Lin Mu found it rather peculiar that the bricks were this different.
'Aren't they supposed to be protecting the core of the temple? Why are there no offensive formations on them. Not just that, they are different in quality than the previous bricks.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
His spirit sense had already probed the bricks, finding them to have no formations nor any runes on them. They didn't emit any spirit qi fluctuations either. If not for the fact that there were high quality bricks with strong formations earlier, Lin Mu would have thought this was just a crude temple.
After confirming that the large bricks were safe, Lin Mu finally touched them with his hands. And when he did, he felt something.
"This… how did I not feel it before?" Lin Mu was surprised.
Each of the bricks seemingly contained a large amount of earth essence. The earth essence was the higher form of earth energy and was rare to find in a mortal world. Even in an immortal world one might need to spend quite a lot of fortune to obtain a small quantity of it.
And yet, there was a lot of it contained within these bricks.
"No wait… the earth essence is flowing?" Lin Mu could tell that it was moving around.
He had not sensed it with the spirit sense, which made him think that perhaps it was beyond his current understanding. Perhaps it already fell in the range of 'immortal' instead of 'spirit'.
The only reason Lin Mu was even able to sense it after touching it was because of his high affinity to the earth element. He continued to sense the flowing earth essence and discovered that the earth essence was actually flowing in a specific pattern.
This made Lin Mu furrows his brows as it was unknown to him.
'It isn't any kind of a formation I know, this is something new…' Lin Mu was confused.
He had come across another thing that was not within the scope of his knowledge.
"I need to take this with me. At the very least, the Earth essence is very useful for me." Lin Mu decided.
His placed his hand on one of the bricks and tried to push it.
"HAA!" unexpectedly though, the bricks didn't budge.
Lin Mu didn't falter there though and used even more strength.
"Ugh… this doesn't work." It was disappointing to him.
After all, Lin Mu had great physical strength and Huyun Chuan had to admit that even an Immortal might not have such strength if they didn't use their cultivation base. This prompted Lin Mu to delve deeper into why it maybe like this.
Spending three hours in this, Lin Mu finally understood the reasoning.
He had tried to sense the movement of the Earth Essence within the bricks when he was pushing them. By doing this, he discovered that the Earth Essence would spread apart uniformly in a triangular repeating pattern.
This patter formed a rigid matrix within the brick wall. The matrix linked up all the bricks and prevented them from being moved.
"Can I store them directly into the ring?" Lin Mu wondered.
He placed his hand on the brick wall again and tried to store it, but nothing happened.
"Won't work. Do I need to unearth the wall?" Lin Mu wondered and started to dig around the wall.
After a few minutes, Lin Mu had dug around fifty meters. Though more accurately it was him punching the ground to break it and then storing it away to excavate it quickly.
"Now let's see…" Lin Mu placed his hand on the large bricks once more and willed it to enter the ring.
~shua~
"It worked!" Lin Mu was pleased.
The entire string of wall had now been stored in the ring since it was connected. Lin Mu had to dig out the entire periphery of the wall to make it able to be stored though.
"These will come in handy quite a bit later, I hope." Lin Mu said to himself with a smile.
Ever since coming to this place, Lin Mu had obtained three benefits. The first being the Ten apertures Blood Vein flowers, the second the new kinds of formations from the second layer of wall and third the large stone bricks with earth essence within them.
Just these along were worth the trip here. Though Lin Mu didn't forget that he still needed to find a way out.
'With the Lesser void right above me, I should be able to link up with the Rust Sky world. Though it might take a few tries.' Lin Mu thought while looking at the 'sky'.
His eyes eventually went to the central structure of it all, feeling curious as to what it really was.
"The pillars have channels built into them…" Lin Mu could sense the energy channels that could carry any type of qi or other types of energies within them.
But when he checked the ground for it, he found that they were cut off there.
'Strange, aren't channels like these used to draw energy from spirit veins? Even if this palace had been cut off from what was probably the main world, there should still be some linking remnants in the ground.' Lin Mu was confused.
A comparable example would be the spirit qi channeling formation array that supplied spirit qi to the various buildings and residences in a sect. But such things needed what was basically a pipeline made from runes.
But that was clearly not present in the ground, making the structures practically useless.
"Unless, there is something more to it?" Lin Mu wondered.
He touched the pillars wondering if there was something similar to the large bricks in them, but this time there was nothing unexpected.
~GELELELLELELE~
But just as Lin Mu stepped into the central structure, he heard a strange sound. The sound felt like it had ran directly in his mind and didn't come through his ears.
He became alert and was ready to act at any moment.
~GELELELLELELE~
The sound was heard again, but this time Lin Mu heard it in his ears to.
"It's coming from the front?" Lin Mu didn't see anything there at first.
~Whistle~
Then suddenly wind started blowing and spun around the area, forming some sort of a vortex.
"This doesn't seem good…" Lin Mu directly used blink to bypass the barrier and get away from the structure.
"Wait…" A whisper could be heard.
"Huh?" Lin Mu's ears perked up but he didn't drop his guard.
"Come to me…" a voice spoke from the structure.
"Who?!" Lin Mu questioned.
"Come to me… be part of me…" the voice spoke eerily.
"Yeah, no." Lin Mu turned around finding it incredibly suspicious.
~SWOOSH~
But before he could go any further, a cold wind blew him back.
~WHOOSH~
Another wind vortex formed, preventing Lin Mu from proceeding any further.
"Why are you leaving me?" The voice spoke again.
"Don't leave me alone…"
"Be with me…"
"Forever…"
Lin Mu felt chills going down his spine and his instincts shouted danger.
"Shit!" Lin Mu used blink to put more distance between him an the structure but more wind vortexes continued to appear.
~HONG~
It was at this point that the chiming of small bells could be heard. Lin Mu glanced at the source and saw an indigo colored ball of light appearing there. There was a black outline around the ball, and a creepy aura was exuding from it.
"We shall be here… together!" a voice came from the indigo colored ball.
A stream of energy poured out of the ball making Lin Mu feel anxious.
'What is that?' Lin Mu couldn't tell.
It was unlike anything he had seen before.
~SHUA~
The stream of energy poured into the pillars and entered the ground. It then seemingly spread all over the area before the ground started to shake.
~tremble~
'Those channels weren't meant to pull energy from the ground… they were to send energy into it.' Lin Mu realized.
~Rumble~
The ground started to move and several mounds appeared. These mounds continued to rise and then changed shapes. Soon they took the form of beasts.
"Wait a minute, aren't they…" Lin Mu recognized the form of those beasts. "Chasm Beasts!?"
The beasts formed from the earth had the same shape as the Chasm Beasts he had fought before, with the only difference being that they were made of earth rather than the dark dusty fog of the Broken Chasm.
Thankfully their strengths weren't great, being at the Dao Shell realm. Lin Mu could sense this simply from their aura.
~SHING~SHING~SHING~
Several weapons appeared around Lin Mu before he waved his hand.
"Go!" Lin Mu launched the weapons at the earth beast.
~CLANG~ CLANG~ CLANG~
Upon hitting the beasts, the spirit weapons made solid sounds. But the power contained within them was still enough to break the beasts apart.
~Crumble~
The beasts broke into fragments and fell to the ground. But Lin Mu didn't feel relieved at that.
'Their aura hasn't disappeared yet…'
