If you die, I will be able to inherit your cultivation.

Zhou Ming traveled eastward, passing through half of Liangzhou, and returned to Youzhou territory.

The land beneath our feet gradually transitions from barren Gobi desert to rolling hills, and then stretches out into a vast plain.

An hour later, Zhou Ming stopped in the air above a remote mountain gully.

He had been to this mountain valley six months ago.

It was at the spot where he sank the massive boulder, inscribed with "The sun and moon shine brightly, the earth and the universe unite in virtue," into the dam.

It was just getting dark, and the last rays of twilight were fading from the western ridgeline.

Oil lamps were gradually lit in the farmhouses in the mountain valley, their dim yellow light flickering sporadically at the bottom of the valley.

Zhou Ming hovered in the night sky, spreading out his divine sense to explore the distant Yongning City.

Half a year has passed, and the layout of the streets and alleys in Yongning City remains unchanged.

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

The vermilion gates of the prefectural governor's mansion were tightly shut, and the two stone lions at the entrance remained silently crouching in the night.

The only change was to the city wall near the palace.

The city wall had been renovated; the newly laid blue bricks were a shade lighter than the old wall next to it, and the arrow towers at the crenellations had also been replaced with new ones, their ridges still untouched by wind and rain visible in the night.

His divine sense crossed the city wall and silently entered the Begonia Garden of the Marquis's Mansion.

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

The causal chain above her head was even thicker than it had been six months ago, and its solidity far surpassed that of the generals at the fourth level of Qi Refining on the training ground.

In the side room next door, Dongmei and Xiahe each occupied a bed, sitting cross-legged and muttering to themselves.

Dongmei chanted the sutras much faster than Xiahe. Her brows were slightly furrowed, and her lips moved rapidly, as if she were struggling with the sutras.

It seems that the dramatic changes in the world situation over the past six months have made these people feel an unprecedented crisis, and they have begun to intensify their cultivation of the Scripture of Salvation.

Zhou Ming withdrew his divine sense and looked down at the reservoir beneath his feet.

The dam was still the same dam as it had been six months ago. The reservoir water shimmered with a faint, dark light under the moonlight, and the surface was calm and still, just as it had been when he had sunk the boulder to the bottom.

The few dozen households scattered at the bottom of the ravine are still there, but the smoke from their chimneys has long since dissipated, and only a few barks of dogs occasionally echo through the valley.

Zhou Ming pondered for a moment, then enveloped his right fist with a wisp of magical power.

A purple-gold light flowed between his fingers as he threw a punch into the air towards the bedrock at the bottom of the dam.

The force of the punch silently pierced through the air and slammed into the rock strata at the bottom of the dam. The entire dam trembled violently, and a crack several meters long was shaken out of the bedrock at the bottom of the dam.

He did not blow up the dam directly.

All he needs to do is give a heads-up to the villagers at the bottom of the ditch.

Whether they chose to evacuate or continue sleeping after hearing the loud noise was not his concern.

The aftershocks of his punch still echoed in the valley when he unleashed his black longsword.

The flying sword transformed into an almost invisible streak of black light in the night sky, silently penetrating the spillway at the bottom of the dam.

The sword tip was aimed at the clay layer at the bottom of the reservoir, and a hole the size of a bowl was precisely cut out.

A jet of water as thick as an arm shot out of the hole, and then the flow of water grew larger and larger.

The clay around the edge of the hole was peeled off piece by piece by the water pressure, the bowl's mouth became a bucket, and the bucket became a millstone.

The turbid reservoir water, carrying silt and gravel, surged out from the bottom of the dam, creating an increasingly loud roar in the valley.

In the village at the bottom of the ravine, the sleeping villagers were awakened by a loud, muffled thunderclap.

They put on their coats, held up oil lamps, and walked out of the courtyard in twos and threes, standing on the ridge of the field looking around.

Since Zhou Ming promoted the Peace Sutra throughout Youzhou six months ago, even the most impoverished farmers have developed magical powers.

Although his cultivation level is still shallow, his senses are far more acute than those of ordinary people.

They soon heard an increasingly loud roar 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 a chorus of exclamations.

The villagers, without even bothering to pack their belongings, grabbed their children and carried the elderly on their backs, and ran towards the hillsides on both sides.

In the darkness, some people fell and got up again; a woman ran barefoot and lost her shoes without bothering to pick them up; only a few dogs tied up in the yard were still barking wildly.

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

He turned around, his entire body transforming into a streak of light, heading straight for the cave atop the western mountain outside Yongning City.

As Zhou Ming flew through the night wind, he pondered in his mind.

After the dam releases water, the massive boulder weighing tens of thousands of kilograms, inscribed with "Sun and Moon in the Sky, Earth and Man in Harmony," will be exposed to the public once the water recedes.

First, a divine phoenix appeared in the world, and now a giant rock has emerged from the water. These two divine hints are layered on top of each other, and anyone who isn't a fool would connect these two events.

It all depends on whether Su Mingyue can seize this opportunity.

However, based on his understanding of Su Mingyue, he knew that she didn't need to worry about this at all.

That young lady has never disappointed him when it comes to seizing opportunities.

Zhou Ming stopped thinking about it, calmed his mind, and headed straight for West Mountain.

The Western Hills in the night were still as he remembered them, the steep mountains standing silently in the darkness, the winding paths appearing and disappearing in the moonlight.

He easily found the familiar cave and crawled into it through the narrow entrance.

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

A thin layer of dust covered the cave floor that he had leveled with his flying sword, and several bats hung upside down in the crevices of the cave ceiling, fast asleep.

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

Zhou Ming used his magic to sweep away the dust inside the cave with a wave of his sleeve.

He took out the spiritual herb cushion from his storage ring and sat down on a clean bluestone.

He took out the black longsword and placed it across his lap.

This sword was the first magical artifact he forged using two pieces of jet-black ore he had acquired from a prominent family in Yuyang County, and he used infant fire to refine them.

Strictly speaking, it can only be considered a semi-finished product. The sword blank is complete, the material is hard, and it can withstand his magic power without breaking.

It could fly and dart around as easily as his own under the control of his divine sense, but the inside of the sword was completely empty, without even a single basic array pattern engraved inside.

A true flying sword should have a solid array engraved inside to stabilize the blade, a lightness array to increase speed, and a sharp metal array to enhance its edge.

There should also be flight formations to make flying on swords faster and more stable, and attack formations to make sword light split and kill enemies from a hundred paces away.

The sword in his hand was at best a high-quality unfinished weapon, shaped into a sword.

Six months ago, he knew nothing about formations, but now it's different.

Liu Jun had been studying the array jade slips in his storage ring for over half a year.

From the most basic array pattern outlining and array eye arrangement, to the intermediate array layering and nesting and array flag crafting, and then to the advanced array borrowing of the power of heaven and earth.

Although he is still far from fully comprehending it, he is already able to independently set up several practical formations.

The array formations required for weapon forging were all within his grasp.