Zhou Ming traveled eastward, crossing half of Liangzhou, and returned once again to the borders of Youzhou.

The land beneath his feet transitioned gradually from the barren Gobi Desert into rolling hills, before stretching out into vast plains.

An hour later, Zhou Ming halted his flight above a secluded mountain gully.

He had been to this gully six months ago.

It was exactly the place where he had submerged the ten-thousand-jin giant stone engraved with "The sun and moon hang in the sky; the Kun and Yuan unite in virtue" into the dam.

At this moment, twilight had just descended, and the last gleam of dusk was fading from the ridgeline of the Western Mountains.

Oil lamps were lit one after another in the farmhouses within the gully, their dim, yellowish light flickering sporadically at the bottom of the valley.

Zhou Ming hovered in the night sky, spreading out his Divine Sense to probe toward the distant Yongning City.

Six months had passed in the blink of an eye, and the layout of the streets and alleys within Yongning City remained the same as before.

The shop signs on both sides of Yu'an Main Street swayed gently in the night breeze.

The vermilion gates of the Prefectural Governors Mansion were tightly shut, and the two stone lions at the entrance remained silently crouching in the night.

The only change was the city wall near the direction of the Imperial Palace.

That section of the wall had been renovated; the color of the newly laid blue bricks was a shade lighter than the old wall beside it, and the arrow towers on the battlements had been replaced with new ones, their edges—not yet eroded by wind and rain—visible in the night.

His Divine Sense crossed the city wall and silently drifted into Begonia Court of the Marquis's Mansion.

On the bed in the main room of the inner courtyard, Empress Su Mingyue sat cross-legged with her eyes slightly closed, her lips moving as she recited the Dushi Sutra, word by word.

The Causal Chain above her head was several times thicker than it had been six months ago, and its density far surpassed that of the generals at the fourth level of Qi Refining on the training grounds.

In the adjacent room, Dongmei and Xiahe each occupied a bed, also sitting cross-legged, muttering to themselves.

Dongmei recited the sutra much faster than Xiahe, her brows slightly furrowed, her lips moving rapidly and densely, as if she were wrestling with the scripture.

It seemed that the drastic changes in the world's situation over the past six months had made these people feel an unprecedented crisis, prompting them to start intensifying their efforts to Cultivate the Dushi Sutra.

Zhou Ming withdrew his Divine Sense and looked down at the reservoir beneath his feet.

The dam was still the same dam from six months ago; the reservoir water shimmered with a faint, dark light under the moonlight, the surface calm and waveless, exactly as it had been when he first submerged the giant stone to the bottom.

The few dozen households scattered at the bottom of the gully were still there, the cooking smoke had long since dissipated, and only a few barks of dogs occasionally echoed in the valley.

Zhou Ming pondered for a moment and wrapped a trace of mana around his right fist.

Purple-gold light flowed between his fingers as he struck out with a fist through the air toward the bedrock at the bottom of the dam.

The fist force silently pierced through the air and slammed into the rock layer at the base of the dam with a thunderous crash. The entire dam trembled violently, and a fissure several zhang long was shaken into the bedrock at its base.

He did not blast the dam to pieces directly.

He only needed to give the villagers at the bottom of the gully a warning.

As for whether they chose to evacuate or continue sleeping soundly after hearing the loud noise, that was not something he needed to worry about.

The aftermath of the fist force was still echoing in the valley when he released his black Flying Sword.

The Flying Sword turned into a nearly invisible black light in the night sky, silently drilling into the drainage outlet at the bottom of the dam.

The tip of the sword aimed at the clay layer at the bottom of the reservoir, precisely carving out a bowl-sized hole.

An arm-thick column of water shot out from the hole, and immediately after, the water flow grew larger and larger.

The clay at the edge of the hole was peeled off block by block by the water pressure; the bowl-sized hole became bucket-sized, and the bucket-sized hole became the size of a millstone.

The murky reservoir water, carrying mud, sand, and gravel, rushed out from the base of the dam, emitting an increasingly loud roar in the valley.

In the village at the bottom of the gully, the sleeping villagers were awakened by the thunderous boom.

