Chapter 39: Zhou Ming Loves Reading. Zhou Ming followed Dongmei toward the inner courtyard. The servants, guards, and maids they encountered along the way bowed respectfully at first, but as soon as he passed, they huddled together, covering their mouths and snickering.

One little sweeping maid laughed so hard she bent double, barely able to keep her broom steady.

Two guards lowered their voices and muttered after he passed.

One of them colorfully described how he had personally seen Steward Zhou being fished out of the latrine, his legs still kicking wildly in the air.

Zhou Ming was now a Foundation Establishment Stage Cultivator, and though his Divine Sense could only cover a ten-meter radius around him,

his senses were sharp, and these whispers drifted into his ears without missing a single word.

He walked forward expressionlessly, cursing those two servants up and down in his heart several times over.

Entering the Flower Hall of the inner courtyard, he found himself in the same spot as yesterday.

Empress Su Mingyue sat before a yellow pearwood table, sipping a cup of tea, with Chunlan and the others standing in attendance at her side.

After Zhou Ming stepped forward to bow and greet her, Empress Su Mingyue raised her hand to signal him to begin, and he continued the story from yesterday.

Zhou Ming cleared his throat and began recounting the scene with Guo Jing and Huang Rong in the Iron Spear Temple.

Wanyan Honglie had taken Bao Xiruo hostage to force Yang Kang to submit. Yang Kang struck Huang Rong's Soft Hedgehog Armor with a palm strike, only to be poisoned by snake venom. He rolled back and forth on the ground, his face contorted beyond recognition.

Having finished this segment, he went on to tell of Genghis Khan drawing his bow to shoot the condor, and Guo Jing traveling thousands of miles to Xiangyang.

Finally, he reached the second duel on Mount Hua, where Hong Qigong and Ouyang Feng embraced in the snow and both drew their last breaths. In the end, the two Grandmasters, one righteous and one evil, ended up taking each other down.

Of the Seven Freaks of Jiangnan, only Ke Zhen'e remained. Meanwhile, Guo Jing and Huang Rong rode off side by side, leaving behind a Jianghu filled with swirling yellow sands.

After the story finished, the Flower Hall fell silent for a long time.

Empress Su Mingyue remained silent for a long while before raising her eyes to look at Zhou Ming, asking a seemingly casual question, 'How many of the books in the Library have you read?'

Zhou Ming's heart stirred slightly.

This question was clearly not asked on a whim.

When he was telling 'the legend of the condor heroes,' in order to graft the story onto the context of this world,

he had, intentionally or otherwise, slipped in quite a few place names and historical allusions he had come across in the Library.

Empress Su Mingyue had clearly picked up on this as well.

She didn't ask, 'Did you read them in the Library?' but rather, 'How many have you read?'

This showed she had already assumed the source material for these stories came from the Marquis's Residence's Library, and she simply wanted to know how deep Zhou Ming's knowledge ran.

'Replying to Eldest Miss, I have not read much, barely over half.'

Zhou Ming replied with his head bowed, his face unreddened and his heart steady.

In truth, he had only been going to the Library for a few days; how could he possibly have read half of it?

He was merely establishing a persona for himself as someone who 'loves reading.'

These stories he told had to have a source, even if he had made them up.

He needed to show he had some ink in his belly, and the Library was his best cover.

Fortunately, his predecessor really had read quite a lot, which the Eldest Miss also knew. Although it wasn't practical statecraft like military strategy, he had dabbled a bit in poetry, songs, and the various schools of thought.

'I didn't expect you to be such an avid reader.'

Empress Su Mingyue's tone carried no hint of praise or criticism, but she leaned forward slightly.

'I see you also have quite some insight into the battles between the two armies in your stories. Very good.'

'Replying to Eldest Miss, these are just some historical anecdotes this servant read in history books, combined with my own wild fabrications. They are not fit for respectable presentation.'

Zhou Ming quickly lowered his posture; now was not the time to show off.

Getting exposed was no laughing matter. He still didn't know if his current strength was enough to keep him alive in this world, so it was better to keep a low profile and lay low.

'I see...' Empress Su Mingyue pondered for a moment, her index finger lightly tapping the tabletop.

'From now on, you may also enter the third floor of the Library to read the books, but you must not share what you read with outsiders.'

Zhou Ming looked overjoyed and quickly bowed. 'Thank you for your grace, Eldest Miss.'

He didn't know what kind of books were on the third floor of the Library, but since the Eldest Miss had specifically warned him not to share them, the contents inside were bound to be precious.

The first floor of the Marquis's Residence's Library held introductory readings and ordinary classics and histories, while the second floor contained poetry, songs, and the teachings of various schools of thought.

As long as the stewards of the Marquis's Residence were literate to a certain degree, they could borrow books from these two floors.

But the third floor, according to his prior understanding, was accessible only to the masters of the Marquis's Residence and a select few others.

Now that the Eldest Miss had granted him this privilege, it was not only a reward for his storytelling, but also a form of recognition.

This way, any stories he told or remarks he made in the future would have a plausible source.

Empress Su Mingyue waved her hand, and Zhou Ming tactfully took his leave.

It was already midday by the time he left the inner courtyard.

Zhou Ming hastily ate lunch, gave Liu Sandao a few instructions regarding the Kitchen, and plunged straight into the Library.

He climbed the stairs to the third floor and pushed open the heavy wooden door bound in copper.

A unique scent of aged scrolls mixed with mothproofing herbs washed over him.

The space on the third floor was smaller than he had imagined, only half the size of the lower two floors, but the books on the shelves were indeed far more numerous and precious than those on the first and second floors.

Most of the volumes here were manuscripts, their paper yellowed with edges stained in varying shades of tea-color by time.

Some were even written on silk, carefully rolled into scrolls and kept in sandalwood boxes.

He casually flipped through a few volumes; there were works on military strategy, official and unofficial histories, rare editions of various schools of thought, and even some Incomplete Manuals of banned books from previous dynasties.

Outside, any single one of these items would have scholars fighting tooth and nail over it.

With his currently powerful Divine Soul, a sweep of his Divine Thought imprinted every single character on the pages clearly and flawlessly into his mind.

Sitting at the desk by the window, he memorized as he flipped, turning the pages as fast as autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves.

Over the course of the afternoon, he flipped through no fewer than a hundred books.

From the 'Seven Military Classics' to the 'Geographical Records of the Nine Provinces,' from the 'Records of Youzhou Border Defense' to the 'Study on the Evolution of the Great Xia Official System.'

All of them were engraved word-for-word into Zhou Ming's mind.

Closing the final book, Zhou Ming rubbed his slightly throbbing temples and walked out of the Library.

Returning to his room at night, Zhou Ming sat cross-legged on his bed as usual, sinking his consciousness into the Causality Web at the center of his brow.

Then, he froze.

He saw that the Causality Web, which had grown somewhat sparse due to the war, was beginning to grow dense once more.

And this time, the scale was more astonishing than ever before.

In just a single day, it had increased by hundreds of thousands, nearly a million phantom figures.

Those phantom figures densely covered his entire range of perception, still spreading outward from the edges at a speed visible to the naked eye.

It was as if someone had sown seeds in the most fertile soil, and overnight, a boundless carpet of sprouts had burst forth.

Zhou Ming sat in the darkness, remaining silent for a long moment.

A million phantom figures in a single day—this was not something a single faction could achieve, nor was it something that could be driven by the decision of just one person.

The scripture had somehow been spread on a massive, frantic scale in a way he was completely unaware of.