square meters. Apart from a cushion on the ground, there was nothing else on the first floor.

After looking around, Lin Jiu then went upstairs. The second floor looked more like a study, with various portraits and inscriptions hanging on the walls. Neatly arranged on the ancient bookshelf were several bamboo slips. There was a simple small table with a shiny white round stone and a jade bottle on it, and nothing else.

This was not just a simple space... Lin Jiu's heart was pounding like thunder, and she was so excited that she was sweating on her forehead. She was afraid that she had accidentally stumbled upon a great opportunity.

Lin Jiu quickly walked to the portraits on the wall, hoping to find some clues from the inscriptions. But soon, Lin Jiu was dumbfounded.

The inscriptions on the wall were similar to those on the stone tablet outside. Lin Jiu stared at them for a long time, and only then did she confirm that most of the inscriptions were in small seal script, and she couldn't even read a sentence with her guesswork.

Solutions are created by people. Lin Jiu took out her phone and took a picture of the large amount of small seal script inscriptions, then concentrated and silently recited in her mind.

When she opened her eyes again, Lin Jiu was tightly holding two jade beads in her hand, and in front of her was a mirror reflecting her own appearance. Even her shocked expression couldn't be suppressed.

She had made it.

Lin Jiu took out her laptop from her suitcase. There was no internet cable in the courtyard, so she could only use her phone's hotspot to go online.

Lin Jiu painstakingly translated each character on Baidu until evening, when she finally understood the meaning of those inscriptions.

In ancient times, there were many powerful beings, and a cultivator ascended to become an immortal while traveling through the three realms. He accidentally discovered this treasure and named it "Xiao Xian Yuan."

Later, this immortal was wrongly banished to the mortal realm, and his cultivation greatly declined. He passed away after a few years, leaving Xiao Xian Yuan abandoned in the mortal realm. The portraits on the wall were all former owners of Xiao Xian Yuan, and each inscription represented their life stories.

After reading through one of the inscriptions, Lin Jiu was able to infer the rest. Each portrait represented a legendary story, symbolizing the birth, growth, and eventual downfall of a genius.

Lin Jiu held her laptop, her throat dry, and her heart beating rapidly without stopping. Yes, she had truly obtained a great opportunity. This was not just an ordinary storage space... Well, Lin Jiu still hadn't figured out exactly what it was.

But since it mentioned the immortal realm... could she really cultivate immortality?

In the first twenty-five years of her life, plus the five years of the apocalypse, Lin Jiu had been studying and working obediently, enduring the oppression of the Lin family. She had almost no obvious hobbies or preferences. In one word, she was bored. The most fantastical thing that had happened in her life was the arrival of the apocalypse and her awakening of supernatural abilities.

From childhood to adulthood, she had never spent much energy on things she "didn't need." Life forced her to be practical.

She didn't love online literature, serious literature, or spending time watching short videos. As a salesperson, she couldn't even guarantee her sleep time. She could be considered a rare oddity in this entertainment-obsessed era.

Even the concept of "blood contract" was something she had only learned about from a colleague who loved fantasy novels. So now, Lin Jiu was full of questions, but there was no one to answer them for her.

She barely managed to finish reading the introduction of the origin of Xiao Xian Yuan, but that was just the origin. As for how to use it, she would have to figure it out herself.

This felt like being given an iPhone 18 and being told it had amazing functions, but refusing to be given the manual.

Stumbling and struggling, she continued to read. Finally, at the end of the first inscription, Lin Jiu extracted some practical information.

The round stone on the second floor table was a spirit-testing stone, capable of detecting spiritual roots. The jade bottle contained marrow-cleansing pills, and the words "refine bones, burn tendons" and "failure leads to ashes" were particularly prominent.

After translating the entire first passage, Lin Jiu returned to Xiao Xian Yuan and hesitated for a whole hour in front of the jade bottle on the second floor table.

Deep down, she was still a coward. Was this a great opportunity or just a space with no further changes? It all depended on Lin Jiu's thoughts.

For someone who just wanted to live well in the apocalypse, being discouraged by the prospect of failure was normal.

