I changed the world.

This was the aftereffect of overexerting himself yesterday. It seemed his body was still too weak; he needed to increase his exercise. Zhang Jing sighed inwardly. He picked up his phone and checked the time; it was six in the morning. Since transmigrating to this world, he had maintained a good habit of going to bed early and waking up early, and his biological clock had already adapted to this schedule.

After getting out of bed, Zhang Jing did some simple joint exercises to loosen up his body, which relieved some of the soreness. Afterward, as usual, he first cleaned the chamber pot, and then went to fetch water to wash up.

After washing up, Zhang Jing decided to go out to buy breakfast. His body, which was in the recovery period, still needed some nutrition. Zhang Jing remembered that there was a breakfast stall selling meat buns not far from his home, and the taste was quite good.

Stepping outside, Zhang Jing looked up at the sky. It was still overcast, but the red glow that had illuminated the western horizon had vanished, suggesting the volcanic eruption was likely over. However, judging by the current weather, a heavy rain might be on the way.

As he walked forward, lost in thought, he heard what sounded like mournful cries coming from not far away, accompanied by the faint chanting of scriptures. Curious, Zhang Jing followed the sound, walking along the side alley and turning a corner. Ahead lay the tailor shop where Zhang Jing had previously had his clothes repaired. In the distance, Zhang Jing saw a group of people gathered there, discussing something; many of them were neighbors living nearby.

As Zhang Jing approached, he saw a small shed made of white plastic sheeting erected in front of the tailor shop. A large black character "奠" (meaning "offering") was pasted on the shed, and the chanting was already quite clear, indicating that Buddhist monks were performing rituals inside.

"Uncle Jiang, isn't this Aunt Yu's tailor shop? Who passed away here?" Zhang Jing approached and observed for a while before asking a middle-aged man he was somewhat familiar with.

"They said Aunt Yu passed away suddenly last night." The man sighed and shook his head. "You know, people are so fragile; they're perfectly fine and then they're gone...sigh..."

Zhang Jing's heart sank. He silently stared at the white shed, listening to the soft sobs coming from inside. He clearly remembered the scene a few days ago when he went to Aunt Yu to have his clothes mended. Having lived here for so many years, he was quite familiar with Aunt Yu. Sometimes, if a button fell off, Aunt Yu would readily mend it for him, without charging him. Thinking of this, he couldn't help but sigh.

“Jing-ge’er, if you have no taboos, you should also go and light some incense. As neighbors, consider it a final farewell to Sister Yu,” Uncle Jiang said, seeing Zhang Jing’s somber expression.

"Yes, yes." Zhang Jing nodded upon hearing this, straightened his clothes, and stepped into the mourning tent in front.

The girl kneeling on the ground in mourning clothes in the mourning hall to thank her relatives and friends was Aunt Yu's daughter. She was a very capable girl in the past. After graduating from junior high school, she worked at home to help support the family. At this moment, she was kneeling there and bowed or kowtowed when people came in. Otherwise, she just cried.

Standing on the other side was Yu's husband, his face blank and ashen. For him, Yu's death meant not only the loss of his devoted partner, but also a huge change in the family's financial situation. For this honest and taciturn middle-aged man, it was an extremely heavy blow.

After taking the incense offered by him, Zhang Jing bowed three times before the altar. He then stepped forward and inserted the incense into the incense burner. After thinking for a moment, he took out a 100-yuan bill and handed it over.

"Uncle Yu, please accept my condolences."

"Too much, too much, this is unacceptable..." The man instinctively tried to refuse the money as soon as he saw it. After all, his family and Zhang Jing were only nodding acquaintances. In the poor areas, when giving money for a funeral, 10 to 30 yuan was usually enough. After all, no one was well-off, and only very close relatives would give more.

Zhang Jing didn't say much, and stuffed the money into the man's hand: "Sister Yu is gone, but you still have many places to use the money. We're all neighbors, so don't refuse."

"This... Xiao Lan, please thank your elder brother Zhang."

Xiao Lan, who was standing to the side, whispered her thanks and then bowed deeply. Zhang Jing quickly reached out to help her up.

........................

After bowing to the father and daughter once more, Zhang Jing bid them farewell and left the mourning hall. This was the first time since he came into this world that someone he knew had passed away, and he was indeed deeply moved.

For some reason, a line from a novel he had read in his past life inexplicably flashed into his mind:

"Even if you possess a thousand spells and ten thousand supernatural powers, I will only ask one question: 'Can one attain immortality?'"

........................

Chapter Sixteen: Strange Script?!

