Tie Niu watched as the long sword shattered apart in Lin Mu's hand as if it were made of glass. The long sword turned into a mess of runes that scattered away into nothingness. The man felt the backlash coming from the action, but held on with the help of the array's support.
"DAMN YOU!" Tie Niu shouted, feeling the drain on his cultivation base.
A part of his cultivation base had just been cut off due to the backlash. While the array had manage to block most of it, losing one's cultivation base was always painful and frustrating.
He raised his hands as if he held a sledgehammer in it.
~WHOOSH~
Spirit Qi swirled in the air as more runes materialized. And along with this, the other weapons still kept on being formed and attacked Lin Mu non-stop.
~DENG~DENG~DENG~DENG~
The weapons struck Lin Mu's body, but to no avail. Having learned that his defenses were overwhelming against such an attack, Lin Mu didn't even dodge them anymore.
"Time to end this. I don't want to waste anymore time." Lin Mu muttered.
"What do you—?" But before Tie Niu could finish speaking or even completing his attack, his eyes went wide.
~KACHA~
"AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!" Tie Niu shouted in pain as he was forced to kneel.
His knee was now folded backwards, due to the virtue of Lin Mu kicking him on his knee. The attack looked simple, but the might contained in it was nothing to scoff at. One must know that Lin Mu's body was now several tens of tons heavy.
Even a single leg of his was at least ten tons heavy and when he kicked with it, the force generated would be many times more than that. Breaking someone's knee, even if they were at the Dao Shell realm was as easy as snapping a toothpick.
"Let's make you a bit more balanced." Lin Mu said before raising his leg again.
~KACHA~
~SPLAT~
"Oops, I miscalculated." Lin Mu said as he saw his handiwork.
Instead of just bending the knee backwards, Tie Niu's left leg was directly reduced to mush.
The man continued to scream as snot and tears streamed down his face. Lin Mu placed his hand on his head and simply lowered the upward force he constantly applied to his body.
'What in the… how is his hand so heavy?…' Tie Niu couldn't even speak at this point, as he felt the crushing weight of Lin Mu's hand.
~Crack~
The floor below Tie Niu and Lin Mu directly cracked, and an indent appeared in it. Tie Niu's neck was being forced inwards and the weight would snap his neck if it increased anymore.
"Stop… I… I'l… I'll die!" The man cried out.
Lin Mu stared into his eyes as he used his spirit sense to probe the man's body, finding out all his secrets. Tie Niu could feel a surging spirit Qi piercing through his body's defenses as if they were paper.
Even if he was physically injured, his body's natural spirit Qi defenses should have held up. But it looked like they were nothing under the strength of Lin Mu's highly refined spirit sense.
Once Lin Mu's spirit sense entered his body, Lin Mu discovered several things.
'His vitality has been mixed with that strange aura as well. It is present everywhere in his body.' Lin Mu noted.
The spirit sense tendril continued onwards and soon reached the man's Dantian. Here, as a surprise to Lin Mu, he actually met some resistance.
~hiss~
A strange aura exuded from the Dantian and blocked Lin Mu's spirit sense from entering it. But Lin Mu simply increased the power slightly and it pierced right through it once more.
"Ugh!"
~COUGH~
Tie Niu coughed out another mouthful of blood and felt the spirit Qi in his body going haywire. Even his vitality was in a chaos and he felt as if his blood would start to flow backwards.
Once inside his Dantian, Lin Mu could see what looked like a muddy sea.
'This… what happened to it?' Lin Mu was confused.
Within Tie Niu's Dantian, the reservoir of spirit Qi looked like a dirty swamp instead of a clear lake. Spirit Qi was supposed to be clear as long as it was attribute-less. Even Earth elemental spirit Qi that was brown colored didn't look like the spirit Qi here.
"Seems like it has been contaminated greatly… by some strange energy nonetheless." Xukong spoke.
Lin Mu's spirit sense moved around and quickly found Tie Niu's Nascent soul floating in the center of the muddy swamp. Its color was similar to the man he had seen before and had splotches of red and blue all over its body looking strange.
Then there was the Dao Shell of the man. Tie Niu was actually in the Shell Genesis stage, but had only entered it recently. His Dao Shell was the common sphere shape and about forty percent of it seemed to have been materialized.
The color of this Dao Shell was the same as that of the spirit Qi in the Dantian. It looked more like a clay bowl instead of a Dao Shell right now. Plus, its size was exactly the size of a bowl as well.
"The Dao Shell is also rather small… isn't it?" Lin Mu realized.
"It does seem to be smaller than the average Dao Shell." Xukong agreed.
The starting size of one's Dao Shell could differ depending on several factors. The three main ones being the cultivation technique used, the talent of a cultivator, and then the foundation of the cultivator.
In case of Lin Mu, his Dao Shell was already about two meters wide at its maximum. This was a size that many cultivators took centuries to reach. They would keep on expanding their Dao Shell in the Shell expansion stage and take a lot of time.
And yet, this was the starting point for Lin Mu; which was another reason why it made sense to him that he didn't really need to practice the Shell expansion stage. Instead, he could directly prepare for the Dao Treading Realm!
