The next night, Zhou Ming ascended into the night sky once more.

The night wind blew from the direction of the Northern Territory, dry, cold, and biting, causing Zhou Ming's dark blue robes to flap and snap in the air.

The lights of the Imperial Palace grew smaller beneath his feet, gradually turning into a few scattered pieces on a chessboard, before being finally swallowed by the thick, black night.

Zhou Ming hovered above the clouds and spread his Divine Sense to its full extent.

The siege of Shunning City, the wrap-up in Yunzhou—every war fought by Empress Su Mingyue was accompanied by the large-scale fracturing of the Causal Chain.

The resulting torrents of mana washed over Zhou Ming's Nascent Soul time and time again.

Now, the range of his Divine Sense had expanded from the forty kilometers it covered when he first formed his Nascent Soul to over fifty kilometers.

A radius of fifty kilometers—a full hundred li—encompassing mountains, rivers, villages, and cities; everything was laid bare in clear detail within Zhou Ming's perception.

After Zhou Ming returned last night, he thought about it more. A Phoenix descending from the heavens alone was not enough; he needed to add something else.

He then recalled the auspicious stone discovered in the Luo River before Wu Zetian declared herself empress in the history of his previous life.

This was a classic case; according to historical records, the effect at the time was immediate.

Therefore, Zhou Ming also wanted to find a stone.

It could not be an ordinary stone.

It had to be large enough, heavy enough, and shocking enough to awe people's hearts.

It had to weigh at least ten thousand jin.

A giant stone that ordinary people could not carry, general machinery could not move, and even the strongest Martial Artist in the world could not budge by a single fraction.

Only a giant stone that exceeded the limits of human strength could make everyone believe that it had not been moved there by human hands, but had descended from the heavens.

With Zhou Ming's current cultivation at the Nascent Soul Stage, lifting a giant stone weighing tens of thousands of jin was no different from lifting a stone weighing a mere hundred jin.

Zhou Ming flew slowly through the night sky, his Divine Sense spreading out over the land below like an invisible, giant net.

The outlines of mountain ranges emerged in his Divine Sense, one after another, sweeping past the mountains surrounding Yuyang Commandery, crossing the foothills of the Western Mountains, and following a tributary of the Wuding River all the way south.

He saw many giant stones.

Some were embedded on the edges of cliffs, some were half-buried in riverbeds, and others stood alone on desolate slopes.

But either they were not large enough, their shapes were not round enough, or the quality of the stone was problematic.

After searching for half the night and flying two or three hundred kilometers, he finally found a stone that satisfied him in the depths of the mountains more than three hundred kilometers away from Yuyang Commandery.

The stone stood quietly in the very center of a valley.

Surrounded by green mountains on all sides, the cliff walls were covered with gnarled old vines, and there was a dried-up creek bed at the bottom of the valley, paved with pebbles.

The stone stood at the end of the creek bed, perfectly round, like a giant egg abandoned in the valley by a Heavenly God.

The surface of the stone was smooth, washed clean of all dust by the rain throughout the years, and the moonlight shining upon it cast a faint, greenish glow.

Zhou Ming landed beside the stone and patted its surface with his palm; it felt as cold as iron to the touch.

He estimated in his mind that this giant stone weighed at least several tens of thousands of jin.

Zhou Ming did not move to carry it immediately. Instead, he let his mana surge from within, and a purple-gold light flowed from his palms, spreading along the surface of the stone and wrapping the entire giant rock in layers.

Once wrapped in mana, the ten-thousand-jin stone trembled slightly, emitting a very low, deep hum.

Zhou Ming took a deep breath, exerted both his Divine Sense and mana, and let out a low shout.

"Rise!"

The ten-thousand-jin stone slowly floated up from the ground.

The pebbles in the creek bed trembled from the aftershocks of the mana, and the soil beneath the stone was uprooted, revealing a pit several feet deep.

The stone, weighing tens of thousands of jin, hung in mid-air before him. The moonlight filtered through the purple-gold halo surrounding the stone, casting a huge shadow on the ground.