After leaving Aunt Yu's house, Zhang Jing first went to a breakfast stall and bought a few meat buns to eat with beef vermicelli, and then returned to his rented room.

Sitting down at his desk, Zhang Jing opened his phone, accessed his photo album, and retrieved the text he had taken yesterday in front of the skull in the cave. He then picked up paper and pen and carefully traced the characters in the photo, striving for perfect accuracy.

It took Zhang Jing about twenty minutes to copy the text onto paper. Undoubtedly, it was a script he didn't recognize, but judging from its shape, it should be a pictographic script rather than an alphabetic script.

As a traditional culture enthusiast in his previous life, Zhang Jing was naturally familiar with the evolution of his country's writing system. As for the script that looked vaguely familiar, coupled with his guess about the origin of the skeleton, Zhang Jing guessed that it was very likely a script that had been used and spread in ancient times.

Speaking of ancient writing, the writing in this world is quite similar to that in Zhang Jing's previous life. As the mother of Eastern culture, the writing of the Great Zhao has evolved in a continuous line since ancient times, from pictographs to oracle bone script to bird-and-insect script to seal script to clerical script to running script to regular script, with a clear chain of inheritance.

Many characters written after seal script are actually quite similar to modern characters. And characters written after clerical script, unless they are particularly obscure, are generally understandable to an educated modern person.

Therefore, Zhang Jing decided to focus on pictographs, oracle bone script, and bird-and-insect script first. Even the bird-and-insect script, which is the closest to modern usage, is at least 1000 years old. Fortunately, thanks to the development of archaeology and epigraphy, coupled with the excellent preservation of traditional culture, there are many scholars in the Great Zhao Kingdom who study or are interested in ancient scripts, and their research on ancient scripts is far more in-depth than in Zhang Jing's previous life.

Zhang Jing searched online and found a table comparing ancient and modern Chinese characters that someone had compiled and posted online. It has to be said, this is the convenience of the internet age; twenty years ago, he might have had to go to the library to find relevant monographs.

After some investigation, bird-and-insect script was ruled out; Zhang Jing couldn't find any matching characters. He then turned his attention to divination script…

This time, the results came quickly. About half an hour later, his excitement was confirmed; the text was indeed written in oracle bone script. This script got its name from a batch of ancient inscriptions, suspected to be oracle bone texts, accidentally discovered during an archaeological excavation a century ago. Current research suggests that oracle bone script possesses a well-structured writing system capable of clearly expressing the meaning of an article. Thanks to advancements in cryptography, some commonly used words in this script can now be deciphered.

After about an hour of translation, Zhang Jing had mapped out all the text that could be translated. Although some text could not be translated due to the lack of a corresponding table, the general meaning was clear.

"A great calamity struck suddenly. The grotto-heaven was attacked by the evil god's kin. The disciples fought desperately to cover the retreat, and Yu barely escaped with his life, fleeing to this place. His wounds flared up, and he knew his time was coming to an end. However, he could not bear to see the lineage of the sect cut off, and he would be ashamed before the ancestral masters..."

The entire text is about a hundred words long, with less than ten words that cannot be translated. However, these can be roughly guessed from the context and therefore do not affect the reading experience. This should be the last words written by a cultivator who calls himself "Yu." The entire text is filled with self-blame and despair, which makes Zhang Jing feel sorry for him as he reads it.

"Cave Heaven," "Evil God," "Dharma Lineage"... Zhang Jing pondered these words, his mind churning. He realized that the quagmire he had stirred up seemed to be deeper than he had imagined...

Setting down the paper in his hand, Zhang Jing took out the jade pendant he had just received yesterday. Now, under the lamplight on his desk, he could examine it more closely. The pendant was made of green jade, and its quality was clearly excellent—oily, dense, and cool to the touch. One corner of the pendant had a black stain, whether natural or formed from blood droplets over time, he couldn't tell. The front of the pendant was carved in relief with a traditional-style palace building, while the back had four characters, also in divination script.

Zhang Jing consulted the character list and translated the four characters, which were "Lishan Cave Heaven".

It seems that the so-called opportunity should lie in this jade tablet, but how can one obtain it? Zhang Jing reached out and stroked the two characters "Dongtian" on the jade tablet. In the culture of Dazhao, "Dongtian" generally refers to the famous mountains and scenic spots where immortals live in the Xuanmen sect. There is even a saying that there are ten famous mountains in Dazhao.

Based on the farewell letter he had just translated, Zhang Jing guessed that the so-called "grotto heaven" probably referred to a place where a sect cultivates.

