King Hong's reply was exactly what Lin Mu wanted, and he was pleased.
"Very well then, please get back." Lin Mu spoke.
He picked a location that was a bit far from the old man's position just so that he would not be disturbed excessively.
~shing~
The short sword was summoned from his ring and floated in front of him. Lin Mu had stopped keeping the short sword on his waist for a few weeks now. It was mostly because of the new disguise he had taken up, though.
King Hong and Adviser Liu gazed at the short sword, finding it to be of impeccable quality.
"Excellent blade! I don't think I've ever seen anything of this level in our sect." Hua San praised.
"Where did you get this Senior Lin Mu?" Hua Wu asked.
"Oh, I got this from the patriarch of the Jing clan." Lin Mu said, stunning the three.
While he had told them that the Jing clan was still alive, they had not expected Lin Mu to have a weapon like this.
"No wonder…" Hua San muttered.
~SHING~
Lin Mu controlled the Short sword expertly and let it slide into the floor as if it was a hot knife sinking into butter. Seeing this, the others were even more shocked. The floors were tough and made out of dense rocks that were hard to break.
Yet here Lin Mu was cutting through them as if they were paper. A circular opening was quickly carved out onto the floor.
~shua~
~thud~
"No, no! You can't fall!" Lin Mu said as he quickly grabbed onto the circular piece of floor that he had cut.
His fingers directly dug into the solid rock as if they were a block of tofu.
~gulp~
Seeing this, Hua Wu couldn't help but swallow his saliva. He knew how much strength a Nascent Soul realm cultivator had and it was even different when just physical strength was considered excluding spirit Qi.
And from that he knew for sure there would be very few that would be able to puncture through a meter thick rock with the same ease as Lin Mu did.
Having grabbed the piece of the floor, Lin Mu set it to the side and the five men finally felt the gush of spirit Qi coming from it.
"So much spirit Qi? But how?" King Hong couldn't help but feel curious.
"Seems like there is a spirit Qi gathering formation along with several spirit herbs in here." Lin Mu said.
They breathed in the dense spirit Qi for a bit before coming to their sense.
"Let's get in." Lin Mu said and flew down.
The others followed behind him and they finally reached the seclusion chamber, which was made out of several halls and a huge outer courtyard. There were spirit herbs planted according to formation array which promoted their growth and increases spirit Qi.
"I could have never believed this… so many rare and precious spirit herbs…" King Hong said in surprise.
"I believe this might have been an additional security that the former adviser had for the kingdom. I reckon once he died, the formation array that concealed this place would have stopped working and you would have sensed the place." Lin Mu spoke.
"Hmm… that does seem like what the former adviser would think. He was that kind of a man…" Adviser Liu spoke.
"You met him, uncle?" King Hong asked.
"I have indeed… though only a few times. Back then I was quite young and was barely in the Qi refining realm." Adviser Liu spoke.
"How far ago was this?" King Hong asked.
"About two hundred years ago, I suppose. The adviser back then was your grand uncle. And the old adviser here is two generations before that." Adviser Liu replied.
"That was a long time ago…" King Hong muttered. "I wasn't even born then…"
The five of them looked around a little bit and finally reached the end of the corridor where an old hall was located. At the center of this hall, a cushion was on which the old man was sitting.
"It… it's really him… it's Former Adviser Chu!" Adviser Liu said in disbelief.
The others were a bit taken aback by the old man's appearance, though. This was perhaps the oldest looking person he had seen.
"Senior brother, is he…?" Hua Wu whispered.
"Indeed… he's undergoing the final decay of mortals." Hua San replied.
Lin Mu heard what the two brothers were speaking and knew of the 'Final Decay of Mortals'. This was nothing but a term that was used when a cultivator used the end of his lifespan.
The strange thing was, it was actually a rather rare thing to see. Most cultivators never actually reached the true end of their lifespan and would mostly die before that due to other reasons.
Either they would die due to a mistake during cultivation or die due to some other external danger, including being killed by cultivators, beasts, heavenly tribulations, and many more.
Another reason why it was hard to observe it was because most cultivators that underwent it would enter seclusion and would thus not be seen. By the time people found out about them, they would have already turned into dust and bones.
The old man who was named Chu did not respond when the five men got close, and it was obvious that he was in an unconscious state.
"What do we do now?" Hua Wu asked.
"Seeing his state, I don't think we can wake him up directly. That may just end up killing him." Adviser Liu spoke.
Now they were in a dilemma about what to do. While they had managed to come here, waking up the old man and gaining information was another obstacle.
It was now that Xukong spoke again.
"Use the healing technique. While it won't heal his deep seated injury due to aging, it should still give him enough to wake up. If we're lucky, it might just work." Xukong suggested.
"Let's try it then…" Lin Mu said and walked ahead.
