These cracks slowly grew bigger, but when they reached a critical value a strong wave of energy would wash over it and mend it. This energy was none other than Lin Mu's vital energy which had been saturated to a great extent within his body.
This process of mending and repair lasted for many hours during which Lin Mu was running a fever and his body had turned red from the heat. Fine wisps of steam could even be seen rising from his body due to the cold temperature.
The expansion of his dantian continued on until when finally, it had reached double its previous size. Lin Mu's dantian was now large enough to contain three thousand wisps of spirit qi within it.
If other cultivators were to see it, they would be extremely shocked as Lin Mu's capacity to store spirit qi was now three times that of an average cultivator. In fact, if he were to refine more spirit qi and fill it entirely with liquid spirit qi, his capacity would even contend against that of mid stage core condensation realm cultivators.
Even in the top three sects, there were barely any disciples whose capacity of dantian in the qi refining realm reached two thousand spirit qi wisps, not to mention three thousand. Even fifteen hundred wisps was considered a rarity in the top ten sects.
While it only seemed like Lin Mu's capacity was only three times that of a similar stage cultivator, it was not so. While it was only three times for now, it would be exponentially more when he reached a higher realm.
Even a hundred spirit qi wisp difference became a huge difference in the long run as it only meant that, that much extra space was present for refinement and compression of spirit qi. The more spirit qi was refined and compressed, the more stable the foundation of a cultivator would be.
Still, the reason why there were not many cultivators with higher capacity was not that they were not talented. But rather because even in the top sects, they would restrain its expansion as it would only take that much longer for that disciple to reach the next realm.
Another major problem was the injuries caused to the dantian could be life threatening and there was a big chance that the cultivator would actually end up crippling themselves permanently if their dantian was shattered due to the expansion.
In a way, Lin Mu only survived it because of his abnormal body tempering realm cultivation due to which he had ample amounts of vital energy seething within his body. Most cultivators would abandon vital energy once they reached the qi refining realm and thought of it as an inferior to spirit qi.
An entire day passed before Lin Mu's fever finally went down. His dantian had stabilized and was no longer expanding. Even the drops of liquid spirit qi which floated in individual droplets on the bottom of Lin Mu's dantian, merged together forming a small pool.
If one were to look at this pool and the wisps of spirit qi floating over it, they would think that it is a scene from an immortal painting.
Inside Lin Mu's abdomen, something else was happening. A complex and obscure pattern appeared on his stomach. This pattern was the same pattern that had appeared when Lin Mu had first bound with the Lost immortals legacy treasure, which was the wooden slip.
The obscure pattern flickered and small runes started appearing from it. These runes were too small to be clearly observed, and it could not be perceived what they meant. All that could be seen was that they had some kind of a complex form.
These runes spread all over the stomach and formed a net. The net had large size gaps and it did not seem proper. The obscure pattern flickered unstably and a few more of those small runes appeared from it. These small runes too joined the net, making it slightly more denser.
The obscure patter flicked even more, but it could not produce any more of the small runes. The obscure pattern, as if running out of fuel, fizzled one last time before disappearing. The net formed from the small runes shrank and faded into the surface of Lin Mu's stomach.
Just as the obscure pattern disappeared, Lin Mu opened his eyes.
"Huh, what… Ah! Heavens! Not Again!" Lin Mu uttered painfully as the hunger attacked him like a beast.
He quickly withdrew the meat from his ring and started eating it. Over the days he had stored plenty of cooked meat in his ring, but even then it was steadily being depleted. Lin Mu had already known that his hunger was increasing more and more, thus he increased the amount of meat he cooked.
It had come to the point where he had already finished half of all the beast corpses he had accumulated till now. Still, something was feeling strange to him. Usually, when he got the rush of hunger, it would immediately start being satiated once he started eating, but that was not happening right now.
Lin Mu ignored it for a bit and continued eating, as he was more bothered by the pain for now. But after a few minutes, he had reached a point where he had already finished the entire beast and yet there was not even one percent of reduction in his hunger.
"Senior! something's wrong!" Lin Mu shouted out in his mind.
"I know, it seems like there have been a few changes in your body. Quickly check it with your spirit sense your dantian probably expanded even more. And perhaps even the nameless technique of the lost immortal must have had some effect." Xukong suggested.
Lin Mu split his attention with some difficulty and used his sprite sense to observe his body while still continuing to eat. He had already withdrawn the second beast that was cooked beforehand and was already eating eat.
Lin Mu first observed his visceral organs and could not find anything different with them. He even looked at his stomach and scanned it closely, yet could not find any change.
'Huh? It's not my organs, so is it my dantian?' Lin Mu thought as he peered deeper.