At first, Lin Mu was unsure of being able to open the rift all the way to the sacred ground. He had already seen last time that there was a distance between the Xiaofan world and the Sacred ground in the lesser void.
And since the sacred ground had its own schedule of opening and closing, it would get farther and farther away from the Xiaofan world until it was the time for it to open. It was still several years for it to open again, thus the Sacred ground was quite some distance away.
But after hearing the words of Senior Xukong, Lin Mu felt a lot more confident and decided to try it. And the suggestion of Senior Xukong was enough to give him a method to do so with better safety, too.
There was always the issue of anchoring the rift, and usually Lin Mu would just let it float around. This method was rather unstable and the rift would not stay open for long. The world would try to stabilize the space and return it to its normal form as soon as possible.
The only exception was when a proper formation array or treasure was used to anchor it. Once that was done, the rift would become stable and the world would not consider it an anomaly.
"Alright, senior. I'll do that." Lin Mu said.
He then flew to the place where the gate of the Sacred ground was located and used his spirit sense to probe it. He quickly found the specific nodes that he needed to use and spent and hour to modify them.
With his strong spirit sense, the restrictions placed by the Ripple mist sect's formation masters were nothing.
It was a strange situation since Lin Mu was not an official formation master yet. While he had indeed learned about formations, he had not taken the formal examination. Lin Mu had wondered if he should ever do it.
But then Xukong had just told him that it was a waste of time. The certification of a formation master from this world would be useless. Only after Lin Mu was in the immortal realm, would it be better.
He would have to find the authority in charge of certification in an immortal world to get it. Only then would it be useful and his prestige would increase.
Of course, this was only if Lin Mu wanted to make use of the certification. Otherwise, there was no issue in him never taking those examinations. He could very well have the skill level of the best formation master in the entire universe and not have a certification.
As long as he used it for himself, it didn't matter.
The certification was more of a thing of convenience. If others needed a formation master for a certain task, it was easier to just look at someone's certification and know that they were good for the task rather than having to judge them by some other method.
And it wasn't just the occupation of the formation masters that had such a certification, either. A majority of other occupations did too. Though some major ones didn't, the biggest example being the beast taming occupation.
In the case of beast taming though, it was essentially because it greatly depended on the beast in question too. There were far too many inconsistencies in it, thus it was a big occupation that had no certification officially used.
Other than that, alchemists, tool refiners, weapon forgers all had certification and associations that handled it.
Once Lin Mu was done with the gate's formation array, he began the process of opening the rift.
~huu~
"Let's see how it goes…" Lin Mu took a deep breath and used spatial perception again.
He then activated the ring and directed it to open a rift. Spirit Qi started to flow into the ring and Lin Mu could tell the drain was greater.
'Its far higher than before… opening a proper portal is indeed different.' Lin Mu thought.
The ring finally activated, and its power showed its effect.
~RIP~
The air in front of Lin Mu started to tear as a small black spot appeared. Lin Mu moved his hands and gestured in a widening gesture. The small black dot was pulled along with Lin Mu's hand and turned into a long line.
Done with this, Lin Mu brought his hands together and then spread them wide part.
~HONG~
The space trembled as the black line started to expand into a window. It continued to expand as Lin Mu continued pouring more and more spirit Qi into the ring. Once it reached a sufficient size, his spirit sense quickly activate the formation array.
"LINK!"
~SHUA~
The fomentation array lit up as hundreds of thousands of runes spread all around. The Ripple mist sect seemed like it was in a spotlight with the great amount of light coming from it.
"HAAA!" Lin Mu grunted as he pulled the space forward.
~WOONG~
A humming sound was heard as runes spread from the formation array into the black window's edges. The runes were like chains and firmly latched onto the edges of the black window.
More runes appeared and strengthened the chains before starting to pull more.
~SHUA~
The black window started to expand even more, but now its color started to change too!
From the black color, it first became grey, then white. The runes continued their work and began the anchoring process. Five minutes passed like this and the white color changed to a scenery instead!
Like a dense mist parting and revealing the bountiful valley, the sacred land was revealed and the spatial rift was fully turned into a portal!
~huu~
Lin Mu took a deep breath, feeling a bit exhausted. It wasn't that his body was tired but rather his mind. This was possibly one of the most complicated procedures he had ever attempted.
"I did it…" Lin Mu muttered as he saw his handiwork.
"You did indeed. Good work!" Xukong praised.
Lin Mu nodded his head and did some more checks to ensure that the portal was all good before deciding to enter.
~SHUA~
It was like he passed through a thick membrane as the portal flicked and bulged. First his hand passed through it, and then his head. Finally the rest of his body entered, and he had successfully entered the Sacred Grounds of the Ripple Mist sect.
Lin Mu breathed in the air rich in spirit Qi and could tell that this was actually on the same level as that of the Kong plane.
"It's actually a little higher than Kong plane too…" Lin Mu estimated.
Though he also knew that this was only because the Sacred Land of the Ripple mist sect had been closed for a long time and was also smaller in size. With a smaller size, the amount of spirit Qi produced might be less, but the concentration would rise quickly too.
Lin Mu's spirit sense spread around while he soared into the air, wanting to take a proper look at the Sacred Ground.
He found himself to be in the middle of a deep valley, with rows of mountains extending in both directions.
"These are certainly man made." Lin Mu guessed.
There were various kinds of trees growing in the valley and many spirit beasts roaming around too. Lin Mu sensed several spirit fruits and spirit herbs here too. His spirit sense kept expanding and reached its very limit of hundred kilometers, but even then the sacred land was not fully revealed.
"It should be several times that…" Lin Mu muttered.
Withdrawing his spirit sense, he changed the direction of search and let it pierce the earth. It quickly burrowed into the soil, and scanned for any spirit stone mines.
"Nothing here. Time to move." Lin Mu said and flew ahead.
He picked a random direction and started to search for the spirit stone mines. That was his main goal in coming here after all. He also hoped to find them quick, so that he could return quickly as well.
He didn't know if Gu Yao might act upon finding about the Ripple Mist sect. There was a chance that he might have found out already. There was no guarantee.
'Little Shrubby should be able to handle if anything happens, though.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
It was one of the reason he had not brought Little Shrubby with him. Then there was also the uncertainty that if something happened to the portal, it would be hard to bring him with him.
Lin Mu was confident of escaping himself, but bringing another person, or a beast in this case could prove to be difficult. He didn't want to take that risk and thus thought that it was best for Little Shrubby to stay behind.
After about an hour, Lin Mu finally found the first spirit stone mine.
"There we go," Lin Mu said as his eyes locked onto the plain ground.
This spirit stone mine was not beneath a mountain, but rather underneath some plains.
It was a mid grade spirit stone mine though and wasn't that big either. But Lin Mu wasn't going to say no to it. He dived into the ground and only needed half an hour to extract everything he could from it.
He then moved to find the next and found it after another half an hour. This one was better than before, a peak grade spirit stone mine. But it was hidden within a mountain.
Knowing that it would take quite a while to excavate, Lin Mu decided to take a different route.
Lin Mu pulled his fist back as energy swirled within his hand.
