Chapter 1769: Mind Breakthrough to Ancient Sage!

Since there was no danger, there was no need to waste time. They should quickly pass the assessment and find the Spring and Autumn Ceremony.

Everyone nodded simultaneously and walked together toward the passage.

Whoosh!

As he approached, Zhang Xuan immediately felt a warm radiance envelop him, and then his vision blurred as he vanished from the spot.

The next moment, he found himself before a majestic mountain.

Towering into the clouds, its peak was invisible. The entire mountain seemed piled up from books, with no paths, no end, only a series of characters that occasionally flickered and floated, giving a dreamlike sensation.

“Reaching the summit means passing! If you give up, you will receive different opportunities based on your progress!”

Kong Shi’s faint voice continued.

“Hmm!” Zhang Xuan responded, taking a deep breath.

Although everything before him seemed utterly real, judging from the situation with Zhao Ya and the others earlier, it should be an illusion.

That is, he was still in the passage, but his spirit had arrived at this mountain formed by books.

With a solemn expression, Zhang Xuan circulated his inner strength.

Whoosh!

He did not leave the spot.

“It seems flight is impossible… That makes sense; if one could fly, it would be too easy…”

He nodded to himself.

Reaching the summit meant passing. If one could fly, flying straight up would be far too simple, wouldn’t it?

He looked again at the book mountain before him. The entire mountain was bare, nothing but books, with no paths and no handholds.

He pressed his palm lightly on a book, intending to leap upward, but immediately felt a tremendous pressure crushing down, like a thunderbolt, numbing his whole body. His palm seemed pricked by thorns, oozing blood.

“This…”

His face darkened.

He had thought that climbing a mountain, even if as smooth as a mirror, would not be difficult with his strength. He never expected such immense pressure!

It was as if an Immortal Realm Great Perfection expert was constantly attacking him. How could he possibly ascend under these conditions?

“Could it be… that climbing is not the way?”

After circling around and testing several spots, all yielding the same result—unable to rise even half a meter before being forced down—Zhang Xuan had to stop, his brows deeply furrowed.

If not by climbing, and there was no path, how could he ascend?

No wonder Zhao Ya, Wei Ruyan, and the others could not pass. It was indeed not as simple as he had imagined.

“Since it’s a book mountain, let me first study what kind of books these are. Perhaps I can find the key…”

Pausing, Zhang Xuan looked at the many books before him. With a thought, hundreds of volumes were collected into the Library of Heaven’s Path. With a flick of his finger, vast knowledge flowed into his mind.

These books covered techniques, martial skills, humanities, geography, astrology, divination… all sorts, seemingly encompassing all the professions of the continent.

Rustle!

Just as he absorbed the knowledge, he saw the smooth, mirror-like book mountain suddenly reveal a row of steps, about a few layers.

Zhang Xuan was startled.

He had circled for a long time without seeing such a thing. How could it appear after reading just a few hundred books?

Could it be… that reading books could reveal a path?

“Let’s try!”

With this thought, he hesitated no longer and stared straight around the book mountain.

Rustle!

Countless books appeared in the Library of Heaven’s Path. In less than ten minutes, he had collected tens of thousands.

With a light tap, knowledge flowed into his mind. He closed his eyes, and just as he digested it, he felt the mountain before him shake, and a row of steps appeared out of thin air, slowly extending upward.

“Indeed…”

Seeing that it was indeed related to reading and digesting knowledge, Zhang Xuan’s eyes flickered.

For others, reading so many books, even with divine sense scanning, would surely drive them mad with mental confusion. But for him, a single glance, and the library automatically collected and organized them into memory…

In terms of time, there was no waste, nor did it cause mental chaos.

He was now like a powerful computer. The massive book mountain before him required others to memorize, ponder, and recite endlessly, but for him, it was just copy and paste.

Rustle!

Stepping onto the stairs, he continued to look at the surrounding books, knowledge flowing into his mind.

As he read more books, the stairs appeared layer by layer, and Zhang Xuan gradually ascended.

Through his progress, he also discovered that usually, reading a hundred books would produce one layer of stairs.

Only he could read books this way. For anyone else, continuously reading and memorizing… even an Ancient Sage would have gone mad long ago.

After walking for an unknown time, he looked down and saw clouds swirling below, with only a staircase slanting between the white clouds. The world around was vast and desolate, leaving him as a solitary figure.

“Reading so many books and still not reaching the summit—anyone’s mind would break under this!”

He sighed.

As expected, the flow of time here was completely different from the outside world.

With the powerful cheat of the Library of Heaven’s Path, he had already been reading for half a day to reach this point. For others, reaching here would take hundreds or even thousands of years.

Hundreds of years of reading books with nothing else—the sheer loneliness would unbalance one’s mind, and even an Ancient Sage might not endure.

Whoosh!

He continued forward a few steps, and after a while, Zhang Xuan looked helpless.

At this point, he needed to read a thousand books to produce one layer of stairs.

It was already hard to persist earlier, and now the difficulty increased tenfold, like the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

However, while the difficulty increased for others, for him, it was still a process of copying, nothing special.

He continued forward for another half day, now needing to read ten thousand books to produce a single step.

Knowing that the end should be near, Zhang Xuan did not give up and quickened his pace.

After an unknown time, he finally saw the peak come into view.

“There is a path up the mountain of books with diligence as the path… It seems Kong Shi’s test is about understanding knowledge and diligence…”

He sighed again.

Only by reading could one climb; the more one read, the higher one climbed. This was not only a tempering of the spirit but also Kong Shi’s warning to later generations.

He wanted to tell posterity… that in cultivation, what ultimately matters is not talent, but culture!

With sufficient cultural foundation, one could gain deeper insights into cultivation and the Heavenly Dao, embrace new things with a broader mind, and thus go further and achieve higher.

Take, for example, the Seventy-Two Sages and the Ten Virtuous of Confucius’s School.

Even if their talents were inferior to Kong Shi’s, they received personal instruction from him, with hands-on teaching of cultivation methods… Their conditions were certainly more favorable than his.

Yet their achievements could not compare to Kong Shi’s…

There was only one possibility: in knowledge, they were far inferior to Kong Shi; culture limited their progress.

When Kong Shi established the upper, middle, and lower professions, it seemed to have no effect on cultivation, but in reality, it was this tempering that allowed him to embrace the world and advance further.

Crack!

As these thoughts flowed in his mind, suddenly a sound like an egg cracking echoed in his head, or like a seedling breaking through soil to greet the sun.

“Mind… broke through 29.9?”

His fist clenched, and Zhang Xuan’s eyes shone with dazzling light.