Zhou Ming then slowly lowered the giant stone back to its original position.

He couldn't just move it away now; the characters hadn't been carved yet.

Zhou Ming released his Flying Sword. The pitch-black, lusterless blade left only a faint afterimage under the moonlight.

He hovered directly in front of the giant stone, using his Divine Thought to control the Flying Sword as a pen, and carved into the round stone surface.

When the sword edge cut into the stone surface, it produced a crisp chiseling sound, and stone chips fell down in a rustle.

Zhou Ming did not carve quickly; every stroke was extremely steady and deliberate. Where the sword passed, the stone surface yielded, and the marks were several inches deep.

In a short while, eight large characters were deeply carved into the stone.

"The Sun and Moon occupy the sky; the Kun and Yuan unite in virtue."

Zhou Ming sheathed his sword and hovered in mid-air, examining these eight characters.

"Sun and Moon" makes "Ming," directly pointing to the name of Empress Su Mingyue without stating it outright. The sun and moon traversing the sky is an astronomical phenomenon, naturally carrying a sense of mystery.

"Kun Yuan" is taken from the commentary on the Kun hexagram in the I Ching: "Great is the Kun Yuan, from which all things originate."

Kun represents Earth, Mother, and the virtue of gentleness, while "uniting in virtue" secretly aligns with the ancient logic of the resonance between Heaven and humanity.

The rise of a ruler must be met with corresponding Heavenly virtue; the Sun and Moon suspended above the Kun Yuan is a sign of Heaven and Earth bearing witness together, and the union of Yin and Yang.

There was no need to carve another word; the meaning was already conveyed.

In the future, great scholars skilled in the study of prophecies would naturally interpret it word by word for him.

After Zhou Ming finished carving the characters, he used his mana to wrap the giant stone again.

This time, he did not hesitate. He transformed into a streak of purple-gold light, carrying the ten-thousand-jin giant stone as he flew toward Yuyang Commandery.

The giant stone traveled silently through the night sky, carried by his mana as it swept past mountains and rivers, the moonlight causing the eight large characters on the stone's surface to flicker in and out of the light.

To the west of Yuyang Commandery lay a remote mountain gully, where a few dozen households were scattered at the bottom, forming an inconspicuous little village.

A dam spanned across the top of the gully. No one knew when it had been built, but although it was somewhat dilapidated, it still held a full reservoir of water.

Zhou Ming chose this place; the center of the dam was the ideal placement point.

When the day came for the dam to release water, the water level would drop, and the giant stone would slowly emerge from the water to be seen by everyone with their own eyes.

A ten-thousand-jin giant stone appearing out of thin air in the center of the dam was certainly not something that could be moved there by human power.

Other than a descent from the heavens, there was no other explanation.

Zhou Ming slowly lowered the giant stone into the water.

The water surface was pressed into a huge depression by his mana, and water splashed all around, making a dull sound in the night.

Zhou Ming controlled the speed of the descent, letting the giant stone gently touch the silt at the bottom of the dam without splashing too much water.

The round, giant stone of tens of thousands of jin sank steadily to the bottom, and the eight large characters on its surface were submerged by the murky reservoir water.

Only a few slowly spreading ripples were left on the water surface, and after a moment, the ripples dissipated.

The water surface returned to calm, and the moonlight once again covered the dam, looking exactly as it had before, as if nothing had ever happened.

Zhou Ming hovered over the dam for a while, scanning the area for several miles around.

He had not disturbed anyone, nor had he left any traces.

The schools of fish in the dam had been startled for a moment, but they were already beginning to gather again, swimming blankly around the giant stone.

Nodding, Zhou Ming turned and ascended into the clouds.

Returning to Wuying Hall, the horizon was already faintly whitening.

He landed silently in the back hall, returned to his room, sat cross-legged, and reviewed the night's actions in his mind from beginning to end.

The auspicious Phoenix was hidden in a cave in the Western Mountains, and the giant prophetic stone tablet was submerged at the bottom of the dam.

Now, all that was missing was the timing for the auspicious omen to appear in the world.