They threw on their outer garments, raised their oil lamps, walked out of their courtyards in twos and threes, and stood on the ridges of the fields, looking around.

Ever since Zhou Ming promoted the Pingan Sutra throughout Youzhou six months ago, these lowest-level farmers had also cultivated mana.

Although their cultivation was still shallow, their senses were far keener than ordinary people.

They soon heard the increasingly loud roaring sound of water coming from upstream.

Someone was the first to react, shouting at the top of their lungs, "The dam has collapsed!" The quiet valley was broken by the rising and falling cries of alarm.

The villagers had no time to pack their belongings; clutching their children and carrying the elderly on their backs, they ran for their lives toward the hills on both sides.

In the darkness, some fell and scrambled back up; one woman ran barefoot, having lost her shoes, and didn't even bother to pick them up; only a few dogs tied in the courtyards remained in place, barking wildly.

Zhou Ming withdrew his gaze, no longer paying attention to the aftermath at the reservoir.

He turned around, his entire being transforming into a stream of light as he headed straight for the cave on the Western Mountain outside Yongning City.

As Zhou Ming flew through the night wind, he calculated in his heart.

After the dam released the water, that ten-thousand-jin giant stone engraved with "The sun and moon hang in the sky; the Kun and Yuan unite in virtue" would be exposed before everyone's eyes once the water receded.

First there was the appearance of the Divine Phoenix, and now the giant stone had emerged from the water; with these two hints of Heaven's will layered upon each other, anyone who wasn't a fool would connect these two events.

It all depended on whether Empress Su Mingyue could seize this opportunity.

However, based on his understanding of Empress Su Mingyue, this was not something he needed to worry about.

That Young Miss had never disappointed him when it came to seizing opportunities.

Zhou Ming stopped thinking about it, collected his thoughts, and headed straight for the Western Mountain.

The Western Mountain in the night was still the same as in his memory, its steep terrain standing silently in the darkness, the winding, narrow mountain paths appearing and disappearing under the moonlight.

He found the familiar cave with ease and squeezed into the narrow entrance.

Everything inside the cave was exactly the same as when he had left it six months ago.

A thin layer of dust covered the floor of the cave, which he had leveled with his Flying Sword, and a few bats hung upside down in the rock crevices on the ceiling, fast asleep.

The air was filled with a dry, earthy smell and the faint scent of residual saltpeter.

Zhou Ming circulated his mana and waved his large sleeve, sweeping the dust out of the cave.

He took the Spiritual Plant meditation cushion out of his Storage Ring and found a clean piece of bluestone to sit on.

He took out that black Flying Sword and laid it across his knees.

This sword was the first Magical Artifact he had forged using Nascent Fire, created from two pieces of jet-black Ore he had collected from the aristocratic families of Yuyang Commandery.

Strictly speaking, it could only be considered a semi-finished product; the sword embryo was formed, and the material was hard, capable of bearing his mana without shattering.

It could fly, spin, and shuttle around as if it were an extension of his own arm under the control of his Divine Sense, but the interior of the sword body was completely empty, without even a single basic Formation pattern engraved into it.

A true Flying Sword should have a solidity Formation engraved inside to stabilize the sword body, a lightness Formation to increase speed, and a sharp-metal Formation to enhance the blade's edge.

It should also have a flight Formation to make sword-flying faster and more stable, and an attack Formation to allow the sword light to split into shadows and kill enemies from a hundred paces away.

Yet the sword in his hand could at best be considered a high-quality artifact embryo molded into the shape of a sword.

Six months ago, he knew nothing about Formations, but now things were different.

He had spent over half a year studying those Formation Jade Slips from Emperor Liu Jun's Storage Ring from beginning to end.

From the most basic sketching of Formation patterns and the arrangement of Formation eyes, to Intermediate Formation stacking and nesting, the refining of Formation Flags, and finally the borrowing of the world's momentum in Advanced Formations.

Although he was still far from fully comprehending them, he was already capable of independently setting up a few practical Formations.

The Formations required for Artifact Refining happened to be within the scope of what he had already mastered.