「Three days later, Stone Marrow Pavilion」

The silent basement. No, more accurately, it was the cellar beneath the basement.

This broken cellar, though only about ten square meters, had taken Huai Shi, even with his physical strength and various tools, over three days to dig. He had only completed it yesterday.

The inferior air purifier buzzed, slowly delivering fresh air down, yet it failed to dispel the claustrophobic stuffiness. Instead, the atmosphere grew even more irritating.

Beneath the flickering, dim yellow light, Huai Shi, wearing a mask, emotionlessly raised the emerald-green syringe in his hand and stepped towards the corner.

There, the bound raven struggled frantically, trembling, fear stark in its eyes.

"Honestly, your help has been indispensable to me until now, but reaching this point today was truly unexpected..."

Huai Shi clutched its neck. The syringe pierced down, and the emerald poison was slowly injected into its chest cavity. "Have a good journey, my dear friend."

In the blink of an eye, the raven rapidly withered.

It was as if it had weathered for decades; in an instant, it became dehydrated and shriveled. The poisonous Source Substance rose like mist from the dried-up corpse, quickly dissipating into the air.

Huai Shi stared at it with pity in his eyes for a long time, then mercilessly tossed the raven's corpse into the trash can in the corner.

Looks like it was a success.

He turned around to look at the raven standing on the table. "What do you think?"

"I said, you're just testing a drug. Can you not make such a production out of it?"

The real Raven glared at him. To be honest, Huai Shi wasn't even sure if she was truly a raven, but she certainly looked like one.

"Testing drugs is one thing; you actually bought so many ravens on purpose, didn't you!"

"Anyway, since I had to test the drugs, why not choose an animal that would make me a bit happier, right?" Huai Shi looked deeply at the trickster in front of him, "As for why the test subjects look a bit like you, you're thinking too much. It's just a coincidence."

"Wow, that scumbag tone of yours. You're no longer the innocent and cute Little Huai Shi."

"...So who do you think is to blame for this!"

The two bantered as they climbed the ladder out of the cellar. After closing the door below, Huai Shi passed through a disinfection chamber and several sets of sterilization equipment before finally returning to the basement of Stone Marrow Pavilion.

The entrance to the cellar was now strictly sealed off by multiple layers of physical isolation.

It was, in effect, biohazard-level containment.

Upon returning to the basement, Huai Shi's first action was to approach the corner. He looked at the wooden bottle, carefully placed in the center of the temperature-controlled cabinet.

Or rather, the Jug of Tree Blood.

The wood grain and scars on it were now completely different from when he had first brought it back. The numerous faces had shifted and overlapped, eventually forming a single three-dimensional face strikingly similar to Huai Shi's, as if carved directly onto the surface. It was already 80% similar.

If Huai Shi hadn't watched it transform day by day, he himself would never have believed it had formed naturally.

"It's almost ripe."

Raven gave the bottle a cursory glance and nodded slightly, "Continue watering it every six hours. It should enter the final stage tonight."

Huai Shi shrugged and pulled out a knife, slitting his own wrist.

Blood, thick with negative energy, flowed slowly from the wound. It dripped into the Jug of Tree Blood, filling the cup-like recess before gradually seeping into the wood's texture.

Amidst the subtle sounds of growth, Huai Shi could even see his own likeness on the bottle changing, bit by bit.

It looked more and more like him.

This was the item Raven had mentioned, crucial for Huai Shi's advancement.

"Rather than advancement, it's more like an adjustment beforehand," Raven said mysteriously, "You see, sometimes when you want to smuggle yourself out of Africa, you need to think of more ways..."

"Smuggling? What smuggling?"

Huai Shi became alert subconsciously. "You're not talking about switching Genealogies, are you?"

"'Switching Genealogies' is perhaps too strong a term... emmmmm, how should I put it... Let me think."

After a moment of contemplation, Raven explained, "By now, you already know that the so-called Abyss Genealogy is actually the Heavenly Kingdom Genealogy, originally established by the Astronomical Society. But in reality, the Astronomical Society members are merely processors, not creators. You understand that, right?

"No miracles come from nothing. Even if the Astronomical Society is incredibly powerful, so formidable that they can restart the world a dozen times, endlessly overturn the law of conservation of matter, and recreate Qian and Kun, they still cannot create true 'miracles' from thin air."

"Isn't that a miracle in itself?" Huai Shi asked.

"Alright then, let's have another basic lesson."

Raven paused for a moment, then said seriously, "Strictly speaking, among Scholars, the term 'miracle' doesn't describe supernatural phenomena created by Deities or other inconceivable events. Instead, it specifically refers to Transformations that are transcendent, existing above the laws of the mundane world. These are directives and prototypical phenomena that flow directly from the World Axis.

"Of course, many of these originate from the God Spirits who were born along with the world. But there's still a portion... that doesn't belong to the God Spirits' domain. You understand?"

Huai Shi understood some of it, but he found the topic particularly strange. It felt as if Raven was hiding something from him, yet he also sensed he was on the verge of understanding.

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