Half an hour passed before the lake had been emptied out.
Much to Lady Kang's surprise, Lin Mu didn't seem the least bit tired and she could tell this due to the stable immortal Qi fluctuations coming from him.
'He really did store the entire lava lake away,' Lady Kang thought in slight disbelief. 'It's as if he didn't need to use Qi to do this at all.'
Though she didn't know that on some level, she was correct. Lin Mu used the ring's power to store the Lava Lake away, thus he didn't have the same level of consumption that a normal spatial storage tool would have.
The reason for consumption of Qi when using a spatial storage tool was due to the fact that not all spatial storage tools kept the space inside them at maximum volume. Instead, one could think of the space inside them like a stretchable rubber bag.
If one wanted to store items inside them, they would have to expend some energy to stretch the bag; in this case, using Qi to expand the space to a bigger size. Thus, the consumption was two fold, the first being to expand the storage in the spatial storage tool, before using more energy to transport the items inside them.
Of course, this could only be done until a certain limit before the space wouldn't be able to hold and either break apart or the user would simply not have the Qi needed to expand it further than that. And the bigger the spatial storage tool, the more energy one would need to store items if the space inside continued to grow.
This was also why storing mass items like what Lin Mu was doing with the lava or other junk like the literal mountains of soil and rocks, was not something people normally did.
Of course, higher quality Spatial Storage tools had better efficiency and didn't need as much Qi to store items. But even the highest quality spatial storage tools would have a certain cost to them.
But in Lin Mu's case, that cost to expand the storage was nil.
The space inside the ring was constant and didn't seem to change. As such, the only cost he had was the Qi needed to transport the items inside it, which was mostly negligible to Lin Mu.
~huu~
"Here we go." Lin Mu said as he stood up and looked at the sphere which had been left lying at the bottom of the lake.
With how deep the lake was and now that the lava had mostly been stored away, it was quite dark there.
~SHUA~
But a moment later, Lady Kang descended into the lake, bringing illumination with her as a few stars glowed around her.
"Let's see what this actually is," Lin Mu said as he probed the sphere with his immortal sense.
~POP~
But when he did, the sphere suddenly burst as if it were a balloon.
"Huh?" Lin Mu was surprised and Lady Kang was concerned by it, but then they saw an object fall out of the sphere.
"The key!" Lin Mu and Lady Kang saw.
It was the same as the previous key that they had obtained and looked very simple.
"It really could have been destroyed if the puzzle wasn't solved in the 'right' way." Lin Mu said as he picked it up.
"Now we have two of the keys. How many more do you think we'll need?" Lady Kang asked, ignoring the fact that they hadn't exactly used the 'right' way.
"Hard to tell. With a space this big, it could be tens of keys." Lin Mu replied. "Plus, it seems like the keys will have different ways of obtaining them. The first was guarded, while the second was hidden with a puzzle." He added.
"Guess we'll just have to keep on looking." Lady Kang said, knowing that this step of the trial might take long.
Lin Mu nodded in agreement and the two looked up from the now empty lake.
"Let me make a path," Lin Mu said as he took out Afternoon Pine.
~SHING~
He then slashed out, creating a long yellow cut that struck the tall wall of the empty lake.
~RUMBLE~
The slash created a diagonal cut in the wall, which went deeper the farther up one went.
"There we go… That should be a good enough staircase." Lin Mu said after doing some quick landscaping.
~Whoosh~
A red blur appeared at their side, ready to take them up.
"And here's our ride." Lin Mu chuckled as he got onto Little Shrubby.
Lady Kang jumped on too, and the trio quickly rushed out of the lake through the new ramp Lin Mu had made.
~Chirp~
Ashy also flew down to land on Lin Mu's shoulder.
"Did you find anything more?" Lin Mu asked.
"Nothing here. We'll need to go farther." Ashy replied.
She had already searched everything within her scope of movement, and it was much better to rely on Little Shrubby to take them further from here. His speed was superior and once they were in a new section, Ashy could begin her search again.
"Alright Little Shrubby, full speed ahead!" Lin Mu said, causing the beast to roar.
~ROAR~
The beast sped up, and soon they were nothing but a blur.
Little Shrubby continued to run for a while until they had come more than three hundred kilometer from their initial location. Lin Mu and Lady Kang had kept their immortal sense extended this entire time and were observing if there was anything they could have missed, but there really was nothing there.
"Master," At a certain point though, Little Shrubby alerted Lin Mu.
"I sense it too." Lin Mu said, narrowing his eyes.
~CREAK~
Little Shrubby braked using his claws and came to a halt next to a steep cliff.
From here, the group got to look at a rather lively scene below them.
"Looks like we were in the 'outskirts' all this time." Lin Mu said as he looked at what looked like a rather bustling area filled with beings.
