Lin Mu continued his work for several hours and in 20 hours, he had uprooted and stored five spirit stone mines.
Of these five, three were peak grade spirit stone mines while two were high grade spirit stone mine. This was a great fortune, and Lin Mu could understand how the Ripple Mist sect became such a top sect.
"If I recall correctly… even the Long Cloud sect doesn't have a sacred ground with so many spirit stone mines in them." Lin Mu had heard from Patriarch of the Long Cloud sect, Yi You that they too had a sacred ground.
But their sacred ground wasn't the best one. It merely had a single peak grade spirit stone mine hidden in it and two high grade spirit stone mines. Just compared to the Ripple Mist sect, it seemed to be inferior.
And yet, the Long Cloud sect was ranked higher than the Ripple Mist sect.
'I guess just the spirit stones and resources are not enough, the techniques and guidance is too…' Lin Mu could only attribute that to the ranking of the Long Cloud sect.
Of the top sects, not all of them had sacred ground. For example, the Noon Grass sect, the West Ocean Sect, the Light Harmony sect, didn't have Sacred grounds. That was also one of the reason why they were ranked at the bottom of the ranking.
Other than them, all the sects had their own sacred grounds. Though the quality of their sacred grounds was debatable since the accurate information about them was unavailable. After all, no sect would like to show their secrets like that.
Seeing the Ripple Mist sect's sacred ground proved that to Lin Mu.
"No wonder the Kong Plane helped them so much. It is far better than any of their sacred grounds…" Lin Mu muttered to himself and continued on his way.
He had traveled nearly a thousand kilometers by now and was nearing the edge of the Sacred ground.
Lin Mu's senses could soon feel the end of the sacred ground. This was also where Lin Mu found the last spirit stone mine.
"This spirit stone mines seems to be rather weak…" Lin Mu muttered.
He could tell that the spirit Qi fluctuations coming from here were even weaker than that of a low grade spirit stone mine.
"It might be a newly formed one." Xukong spoke.
"Perhaps…" Lin Mu said as he descended to check.
This spirit stone mine wasn't in a mountain, thus he didn't need to do what he had been doing all along. Rather, it was located within a lake!
The lake wasn't that big either, being merely a hundred meters wide. But the spirit Qi got saturated in the water, giving rise to some unique effects. All the plants around the lake were lush, and the fishes and aquatic beasts living in the lake had become vibrant.
Their scales reflected clearly and a fresh aura could be felt from them, too.
This was one of the signs of a newly formed spirit stone mine. A mine that was more matures would be more isolated and would not leak out this much spirit Qi. It could even be said that a spirit stone mine that leaked spirit Qi was a defective one.
Descending into the water, Lin Mu scared away the fishes and beasts with just a hint of his aura. The creatures rushed to the edges of the lake, scared of coming close to Lin Mu. If they could, they might have already jumped out of the water and ran away.
Thankfully for them, Lin Mu didn't stay in the lake for long and descend further, entering the ground below it.
From there, Lin Mu didn't have to go much deep. Merely three meters from the lake bed, he ended up in the spirit stone mine.
"No wonder…" Lin Mu muttered.
In front of him wasn't actually a spirit stone mine, but rather a spirit Qi spring. Though along with the spirit Qi spring, he could already see clusters of spirit stones condensing at the bottom of the spring.
"It is indeed a newly formed spirit stone mine." Xukong nodded his head.
Lin Mu spread his spirit sense and discovered some unusual things here though.
Narrowing his eyes, he moved around and found some strange structural formations.
"This wall… why does it seem so smooth?" Lin Mu was confused.
One side of the cave was like a smooth curved wall that went all the way to the top and then met the ceiling. From there, it turned uneven and looked like the natural cave surface, like it should.
Lin Mu looked at the bottom of the spirit Qi spring, where it connected to the smooth wall, and saw that the number of spirit stones here was higher. In fact, they had condensed enough to form an almost flat slab of spirit stone.
Using his spirit sense, Lin Mu scanned sit and discovered that the slab of spirit stone actually went deeper into the wall.
"No, that's not all. The grade of spirit stone is higher too." Lin Mu noticed.
The rest of the spirit stones here were low grade ones, but the ones here were mid grade.
Just as Lin Mu was wondering about the reason for this strange formation, his spirit sense picked up on something else.
"Spatial fluctuations!" Lin Mu understood.
"This must have been the place from where the fragment of the sacred ground was cut off in the past." Xukong guessed.
"Indeed, senior. This place must have been part of the mine in the fragment, but was cut off and finally developed into a spirit Qi spring again." Lin Mu nodded his head.
Lin Mu decided to see the edge of the sacred ground himself this time. He wanted to see how the difference in void would be here and hope to learn from it.
Passing through the walls, he reached an invisible barrier which he crossed with the ring's help and peered into the Lesser Void.
But what he saw there stunned him.
