Back in the Kong Plane, time continued to pass as Lin Mu stayed in the cauldron. Days turned into nights and clouds disappeared past the horizon. Trees grew new leaves and shed the only as the seasons changed.
The finally one day, it happened…
~Huu~
The sound of a breath was heard and echoed within the cauldron. The man sitting in the cauldron opened his eyes and looked at the dark interior of it before looking up at the dark, starless sky.
"Finally…" Lin Mu let out a breath.
He flew out of the cauldron and looked at himself, finding the great difference from before. Lin Mu's skin gained a golden sheen that could be seen when light reflected off it slightly. The sheen was not fully stable and could fade in and out of the skin.
~CRACK!~
But when he finally stepped onto the ground, his feet directly sank in.
"Damn!" Lin Mu cursed as he looked at his feet, that were now buried in the rocky ground all the way to his shins.
~CRACK~ CRACK~
Lin Mu pulled his right foot out and put it on the side so that he could pull his other foot out of the ground, but doing that only made it worse.
~SHATTER~
Lin Mu's right leg sank back into the rocky ground where he had stepped. Looking at the situation Lin Mu couldn't help but shake his head.
~Sigh~
"I did know this was gonna happen… but seems like I forgot…" Lin Mu muttered to himself.
Knowing that walking normally will not be an option for the time being, Lin Mu directly flew out using his cultivation base.
~shua~
He floated in the air and looked at this handiwork on the ground.
"How will I actually walk now?" Lin Mu couldn't help but wonder.
His weight was now enough to make his legs sink into the ground with ease. If it were some other beast, it might not have been the same since the surface area of their feet would be large.
But in the case of Lin Mu, he was still the size of a normal human and thus the pressure from his feet was enough to easily break even the rocky ground. Thinking of a solution, Lin Mu decided to try it out.
He slowly lowered himself to the ground, while still maintaining the upwards force from his cultivation base. Then he very gently laid his feet on the ground.
~Crack~
"Tch~" Lin Mu clicked his tongue as he saw the cracks spreading on the ground.
'Need to practice a bit…' Lin Mu thought to himself.
He ended up spending an hour just in this, before he finally managed to reach the perfect equilibrium of upward force so that he would be able to walk normally and not crack the ground and sink in.
~Phew~
"This will take some time getting used too…" Lin Mu muttered to himself as he finally managed to walk around without breaking the ground.
Now that he had fixed the immediate problem, Lin Mu could think about other things. He looked around in search of someone but didn't see them.
"Little Shrubby?" Lin Mu called out, but didn't get a response.
Closing his eyes, a wave of spirit Qi spread out from his body like a tsunami.
~WHOOSH~
~CRACK~
Cracks started spreading simply from the pressure of his spirit Qi, as it was unleashed.
~Rustle~ Rustle~ Rustle~
The trees in the distance started shaking due to it too, as if a wind was striking them.
A few seconds later, Lin Mu opened his eyes again.
"Not within the the hundred kilometers…" He muttered.
That was right, Lin Mu's spirit sense had been strengthened and refined further and could now directly cover a range of hundred kilometers!
"The increase was certainly worth it…" Lin Mu said as he felt the increased sensitivity.
He could feel each and every creature within the range of his spirit sense and also the other objects like rocks, soil, dead trees and a lot more. But this also put another question in his mind.
"Wait… if I managed to refine my spirit sense this much… then how long has it even been?" Lin Mu questioned as his face fell.
He quickly took out the communication jade slip and checked it for messages. But as a surprise to him, it was completely blank.
"What in the world…? How are there no messages at all? Even if nothing happened, they would still be sending me weekly updates. I'm pretty sure at least a week has passed." Lin Mu said to himself in disbelief.
'My cultivation!' Lin Mu quickly checked his own body.
His spirit sense first went to his Dantian, where he saw his Nascent soul floating above his Dao Shell and the massive ocean of spirit Qi that surrounded it.
"The Dao Shell… it's more than fifty percent complete? HOW'S THAT POSSIBLE?!" Lin Mu exclaimed.
His face fell even more, as a bad feeling rose within his stomach. Lin Mu then checked his lungs to see the refinement level and saw it had been fully refined.
He had officially refined three treasured organs and was at the third level of the Five Treasures realm!
Usually Lin Mu should have been very happy with all this, but he was not. It was due to the fact that the cost of time came with these increases in power as well.
Lin Mu knew very well that it would take him a long time to progress the Shell Genesis stage of the Dao Shell realm and yet, his Dao Shell was more than half ready. It meant that a sufficient amount of time had passed for that to happen.
Even if his lungs could have been refined in a lesser time than that, Lin Mu knew for sure that his Dao Shell should have taken way longer than that.
"There is no sign of increased spirit Qi here, which means… Did the well of Slumber trigger on its own?" Lin Mu wondered.
