Seeing this scene, the shopkeeper's legs went limp, and he fell to his knees with a thud.

He knocked his forehead against the blue brick floor with loud thuds, repeatedly shouting, "Immortal!"

Yet, after kowtowing for a long time, there was not a sound in his ears; the courtyard was so quiet that only the rustling of the night wind through the branches remained.

He cautiously raised his head. The mist on the roof had dispersed, the person was gone, and even those thousand-plus books had vanished completely.

He stood stunned in the courtyard for a long while before coming to his senses, then, feeling deep regret, slapped himself twice.

"Told you not to take the Immortal's money! The Immortal Opportunity was delivered right to your doorstep, and you drove it away with your greed for silver."

While regretting this, he suddenly remembered the book Zhou Ming had asked him to copy.

He rushed into the study, spread out the original scripture again, and his gaze locked onto the eight characters on the title page.

"Read a book a hundred times, and the profound art will reveal itself."

He hugged the book, squatted on the threshold, and chuckled to himself.

Zhou Ming used his cultivation power to envelop the fifteen hundred or so scriptures as he traveled silently through the night sky.

He spent five or six consecutive nights crossing the entire territory of Great Yuan.

He distributed the books, one by one, to the influential and powerful families who held sway.

In each city, he left at least a dozen or so; in larger, important towns, he scattered more, while in remote, small cities, he left fewer as appropriate.

Most of the books were tossed directly into the deep courtyards of noble families, bypassing the layers of walls and tightly shut doors.

They either landed on desks in studies or lay on the steps of corridors leading to secret chambers.

Zhou Ming knew that individuals who found the books would often hide them away to keep the Opportunity for themselves.

This would not be conducive to the rapid spread of the scriptures, whereas noble clans, while perhaps not willing to easily make them public, naturally functioned as a network for spreading scriptures within their families.

As long as one person among them discovered the trick, it would soon quietly spread among the direct descendants.

Of course, there were always exceptions.

In the dead of night, Zhou Ming casually tossed a book into the broken bowl of a thin, frail youth who was squatting in a corner, gnawing on a cold bun.

He didn't care whether the youth was literate or not; he had given the Cultivation Technique, and whether he could master it would depend on his own destiny.

He also tucked another book into the gap of a Karma box in a local Earth Temple in a small town.

The scattered copies left for these insignificant individuals were merely casual moves made on a whim, with no expectations.

Unexpectedly, in a city in the east of Great Yuan, Zhou Ming accidentally discovered the tracks of Fang Yuan and the others.

This group had learned their lesson this time; they no longer coerced the common people to raise banners in rebellion, but instead quietly developed followers within the city, preaching in secret.

After distributing the last few books, Zhou Ming did not linger and turned to head north.

He climbed back into the night sky, flying higher and higher, as the lush, rolling land beneath his feet was gradually replaced by a dark green that was thick and impenetrable.

At the end of the northern horizon, the canopy was like an ocean, with ten thousand trees reaching for the heavens. Looking down from high above, the deep green treetops rolled on endlessly, as if stretching to the very edge of the horizon.

That was the entrance to the Endless Forest.

Without stopping, Zhou Ming flew north over the forest, his Divine Sense constantly spread out over the vast sea of trees beneath him.

The trees in the Endless Forest were completely different from the forests in the south.

Each one was so thick that several people could not wrap their arms around it; the crowns towered into the clouds, and the branches and leaves were layered and interwoven into an airtight, dark green dome.

Occasionally, birds would be startled from the sea of trees, their wings spanning over a zhang wide, the sound of their feathers breaking through the air creating low booms of Qi.

In a clearing in the forest, an unknown giant beast was lazily rolling on its back to bask in the sun; its belly was covered with thick, scale-like skin that glinted with a cold, iron-grey light in the sun.

Zhou Ming only glanced at it before looking away; the birds and beasts in this forest were at least several times larger than those in the Great Xia territory.

After flying for three or four hours, Zhou Ming estimated he had traveled at least a thousand li.

The sea of trees beneath his feet suddenly began to rise; at first, it was just rolling hills, but then the slope became increasingly steep.

Zhou Ming looked up toward the distance.

At the end of the sea of clouds ahead, a ten-thousand-zhang high mountain appeared.

It was not a solitary peak, but a towering mountain range that stretched from east to west, extending to the edge of his vision.

The mountain was entirely dark blue, as if carved from a single piece of Ore, with cliffs as sharp as if cut by a blade, and rugged ridgelines appearing and disappearing in the sea of clouds.