Actually, rather than saying that Lin Jiu had a heart-wrenching grudge or a bone-chilling hatred, she felt more powerless in her mediocrity.

Whether or not to seek revenge, hatred would fade with time, but mediocrity was a label she would have to bear for a lifetime.

This was an opportunity, a gamble. If she won, the future would be bright and brilliant; if she lost, there would be nothing left.

Once the idea of taking a gamble arose, it was hard to extinguish. This life was like a freebie for her, so what was there to fear?

With the rogue idea of "not afraid to go barefoot," Lin Jiu picked up the jade bottle from the table and opened it, then poured the pills into her mouth. One, two, three... The three pills the size of small peas dissolved in her throat, and a refreshing herbal fragrance filled her lungs.

Thank goodness they weren't expired...

Wait, why were there three pills?

Lin Jiu, who was eager to take a gamble, and Lin Jiu, who took medicine without reading the instructions and being cautious, immediately tasted the bitter fruit.

If the pain caused by one marrow-cleansing pill is like tearing one's heart and lungs, then the sensory experience brought by three marrow-cleansing pills can elevate a person to a whole new level. Even though Lin Jiu had experienced the pain of being devoured by zombies, it was not even half as excruciating as the marrow-cleansing process.

Collapsed on the ground, Lin Jiu felt as if her body was being filled with fire, with every capillary in her body bursting open one by one, oozing out a mixture of fresh blood and black impurities from her skin. Every breath she took made her acutely aware of the sharp pain of her lungs being torn apart, making her unusually clear-headed amidst the extreme agony.

While one marrow-cleansing pill might make a person unable to endure the pain and give up, the consequences of three pills were to experience the excruciating pain of the body being torn apart while remaining conscious, unable even to bite her tongue to end it all.

Lin Jiu didn't even have the strength to close her eyes, staring blankly at the top of the small building, thinking that she had probably stumbled into this by accident.

There was no day or night in the Small Immortal Source, and Lin Jiu had no idea how much time had passed before she once again regained her senses beyond the pain, feeling as if she were lying in a foul-smelling mud pool.

She had washed too vigorously. Lin Jiu endured her nausea as she crawled out of the mire, only to be pleasantly surprised to find that the second floor had expanded by a whole circle, with the bookshelves increasing from one to two, and the scrolls on them noticeably enriched.

However, this was not her current focus.

Wobbling to her feet, Lin Jiu felt as if she had just been pulled out of a sewer, emitting a stench that could travel for miles. She muttered about her sins as she dragged herself downstairs, leaving dirty marks all over the small building.

The old house had no water heater, so she had been boiling water to bathe for the past two days, but now she simply didn't have the energy.

Her entire body felt as if her muscles were being torn open and hastily healed, with every cell screaming that life was worse than death. She hoped the outside area had expanded, and that the spring could be larger, enough to wash away the dirt from her body.

Arriving downstairs with dragging legs, Lin Jiu's eyes lit up as she saw that the area, originally the size of two basketball courts, had expanded by a whole, and the inscription on the stone tablet next to the spring had also become hidden.

It seemed that she had truly embarked on the path of cultivation after her marrow-cleansing, and the person who had originally inscribed the stone tablet was undoubtedly a real immortal, with each stroke containing profound rules that she, as a novice, had no right to comprehend.

The spring seemed to have emerged from underground, forming a three-foot-square stone pool around it, and the originally narrow stream had widened into a shallow creek, flowing through the land in front of it and ultimately converging into a deep pool in front of the white mist.

A continuous stream of fresh water flowed into the bottomless pit-like deep pool, neither too much nor too little.

Considering that she would inevitably need to use the spring water from the Small Immortal Source in the future, Lin Jiu, in order not to dig a pit for her future self, managed to crawl to the edge of the deep pool and plunged into the pool of faintly green water.

The moment she entered, circles of black dirty water seeped into the pool from her body, instantly making the clear pool stink. Lin Jiu quickly stripped off her dirty clothes and threw them out of the Small Immortal Source, then happily washed herself in the water.

