A day ago Lin Mu had a rather long cultivation session and had a small breakthrough in his practice with the Thousand armament blade scripture. Even he had not expected something like this, thus he had spent the rest of the day practicing it in the backyard.
He had practiced straight for eighteen hours and had utterly exhausted himself. During this entire ordeal, he had not used even a single wisp of his spirit qi, and neither did he use the vital energy. All that he had done was done using the raw strength of his body.
This had left him incredibly sore and tired such that when his head hit the pillow, he did not even appear in the Sleepscape rather just falling into a deep dreamless slumber. All these weeks no one had disturbed him, thus Lin Mu had gotten incredibly used to the solitary life.
He had mostly forgotten about the people outside the courtyard and was fully focused on his training and cultivation. Thus when he was rudely woken from his sleep because of a commotion that was happening outside, he was groggy, to say the least.
In fact, now that he heard the story from Hei Ping, he was wondering when did his neighbors become so caring. While they had interactions over the years, the neighbors mostly kept to themselves after his parent's death, not bothering to talk with Lin Mu.
On one part this was due to them blaming Lin Mu for being an orphan and they did not want him borrowing any money from them. Although Lin Mu had never done that.
~Hmph~
"Hypocrites, how typical of mortal humans." Xukong scoffed in Lin Mu's mind.
Lin Mu paid little attention to Senior Xukong's words as he was still reeling from his sleepiness. He could feel that something strange was happening with his body, like it was sick. This was rather new for him, as he had not been sick ever since he became a cultivator.
'Perhaps it just a side effect of training without the use of spirit qi and vital energy. Bah! I'll deal with these people first.' Lin Mu thought to himself, feeling frustrated.
"Alright, you all can see me now, right? I'm fine, you all can go back. I want to rest now." Lin Mu spoke up in a louder voice than before.
This silenced most people, but some of them were still speaking a few things. Lin Mu did not mind them, as all he wanted to do now was rest. He thus turned to Hei Ping.
"I'll rest for a bit. Please don't let them disturb me." Lin Mu ordered before closing the door of the courtyard.
The people were now left standing in an awkward silence as they now didn't know how to respond.
"You heard him, go off now. Senior Lin Mu does not want to be bothered. If anyone dares to disturb him anymore, they would be reported to the town head and be punished." Hei Ping warned.
With the threat of punishment hanging over their heads and seeing that Lin Mu was indeed there, the people walked away, albeit reluctantly. It was almost as if they wanted more from Lin Mu, and they had now been restrained.
***
~Phew~
Lin Mu let out a breath of fatigue as he laid down on his bed and closed his eyes. He had his hand on his forehead and was rubbing it to alleviate the headache that had now sprouted in his head.
Unable to bear it anymore, Lin Mu decided to ask senior Xukong.
"Senior, what is happening to me? Why do I feel… sick?" Lin Mu questioned.
"Hmm, I do not exactly know. It could be because of the training you did yesterday, but this seems too extreme for that." Xukong replied.
~Sigh~
"I guess I'll just sleep for a bit and see how I feel later." Lin Mu spoke before turning on his side.
A few minutes later, Lin Mu was deep in sleep and the silence once again descended in the room. Xukong though was lost in his thoughts.
"Hmm, is it time for that? It should be, he is already close to the limit. He had already refined enough liquefied spirit qi, his body should be ready." Xukong spoke to himself.
While Xukong had told Lin Mu otherwise, he actually knew what was happening to him, or rather had a good guess.
In this entire month, Lin Mu had accumulated about two hundred drops of liquefied spirit qi and had used up about one third of the basic qi pills from one of the boxes. He actually refined more than double this amount of liquid spirit qi, but he had been using most of it in practicing the nameless technique of the lost immortal and had infused it into his stomach.
If one were to look at Lin Mu's dantian, they would see that it was slowly expanding. Before Lin Mu had thought that he had the capacity of about two thousand spirit qi wisps when he had originally started to cultivate. But later he learned that he was simply mistaken due to his lack of experience and spirit sense.
Later on, he learned from senior Xukong that his dantian was actually increasing in capacity and had reached the capacity to hold fifteen hundred spirit qi wisps.
During the past month, his dantian had gone through a rigorous exercise, having been filled and depleted over and over again. And not only that, but every day the amount of liquid spirit qi in his dantian was also increasing, which exerted a certain kind of pressure on it.
For most other cultivators, this pressure was normal and came with the growth of their cultivation, but unlike Lin Mu's dantian, their dantian would instead get tempered and harden, making it so that the liquid spirit qi would no longer affect its walls due to its pressure.
But in Lin Mu's case, his dantian was rather flexible, and now this very characteristic was showing its effect. His dantian started to steadily expand under the effect of the pressure exerted by the liquid spirit qi and fine cracks developed in its walls.