So, could this jade pendant mean...? Zhang Jing had a guess in his mind.

He stood up; before the experiment, he still needed to make some preparations. Zhang Jing put on his mountaineering clothes, hiking boots, tactical knife, and other equipment from yesterday, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and then picked up the jade pendant again.

In fact, there weren't many testing options to choose from. Based on his experience reading online novels in his previous life, Zhang Jing chose what he considered the most likely option: blood dripping!

Zhang Jing used a dagger to poke a small hole in his index finger, squeezed out a drop of blood, and dripped it onto the jade pendant.

The blood that fell onto the jade pendant was absorbed as easily as water droplets on a tissue. Immediately, Zhang Jing felt a strange connection form between himself and the jade pendant. Then, in the next instant, a powerful suction force came from his hand. Zhang Jing was startled, feeling as if he were being pulled towards the pendant by an irresistible force…

In just two or three seconds, Zhang Jing's rented room was completely empty, with only the desk lamp emitting a soft glow.

........................

Chapter Seventeen: Mysterious Ruins

"Huff, huff..." Zhang Jing gasped for breath as if he had just woken up from a nightmare, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

In that instant, he felt himself being violently dragged in by an irresistible force. Immediately afterward, the surrounding space collapsed and shattered into countless colorful fragments. The crystalline shards scattered in all directions, glowing and swirling, their speed gradually slowing until they were completely frozen in nothingness. At that moment, time seemed to stand still.

He stood in the empty, dark void, yet he did not fall. He had sensation, sight, and hearing, but he could not control even the smallest muscle in his body. The half-uttered scream he hadn't finished was also stopped in his throat. In those brief seconds, he felt a suffocating oppression.

Suddenly, the scattered, glass-like fragments began to move again, reaching unimaginable speeds in an instant. Their own crystalline light formed countless swirling rays, like a chaotic storm, sweeping across the entire dark and void space.

As the light slowed down again, it rearranged to form a clear scene, but it had a shimmering quality, like looking through water. The shimmering eventually stopped, and then Zhang Jingcai regained control of his body. It has to be said, this experience was not pleasant.

He was now in the ruins of an ancient building complex. Everywhere he looked were collapsed pavilions, dilapidated halls, and crumbling walls, reminding him of the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan Fountain that he had visited in Beijing in his previous life.

However, the buildings here are obviously much older than those in the Old Summer Palace, and it is unknown how long they have existed. Zhang Jing can see that some of the exposed wooden structures have almost been petrified.

The place where Zhang Jing was standing should have been a plaza or similar area, with a surface paved with some kind of hard stone. Zhang Jing stomped his foot hard, but it didn't shake at all; it was exceptionally solid. However, this seemingly solid ground was covered with marks that looked as if it had been cleaved by a knife or axe. Some of the marks were so deep that they seemed to have sunk into the ground, almost cutting the entire plaza into several pieces. There were also some huge craters, as if they had been hit by heavy bombs, the cause of which was unknown.

On both sides of the square are some collapsed buildings, one of which is a tower-like building that has been cut in two, as if it had been cleaved by some sharp blade.

On the ground lay scattered skeletons, now reduced to mere bones. Some of these skeletons were humanoid, while others resembled bizarre monsters. Zhang Jing was certain these were not creatures from Earth. The skeletons of these creatures were mostly grotesque, covered in bone spurs and similar structures. Unlike Earth creatures, whose bodies generally exhibit symmetrical beauty, many of these creatures appeared as if pieced together, displaying unusual deformities.

Zhang Jing looked up at the sky, which was a purple night sky with a bright moon hanging high. A dazzling Milky Way stretched across the sky, which was beautiful and breathtaking. It was a starry sky that gave him a sense of transparency. He could reach out his hand as if he could touch the starlight. It was completely different from the night sky he was used to seeing in the city.

The ruins were dimly lit, clearly indicating that it was still nighttime.

Zhang Jing clearly remembered that it was already daytime before he came here. Therefore, he could guess that this place was probably not in the same world as Linzhou, or at least not in the same time zone.

The surroundings were completely silent, a stillness as if everything had frozen in time, save for the occasional gentle breeze. Zhang Jing raised his hand, turned on the compass function of his watch, and saw that the compass needle was spinning aimlessly at a constant speed, as if there were no magnetic poles here.

With his palms slightly sweaty, Zhang Jing cautiously surveyed his surroundings while instinctively lowering his body. He drew his tactical dagger, held it in his hand, and carefully explored forward, keeping his steps light.

