About a day had passed since Lin Mu had started to cook and eat the Glacial Shell Snail Queen meat.
"Huu… huu… huu…" breath after breath came out of Lin Mu's mouth as a cloud of cold air surrounded him.
His hair had turned white from the frost settling on it, and his robes were covered in a layer of thin frost as well. His eyebrows and eyelashes looked rather elegant with the snowflakes dotting it and made him look like an ice immortal.
"Just one more bite left… I can do it…" Lin Mu tried to motivate himself.
For the first time ever since he started cultivating, Lin Mu was actually feeling a bit averse to eating. It was the same feeling one would get when one ate too much food and more was presented to them.
It was rather conflicting to Lin Mu, as he could tell that the Nameless technique of the Lost immortal had not reached its limit at all and he had more than enough space for more food.
Rather, his aversion was stemming from his mind.
No matter how good something was, one would get bored and tired of eating the same thing over and over again. And for Lin Mu, it was rather true right now. After all, he had quite literally eaten a small hillock's worth of meat.
Another thing that he had discovered was that Little Shrubby could not eat the meat at all. It was in direct conflict with his body and affinities, making him spit it out the moment Lin Mu tried to give some to him.
Little Shrubby was rather sad because of it too, as he wanted to taste it seeing Lin Mu cook it.
It could be said that Little Shrubby was quite literally the opposite of the Glacial Shell Snail queen. He had a high affinity to the fire element, which was of the Yang side and even had a partial affinity to the Lightning element, which was even more Yang than fire.
Thus, Little Shrubby's body was repelling the meat with all its might.
Lin Mu didn't mind it though, as he had only given Little Shrubby some since the beast was giving him a pitiful look.
He had almost eaten all of the meat now, but it had made him feel very cold and frost had formed on his body directly. He could feel his body temperature fall greatly, and because his skin was gold, it made it easier for the frost to condense.
~gulp~
Finally, Lin Mu mustered his courage and swallowed down the last morsel.
~phew~
"It is finally done…" Lin Mu muttered as more chilly air escaped his lips.
"You should just focus on assimilating it all now. You are already at the twenty percent point, too." Xukong spoke up.
Lin Mu checked his kidneys and confirmed that both of them were at the same refinement level that Senior Xukong had said.
"Seems like it." Lin Mu replied. "Though the refinement is different than usual. Its strange having two organs of the same type being refined." He added.
While it could be said that when Lin Mu refined his lungs, they were in a pair of two and could be considered two organs; the close proximity and connection made them seem like the same thing when being refined.
But the kidneys were different than that, being further away from each other and could also function independently.
They were unlike lungs, which expanded and contracted simultaneously. Despite being in a pair, they worked as one.
Lin Mu continued to focus on his kidneys and noticed the difference between the two.
'The right kidney is a bit slower in refinement than the left…' Lin Mu noted.
"Is it fine to let it proceed as it is senior? I mean… do I need to balance the refinement speed or something like that?" Lin Mu wondered.
"It's not an issue. Even if one of your kidneys finishes its refinement completely and the other has not even started, it will be fine." Xukong allayed Lin Mu's concerns.
~phew~
"That's good," Lin Mu felt better.
It was the best option that Lin Mu could have hoped for, as the opposite would have left him helpless either way.
Even if the kidney's being refined at a different rate was a bad thing for Lin Mu, he would have been unable to address or control it since he wasn't doing the refinement actively using a technique.
He was merely letting his body refine it passively.
Lin Mu quite literally had no control over it other than simply sensing where the energy went.
He couldn't even control it with his spirit sense or cultivation base as he had no affinity with the water element. And this lack of control was only exaggerated with there being Extreme yin being added to it.
Lin Mu pushed the thoughts aside for now and focused on simply maintaining the balance in his body for now. As long as he did that, there would be no obstacles in the assimilation of the energy and refinement of the kidneys.
Little Shrubby was also cultivating on the side, and the two were now progressing steadily.
Just like this, time continued to pass and the pair of man and beast cultivated.
While this was ongoing, another set of events was happening in the Sky Precepts sect.
In the grand palace of the Sky Precepts sect, the patriarch and the head elder Han were in a meeting with several others.
The atmosphere was rather solemn, and silence was abundant.
"How is this possible?" The patriarch spoke after a while.
"We do not know patriarch… the Ripple Mist Sect's patriarch has cut off all contact with everyone. If not for the fact that a few disciples were spotted wandering the border of the Kingdom of Shu, we would have never gone to check the Ripple Mist sect." One of the elders spoke.
"Still… another one of the top ten sects being eradicated without us even getting a clue after days on end… how have we become so ignorant?"
