“Damn it, tomorrow I must talk to those three girls about the rent. Just because they're beauties, does that make them special? Even beauties can't live in my house for free, right? I used to live in that shabby little room, and it was only five hundred a month. Living in a villa like this, shouldn't it be at least a thousand a month? That would mean a steady income of three thousand a month, and after deducting electricity and property fees, there should still be something left.”

James Carter finally set his sights on the house, and on those three beauties. With so many rooms in this house, if he rented them all out, it seemed like he could make quite a bit each month. When the New Year comes, even if he loses the right to use it, he wouldn't really be at a loss, and could still make a little extra. Yes, that's what he'll do—when he gets the chance, he'll put up an ad.

As James Carter was thinking about how to make use of this villa, he suddenly felt something strange in his chest. A small area suddenly felt very hot. Instinctively, he touched his chest and found that the jade pendant, which had felt cool during the day, was now burning hot.

“Aren't jade pieces supposed to be cool? Why did it suddenly get hot?” James Carter muttered to himself, just about to take off the pendant, when his chest suddenly hurt. Then, something extremely bizarre happened—the round jade pendant actually began to slowly burrow into James Carter's chest.

“There's a ghost!” James Carter cried out in shock, frantically grabbing at the pendant, trying to pull it out of his chest. But the pendant was slippery, and after a couple of failed grabs, it had already completely disappeared into his chest. Then his body went numb, as if he had been electrocuted.

James Carter was completely stunned. The pendant could actually burrow into a person's skin like a worm—this was beyond imagination. But he didn't even have time to think about it, because his head suddenly throbbed with pain, as if something was being forcibly stuffed into his brain. James Carter began to suspect that the pendant was now drilling into his head, but his body was completely paralyzed—he couldn't even move a finger, let alone react in any way.

Chapter 17: The Alchemy Sutra

“No way, I just became a millionaire, and now I'm about to die? Uncle, are you screwing me over?”

“Beauties, come save me! I shouted so loudly just now, you can't tell me you didn't hear me?”

That was James Carter's last thought before he passed out.

When James Carter woke up again, it was already past ten at night. When he fainted, it wasn't even completely dark yet—barely eight o'clock. He had been out for more than two hours. Fortunately, after moving his arms and legs a bit, he didn't feel any discomfort. His chest felt exactly the same as before, making James Carter wonder if he had just had a nightmare. But the jade pendant had truly disappeared without a trace.

“Alchemy—enter the Dao through alchemy! Focusing on qi is time-consuming and laborious; focusing on pills leads to an unstable foundation. Using pills to assist qi cultivation leads to great achievement.”

As he was pondering the matter of the jade pendant, a sentence suddenly popped into his mind, startling James Carter. He looked around—he was still on his own balcony, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“The Alchemy Sutra: nourish qi with pills, achieve mastery of qi; refine pills with qi, achieve mastery of pills. They complement each other, with endless wonders!”

James Carter's hair stood on end. The first sentence he could have dismissed as a fluke, but the second made it clear—these words were appearing out of nowhere in his mind.

But James Carter didn't feel any physical abnormalities, which made him breathe a sigh of relief. Suddenly, an excited thought welled up in his heart.

James Carter didn't have many hobbies, but reading web novels was one of them. That old second-hand computer was used for reading novels ninety percent of the time. Reality was too harsh, so he found his fun in novels. He had read plenty of cultivation and fantasy stories, and now he felt that what he was experiencing was a bit like the plot of some novel. Could it be that he had encountered some powerful figure who hid their spiritual consciousness in the jade pendant, and he had obtained it by accident?

Taking a deep breath, James Carter tried to calm himself down. Immediately, more words like before appeared in his mind, and these turned out to be a kind of cultivation method called the Alchemy Sutra.

However, because the amount of knowledge was so vast and the later parts were extremely obscure, James Carter temporarily ignored them, but he did manage to understand quite a bit of the earlier sections.

It was actually a profound cultivation technique that used pills to assist in becoming an immortal. Every stage and every level had pills to aid the process, and in the end, one could become a legendary immortal. There was a dedicated Alchemy Sutra for cultivation, as well as various methods for refining pills.

This was a real treasure! James Carter was so excited he almost shouted out loud. Afraid he might forget, he quickly reviewed the knowledge several times. But soon James Carter realized he didn't need to worry, because this knowledge had already taken root in his mind—he couldn't forget it even if he tried. Whenever he thought about it, the relevant knowledge would appear.

By now, James Carter was completely convinced, his face beaming with excitement. He never expected that the jade pendant would turn out to be such a treasure. If he could really cultivate immortality, even if he couldn't ascend to the immortal realm or live forever, at the very least, on Earth, nothing could stand in his way.