The temperature in the Small Immortal Source was pleasant, and the cool pool water immediately soothed Lin Jiu's numbness after enduring unbearable pain. Then, one after another, a strange force began to converge towards Lin Jiu, eagerly entering her body.

"Ugh..."

Fully filled with the force, Lin Jiu simply floated in the water, allowing her body to absorb it at will. When the absorption was almost complete, the dirt on her body also disappeared, and the pool water became clear again.

Cleaned up, Lin Jiu emerged from the Small Immortal Source to find that her body felt significantly different.

Her steps were light, her limbs filled with strength, and the heavy wooden box that she could barely lift before could now be easily lifted with one hand. Although she didn't have myopia, her vision had become much clearer...

Closing her eyes, Lin Jiu could even hear the bustling sounds from the village over fifty meters away.

Putting on some clothes at random, Lin Jiu eagerly entered the Small Immortal Source again.

Having endured what she needed to, the next step was probably to practice according to the bamboo slips on the small building, right? This time, Lin Jiu had brought a few pieces of cloth and a bucket, as there were more arduous tasks waiting for her in the small building.

When Lin Jiu entered the small building, the expected stench did not appear, and all the traces had disappeared into thin air, leaving the small building spotless.

Lin Jiu breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that the small building, like the pool, could clean itself automatically, saving her from having to relive her foolish act of taking three pills.

Taking a deep breath, Lin Jiu walked to the table and placed her hand on the spirit-testing stone.

The spirit-testing stone could detect spiritual roots and cultivation, but testing cultivation required the infusion of one's own spiritual power. As Lin Jiu was a novice, she didn't even know how to sense spiritual power, let alone release it externally. Therefore, she could only temporarily test her spiritual root attributes.

In her previous life, Lin Jiu had awakened water-based abilities, so her spiritual roots should also be mainly water-based...

The snow-white spirit-testing stone lit up with two streams of light, one water-blue and the other silver-white. According to the information on the wall, Lin Jiu discovered that she had dual water and ice spiritual roots. Although it was not a pure single spiritual root, it was still within the same system, not much different from a single system.

Lin Jiu had originally prepared for the worst-case scenario of having five-element spiritual roots, so she was pleasantly surprised at this moment.

With space and opportunity, her chances of surviving in the apocalypse would greatly increase. She not only wanted to stay alive, but also to live a high-quality life in the apocalypse!

Lin Jiu, who was eager to confirm this idea, walked to the bookshelf to find a suitable cultivation method. Soon, she discovered a problem - the characters on the bamboo slips were mostly in small seal script, which she couldn't fully recognize!

The thought of being a "illiterate" on the path of cultivation made Lin Jiu want to cry. There was no electricity or internet in the Little Immortal Source, and she didn't have the courage to take photos and go online to find someone to translate. It was more appropriate to go buy reference books.

After silently leaving the Little Immortal Source, Lin Jiu pinched her nose and threw away the dirty clothes she wore during cultivation. She opened her phone and saw 18 missed calls, and then checked the date - November 7th. It had been four days since she discovered the Little Immortal Source.

One of the missed calls was from Li Zhaoyang, another was from Lin's mother, and the rest were all from delivery services and one unfamiliar number.

Li Zhaoyang...

Lin Jiu checked her bank account on her phone and saw an extra 70,000 yuan in her balance, but he wanted her to call back... Lin Jiu was not unaware of Li Zhaoyang's intentions, but she considered them to be from completely different worlds, and she had never thought deeply about it.

She quickly sent a message expressing her gratitude, and at the end, Lin Jiu couldn't help but remind Li Zhaoyang again not to go out and to prepare some food. There was nothing else she could do, so she considered this a small favor returned.

As for her mother's call, Lin Jiu directly deleted the call log. She missed the delivery calls, so they should have been left at the delivery point. As for the unfamiliar number...

Oh no, she forgot to pick up her "customized" weapon!

Lin Jiu hurriedly put on her coat, and before leaving, she hastily glanced at the mirror. Then, Lin Jiu's casual gesture of pulling her hair stopped.

The woman in the mirror was her, but also not quite like her.