"He's close…" Lin Mu muttered as he observed Little Shrubby.
The Dao Shell was now almost completely corporeal and merely a fraction of a percent was left.
About two weeks had passed since Lin Mu's breakthrough and he had basically exhausted all the resources he had taken from the West Ocean Sect that were consumable. He had even stopped cultivating himself so that Little Shrubby could get the last push needed.
Minutes felt as long as hours to Lin Mu, with the last step taking longer than before.
'Is there a problem?' Lin Mu wondered.
He was just about to use his spirit sense to check, when it happened.
~SHUA~
Suddenly, the air heated up and massive spirit Qi waves started to emanate from Little Shrubby.
Compared to Lin Mu's own breakthrough, Little Shrubby's was far more impactful.
~HONG~
The Dao Shell floating above Little Shrubby hummed and started to change color. From its pale white color, it turned red. Flames soon appeared on it as fire attribute spirit Qi was infused into it as well!
Little Shrubby himself was still deep in a trance, his eyes closed.
~ROAR~
But regardless of that a loud roar was heard coming from deep within his body.
~HUALA~
The effect started to spread as a phenomenon manifested. The spirit Qi outside the mountain Lin Mu and Little Shrubby were cultivating started to stir. Even the clouds started to move and the sky darkened.
The beasts living in the vicinity were terrified and ran to get as far from it as possible.
The mountain was deep in the forest, thus there were no humans nearby, or they would have been greatly shocked too.
Little Shrubby's body glowed in a red light as seven illusory figures appeared out of it, The illusory figures expanded and turned into the seven bloodline beasts that Little Shrubby had.
"The bloodlines appeared again?" Lin Mu was surprised.
"You should take this chance to strengthen the bloodlines once more." Xukong felt the changes and woke up too.
Hearing this, Lin Mu nodded his head. In fact, the seven illusory bloodlines figures were already staring at him with a hint of desire in their eyes.
"Look, even they haven't forgotten that." Xukong added.
~huu~
Lin Mu took a deep breath as he chanted the Nurturing heart sutra. The spirit Qi within his Dantian started to quickly transform into streaks of Beast Qi. Lin Mu decided to go all out this time and strengthen all of them.
'Since little Shrubby's cultivation base increased, the bloodlines should have gotten more stable than before. Strengthening them shouldn't be a problem.' Lin Mu thought as he let out two wisps of Beast Qi.
More Beast Qi was already being made in his Dantian while he shot the two streaks towards Little Shrubby.
~shua~
One of the Beast Qi streaks went to the Flash Fire Liger bloodline and the other to the Scorch Claw Tiger Bloodline. These two were the most dominant ones that Little Shrubby had and gave him his strength and speed.
The other bloodline figures watched in envy as the first two got to enjoy the Beast Qi.
"I got more coming up, you all just maintain your appearance." Lin Mu spoke.
The bloodline figures had a certain level of intelligence and understood his words; suddenly increasing their presence.
~shua~ Shua~
Lin Mu sent two more streaks of beast Qi towards the Bloodlines, with one going to the Thunderbolt Cheetah and one to the Fume Wood Panther.
The Thunderbolt Cheetah also contributed to Little Shrubby's speed, but didn't give him the elemental affinity yet. While the Fume Wood Panther had only recently shown an effect on Little Shrubby, giving him the Vitality Reversal skill.
While the Skill didn't have any direct effect on his strength, it did give Little Shrubby momentary boosts in speed and also allowed him to change his size. Which in turn, was effective in hiding his appearance.
Though the bloodline also gave Little Shrubby the ability to absorb wood elemental spirit Qi which he hadn't gotten from the Thunderbolt Cheetah Bloodline.
But what Lin Mu wanted Little Shrubby to obtain from The Fume Wood Panther Bloodline was its healing and regeneration innate abilities. Spirit plants and plant type beasts all had great regeneration abilities.
It made them resilient and hard to kill. For them most injuries were just temporary and could be healed, given enough time and nutrients. It was a top level ability for any cultivator to have.
Additionally, Lin Mu had also been told by Xukong that the more Little Shrubby's speed increases, the greater strain his body will endure. For now, it was not an issue, but the long term use can cause some problems.
One of the ways to overcome this naturally would be to have a healing or regeneration ability.
After these four bloodlines, the ones that were left were the Brood Mane Lion, The Hundred Mirror Leopard and the Midnight Lynx. These bloodlines had not shown any effect at all, thus he wanted to see if they could do so in the future.
He gave them one streak of beast Qi each, before making more of it. This time though, he only gave it to the first four bloodlines and had to stop at that point.
"Seems like this is the limit for his current cultivation base." Lin Mu muttered.
The illusory bloodline figures had gotten unstable and were about to turn to a mote of light.
The bloodline figures seemed unwilling, but in the end couldn't resist.
~shua~
The Illusory figures merged back into Little Shrubby's body and the spirit Qi waves started to calm down.
It had been less than ten minutes, and yet it looked like a long time had passed, though the work that Lin Mu had done in these ten minutes was already worth a lot. Directly strengthening bloodline likes this was not easy to do at all.
The benefit Little Shrubby had gotten from a direct beast Qi infusion like this was a 100 times better than what he would get by absorbing it normally!
