Lin Mu and Lady Kang had nothing to do while waiting here for others, thus they decided to recuperate their Qi stores. But there was a lack of ambient immortal Qi in the air, which meant that the two could not cultivate normally.
Thus they had to use the Immortal stones and other resources they had in their storage. Normally doing this in a trial would have been risky, and they only relied on their natural absorption of Immortal Qi to restore their stores.
But now it was a rare opportunity where they could do this without any danger or threat looming over their heads, as such they would be fools to miss it.
Little Shrubby, the Twin snakes and Ashy were steadily cultivating in the Sleepscape too thus, Lin Mu let them be until it was time to call them out again.
But as time continued to pass, no signs of anyone appearing could be seen. Lin Mu periodically checked on the Teleportation channels and saw no sign of them activating.
By the fifth day of waiting, Lin Mu and Lady Kang had fully recovered and were ready to handle anything that might come their way. Still, they were patient and continued to wait.
On the tenth day though, Lin Mu decided to look into some alternatives.
~SHUA~
He opened his eyes with the Spatial Perception active and started to observe the spatial fabric around them.
'It's tougher than usual.' Lin Mu thought to himself as he extended his gaze beyond the mere surface.
This was usually harder for him in other places, but since there were already Teleportation channels build into the space by the creator of this inheritance ground, Lin Mu had a path laid out for him to follow.
And when he observed them for a while along with the formation arrays that were woven into the fabric of Space, Lin Mu learned a few things.
'The Teleportation channels pass through four different layers, but I can only observe up to the third layer. The fourth layers is far too obscured to observe.' Lin Mu noticed.
This was important, as it meant that if things really went sideways, he could still escape through a spatial rift.
'I'd have to carve a path through all the layers… Though there is no telling if a restriction will activate upon sensing my tampering.' Lin Mu thought. 'At the very least, I should be able to make my way through it, but with Lady Kang it might be complex.' He reckoned as he gazed at the meditating figure of the woman.
She was sitting cross legged on a cultivation mat that was a high grade supportive immortal tool. Faint streams of Immortal Qi surrounded her, arising from the cultivation mat under her.
The cultivation mat basically functioned as a reserve store of Immortal Qi and one could recharge it using Immortals stones, or simply letting it absorb ambient Immortal Qi in the air.
Since there was no Immortal Qi in this place, Lady Kang had used the Cultivation mat. Not only did the mat have an ability to store the immortal Qi, it could also streamline it and channel it in the most optimum rate that was compatible with ones body.
Not everyone benefited from a fast immortal Qi infusion.
It would be the same as pouring a bucket of water into someone's mouth when all they could drink was a glass.
The rest of the water would be wasted, thus leading to an efficient manner of absorption.
With such stable absorption, Lady Kang could continue to cultivate even in a place like this.
'The main issue will be to keep her defenses up when we pass through the Space, other than that she should be able to handle things on her own.' Lin Mu thought after a while.
By now he was confident of Lady Kang's abilities and knew that she could easily carry her weight when unexpected things were thrown at her.
Lin Mu further observed the formations, trying to see if he could understand them. This was an uphill task though as the formation array was spread in a wide area making it almost impossible to observe it all at once.
He had to look around in a wide area just to make sense of a single part of a formation, not to mention the entire array. Lin Mu wanted to see if he could figure some of them out at least so that he would have an idea how to navigate through them, but it turned out to be impossible while he was contained in the space.
'The entire spatial plane is covered with the formation arrays, making it an effective way to encrypt them while also simplifying them. But one would need to be able to inscribe them in the space in the first place for it to be effective.' Lin Mu was lost in the study of formations for a while before his attention returned to the area around him.
~sigh~
"May as well cultivate now…" Lin Mu thought to himself and decided to return to a task that he had halted earlier in the ship.
What Lin Mu intended to cultivate was none other than the Omnicore Ascendancy. If he wanted to cultivate it in the most efficient manner from the lowest quality materials to the highest, Lin Mu needed some time.
'I've already finished the absorption of materials up to the Immortal realm with the water and wood cores, I should get started on the other cores too now.' Lin Mu thought to himself. 'Let's see… I have a lot of earth elemental low quality materials in the store with literal mountain's worth of soil, may as well start with that,' He reckoned.
Since Lady Kang was here, he didn't enter the ring though and just cultivated it here by continually ejecting small amounts of soil into his hands, which was then quickly broken down into pure elemental essence and being absorbed into his body.
With how much soil Lin Mu had, which was the lowest quality earth elemental material, he could continue to absorb it for a long, long time.
~SHUA~
The soil continued to appear in his hands that were kept in a cupped gesture in front of them and was broken down instantly. The more Lin Mu this, the better his speed of withdrawing and absorbing got until eventually it was all just a singular blur.
The soil wouldn't even appear for more than a few moments before disappearing.
Lin Mu sped up the process, absorbing the wisps of earth elemental essence and in about two days time he had reached the limit.
~huu~
Lin Mu took a breath as he checked the tiny sand grain sized Earth core inside his spleen.
'Three mountains of soil yielded this… I suppose it is a good exchange,' Lin Mu thought before he moved onto better earth elemental materials.
Of course, he also took a momentary glance at the Teleportation channels and saw that they showed no signs of activating for now. Lady Kang was still cultivating too and hadn't moved from her place.
Since she was deep in cultivation, Lin Mu didn't disturb her and returned to his own cultivation.
This time it took Lin Mu about four days before he had finally hit the limit of the Spirit herbs of the earth element.
He was now on the cusp of the immortal realm and was just about to start it when he felt a wave of energy.
"Huh?" Lin Mu immediately stood up and so did Lady Kang as they both felt it.
~SHUA~
They saw one of the Teleportation circles glowing and knew that it was time for one of their companions to arrive.
Lin Mu activated his spatial perception too and glanced at the Teleportation channels finding a vague image of two people passing through it from the distance.
The closer the figures got the clear they became and once they were at the very edge, Lin Mu recognized them.
"Daoist Chu and Min Ju." Lin Mu determined.
~HUALA~
And then in the next second, the two people materialized in front of them.
~THUD~THUD~
But upon arriving, the two collapsed to the ground right away.
"Min Ju!" Lady Kang rushed to check up on her maid while Lin Mu quickly scanned the two with his Immortal sense.
Upon doing so, he quickly noticed several concerning things.
First was the fact that the clothes of the two had ice and snow coating it on severe places, while their flesh even had signs of frostbite on it.
Daoist Chu had a few cuts on his arms that had been seemingly frozen and expanded, allowing one to glance at the red flesh inside while Min Ju had the same, but on her back instead.
One of the cuts was deep enough that her ribs could even be seen.
The immortal Qi fluctuations of the two also seemed to be in a rather unstable state, showing that they had exhausted a lot of their energy.