Because of the light from the stars and moon, Zhang Jing was able to see his surroundings clearly after his eyes adjusted. Therefore, he did not take out a flashlight to shine on them, in order to avoid disturbing any potential dangers.

Wandering through the ruins, one can occasionally see skeletons lying among them. The strangely shaped architectural ruins cast bizarre shadows, creating an eerie and terrifying atmosphere in this quiet environment.

Zhang Jing tried to walk as quietly as possible, suppressing his breathing, and cautiously making his way through the area, remaining highly vigilant. He would stop every now and then to scan his surroundings.

After passing through a patch of collapsed building ruins that obscured the view, Zhang Jing came to an open area. By the starlight, he could roughly make out a stone platform in front of him. It was trapezoidal, wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, and about three or four meters high. Zhang Jing guessed that it might have been a place for performing some kind of ceremony or for speaking to a crowd.

Zhang Jing tiptoed up the stone steps and looked around. By the starlight, he observed that the buildings were built against the mountainside. From his vantage point, he could see vast forests on the distant mountains, covered with some unidentified plants. The mountain wasn't high or particularly steep. Zhang Jing was currently halfway up the mountain; the summit was several tens of meters higher, and from there, he could still see some other buildings.

After a moment's thought, Zhang Jing decided to go up and take a look first. So, he went down the stone platform and headed towards the top of the mountain.

Stepping out of this plaza area, a wide stone staircase ascends the mountainside. The staircase connects to one end of the plaza, where there used to be a huge, finely carved stone archway. However, it has long since collapsed, and the massive stone plaque has fallen to the ground and broken into several pieces.

The stone steps were also broken in many places, and occasionally one could see the skeletons of humans or monsters lying there. Zhang Jing carefully went up to examine one of the human skeletons. Perhaps due to the long passage of time, their clothes had all weathered away, but judging from their white jade-like bones, they were definitely not ordinary humans.

Zhang Jing continued upwards without encountering any attacks, but the sight of numerous skeletons with varying deaths only heightened his vigilance. Along the way, he examined several more human skeletons. Most of these skeletons had jade-like bones, with some having silvery parts, or even being entirely silver, reminding Zhang Jing of the silver skeleton he had once seen on Yuxian Mountain.

About twenty minutes later, Zhang Jing arrived at a huge mountain gate-shaped building. The building was separated from the outside by stone walls about four meters high on both sides. There were three huge doorways in the middle. However, the building was half collapsed, and the stone walls on both sides had almost completely collapsed.

Chapter Eighteen: The Discovery of the Sutra Repository!

The collapsed gate completely blocked the path in front of the stone steps, so Zhang Jing had to climb over it. He observed the area for a moment, quickly chose a spot, and crawled over using both his hands and feet.

However, to his surprise, after climbing two steps, perhaps due to the passage of time, a stepping stone under his feet shattered into several pieces, and one of the pieces rolled down the slope, down the steps, and further down...

"Bang...tap...tap...tap...tap...tap...tap...tap..." The sound of stones hitting the steps was exceptionally clear in the quiet night, and even sounded jarring to Zhang Jing's ears.

His heart pounded wildly, and Zhang Jing instinctively bent down, crouching in place, afraid to move, while carefully looking around.

Fortunately, he waited in place for about five minutes and did not find any danger approaching, so he stood up again and continued forward.

After climbing over the collapsed mountain gate, a circular building stood ahead. When intact, it somewhat resembled the structure of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which Zhang Jing had seen in his previous life. However, half of it had now collapsed. Several other tower-like buildings nearby were also broken, with piles of rubble scattered all over the ground.

Passing by the ruins of these towers, Zhang Jing was greeted by a horrifying scene. The ground abruptly ended there, and in front of him was a steep and precipitous cliff. The entire mountain looked like a mooncake with a bite taken out of it. Judging from the surrounding architecture, Zhang Jing guessed that something might have once existed here, but it was destroyed along with half of the mountain.

Zhang Jing was now at the summit, arguably the highest point in the area. From this vantage point, he could see a much wider vista than when he was halfway up the mountain. He noticed that the land he was on was actually a huge oval-shaped island. Topographically, the island was low around the edges and rose towards the center. His current location was on the ridgeline at the center of the island.

Zhang Jing roughly estimated that the island was not very large in terms of area. His initial estimate was that it was similar to Manhattan Island in his previous life. Apart from the ruins, most of the island was covered with various plants, giving it a lush and verdant appearance from a distance.

Beyond the island, a vast fog blanketed everything, obscuring the view of the outside world.