The highest peaks pierced through the clouds, and the snow that never melted on the summits was illuminated by the sun into a blinding silver-white.

This mountain was not a mountain at all; it was a wall.

A wall that cut off the world, slicing the forest and the world outside the mountains in half.

Zhou Ming hovered in mid-air, looking up at the mountain range blocking his path.

According to what Grand Duke Su said, crossing this should lead to the outside world where the Cultivators are.

He took a deep breath, his cultivation power circulating in his Dantian, and he turned into a streak of purple-gold light, charging straight toward the top of the mountain range.

However, just as he crossed the first ridgeline, a violent gale struck him head-on without warning.

The gale was invisible and colorless, but it felt as if an invisible wall was crashing into him with the force of a thousand armies.

It caused Zhou Ming's protective spiritual light to flicker violently, and he was sent flying backward like a withered leaf.

Zhou Ming did several somersaults in mid-air before barely steadying himself and landing back at the edge of the forest on the inner side of the mountain range.

Standing on a ridge, Zhou Ming furrowed his brows and looked ahead.

The force that had just blown him away had now vanished without a trace.

Zhou Ming spread out his Divine Sense, but found everything to be normal; his Divine Sense encountered no resistance at all.

Zhou Ming was a bit unconvinced.

He poured his full cultivation power into the Meridians of his legs, and purple-gold light surged out from the Yongquan acupoints on the soles of his feet.

He steadied himself in a Horse Stance and stepped forward, one step at a time.

Zhou Ming walked very slowly, using his cultivation power to adhere to the rocks beneath his feet with every step.

After a hundred steps, the gale appeared out of thin air again, but this time, the protective spiritual shield he had prepared in advance blocked the first wave of impact.

Zhou Ming gritted his teeth and continued to push forward.

His cultivation power roared through his Meridians, and under the continuous impact of the gale, his protective spiritual shield faded from purple-gold to pale gold, and then to a thin, almost transparent layer.

He held on for less than the time it takes to burn a stick of incense before his feet were finally lifted from the rocks by the gale.

He was blown backward again, his body like a cannonball, crashing into a boulder and causing the gravel on the rock to tumble down with a rustle.

Zhou Ming stood up from the pile of gravel, brushed the dust off his body, and began to observe carefully.

He discovered a strange phenomenon: as long as he stepped forward a hundred steps, the gale would appear out of thin air, with no warning and no blind spots.

Yet, after the gale passed, the vegetation on the ridge did not move at all.

A crooked old pine tree stood right in the center of the gale zone, and the pine needles on its branches didn't even sway.

Just now, when he was being blown about in such a sorry state by the gale, this pine tree had been standing quietly to the side, as if watching him make a fool of himself.

The plants were unaffected, but what about the wild beasts?

Zhou Ming returned to the dense forest at the foot of the mountain and caught a grey wild wolf that was gnawing on a rabbit.

The wolf was wrapped in Zhou Ming's cultivation power, its four legs dangling in mid-air as it bared its teeth and tried to struggle.

Zhou Ming carried it directly back to the ridge.

He placed the wild wolf at the edge of the gale zone and slapped a burst of cultivation power onto its rump, pushing it to run forward.

But just as the wolf ran about a hundred steps, the gale surged out again.

The wolf didn't even have time to let out a yelp before it was swept back like a piece of a tattered rag.

It rolled on the ground several times, then scrambled up, tail between its legs, howling as it fled down the mountain, running even faster than Zhou Ming when Dongmei chased him with a sword.

It was indeed a Formation.

But the problem was that he knew nothing about Formations, let alone breaking them.

He was completely in the dark about where the edges of this Formation were, where the core was, how it was triggered, or how to avoid it.

There was no other way; he could only use the clumsiest method.

Zhou Ming followed the mountain range to the west, testing every hundred steps, searching inch by inch.

He flew west, clinging to the ridgeline, stopping every so often to extend a foot into the gale zone.

The gale would appear on time each time, with uniform force and consistent direction, like an invisible curtain precise to the millimeter.

He tried dozens of times, from noon until sunset, as the sun sank ahead, dyeing the sea of clouds on the west side of the mountain range into a surging gold and red.

Zhou Ming stood in the twilight, the foot he had extended again blown back by the gale.

Withdrawing his foot, Zhou Ming looked at the ten-thousand-zhang high wall beneath his feet, gilded in gold and red by the setting sun, and remained silent for a long while.

I'll try again tomorrow.