A super thin little booklet—just nine pages. Flip it back and forth and you get eighteen illustrations, not a single word of explanation. The little figures in the pictures aren’t even doing anything especially hard. Sure, if you’re a desk-bound office worker or a hardcore homebody, you might struggle, but anyone with a bit of athletic ability or decent muscle flexibility could pull off these poses.
Honestly, there’s nothing mysterious about these poses at all.
A book hidden this carefully can’t just be some ancient gymnastics manual, right? So what’s the real deal with these pictures?
"Wait, are you supposed to... move?" Jill Young suddenly remembered that old kung fu flick, ‘Martial Champion Beggar So,’ where the secret technique only works if you flip through the pages really fast—like one of those early animation flipbooks—to unlock the final move.
"I think I’ve cracked the code—move, move, move!" She flipped through the pages at lightning speed—absolutely nothing happened. Not a single magical effect. Those eighteen illustrations seemed sort of related, but also totally random. No clue what’s going on.
"Alright, I surrender to this book..." Jill quietly packed it away, put it back where she found it, dusted off her hands, and pretended she’d never seen it. She’d found weird stuff in treasure chests during Reliable Adventure before—like that time with the Jade Pearl—so getting a book she couldn’t make sense of didn’t faze her at all. "Okay, time to go find that little kid. Tonight’s main quest is still on!"
Jill Young walked over to the window, sniffed left and right, then whoosh—leapt straight out. Those eighteen pictures? Already forgotten. The Shaolin Archives? Left in the dust. This dark, silent, unguarded place, full of priceless secret manuals, wasn’t enough to make her stop.
But what she didn’t know was, right after she slipped away, a new figure appeared in the empty Shaolin Archives—the mysterious old monk. He seemed to have watched everything, but didn’t react or try to stop her at all.
He opened the secret compartment again, took out the ancient book, and muttered to himself, "Both the Muscle-Tendon Changing and Purification techniques are here, but she only found the Purification Manual—must be fate. This Purification Manual is Saint Damien’s original handwritten copy. Only someone with a pure, childlike heart can truly understand it. Watching her actions, there’s something interesting about her. And that strange stone... Well, if it’s meant to be, she’ll get it. If not, she’ll forget it. Everything’s up to fate."
He walked to the window, gazed in the direction Jill Young had gone, and said in a calm, all-knowing voice, "She’s probably reached the Elixir Lab by now." To avoid being found, the mysterious old monk waited a bit longer, guessed the timing was right, and then slipped away through the window without a sound.
Totally clueless that someone was spying on her or tailing her, Jill Young followed the scent all the way to another cluster of buildings. This place was just as secluded, dark, and empty—pretty much the farthest corner of Shaolin Temple, almost bumping up against the outer wall. The architecture looked super old-school, but the buildings were big and fancy.
"What is this place?" Jill looked around, totally baffled. "Not even a sign on the door?"
Seriously, when she wandered around the whole Shaolin Temple earlier, places like Damien Hall, Wisdom Hall, and Zen Heart Hall at least had a sign. But this pitch-black, silent spot didn’t even have that—definitely suspicious.
"Why would anyone bring a kid to a place like this? Trying to scare the poor thing to death? Good thing this is Shaolin Temple—if it were out in the wild, this creepy building would be perfect for filming a horror flick like 'A Chinese Ghost Story.'" Jill’s doubts grew, but she still strode right in. The moment she entered, a super strong smell hit her. Hundreds of different scents mixed together, forming a familiar aroma—just like a traditional herbal medicine shop.
"So it’s a pharmacy, huh."
She walked along, peeking left and right, and saw that the place was packed with medicinal herbs. Cabinets lined both sides of the corridor, each little drawer stuffed with all kinds of Chinese medicine. Everything was sorted and organized—pretty much every herbal remedy you could think of was here, plus loads she’d never even heard of.
Bringing a kid to a pharmacy? Don’t tell me they’re treating him like Tang Monk’s flesh and tossing him into the furnace in the Elixir Lab...
As she kept walking, the stuff on both sides started to change—from raw herbs to finished medicines.
Jill finally realized just how advanced the pharmaceutical tech was in this world. A quick glance showed at least hundreds of types and thousands of bottles of pills, potions, and ointments. The finished medicines smelled even more intense—sure, they were sealed up pretty tight, but with so many around, a little leak here and there mixed together to fill the whole winding corridor with a powerful medicinal scent.
"No wonder they’re a thousand-year-old sect—just look at these meds, you can tell they’re loaded." Jill picked up a porcelain bottle, spun it around, and saw there was no name—just a number. "What’s this, some kind of secret code for inventory management?"