About three days had passed since, Lin Mu had escaped from Gu Yao and right now he had covered most of the distance to the cave of the great slumber bear.
~huu~
Lin Mu let out a cloud of steam from his mouth as he looked around the snowy tundra. About a day ago, he had reached the point where snow was still present in the area and now it was getting more and more dense. He reckoned that by the time he reaches the cave, the area would be no different from when it was winter.
In the depths of the northern mountains, there was no difference between winter and summer. There was snow all around the year and the wildlife had already adapted to this. But this also meant that the beasts here would be hardier and tougher.
Last time Lin Mu was lucky since the roar of the great slumber bear had scared most of them off, but now he had to fight with the beasts that he came across. Luckily though, he had not needed to fight against a core condensation realm beast till now.
He had encountered a few of them of course, but he was able to avoid them by going around. Also, perhaps because it was the summer, there was still an abundance of prey, which led to the spirit beasts being less aggressive against him.
They would only attack him if he got too close or if they were naturally aggressive type beasts. Since Lin Mu was focusing on getting to the cave as fast as possible, he wanted to reserve his spirit qi and not use it in fighting.
He was mostly using it to travel fast and reach the cave. But Lin Mu was not invincible and had to rest every night or he wouldn't have been able to last this long. Thankfully, he had a rather large amount of food in his ring and he was able to cook it whenever he needed it.
Another thing was that Senior Xukong had still not responded to Lin Mu. He had gotten worried and thus had checked the inside of the ring, only to find him floating around the ring in silence. His eyes were closed and the spatial energy swirled around him, slowly being absorbed into his body.
Guessing that he was relatively fine and was just resting, Lin Mu decided to wait till he woke up himself.
It was near the evening, and thus Lin Mu had decided to take a break for now. Unlike him though, Little shrubby was not the least bit tired. It would simply follow him without complaining at all and only asked for meat.
Little Shrubby had really improved in cooking meat and could make it without burning it. Though there were some parts that were left slightly raw.
"Cook, cook, give, meat," Little Shrubby told Lin Mu.
"Alright, let me take some out…" Lin Mu replied before talking out a wooden chopping block that was about a meter wide.
He placed a slab of raw meat on the chopping block and let Little Shrubby do the work. The beast was able to tear apart ribbons of meat from the slab using its sharp claws and did so one by one. His work was rather uniform and most of the pieces were of the same size.
While he was doing this, Lin Mu took out some firewood and ignited it with the minor fireball technique.
~Shua~
The wood ignited almost instantly, and Little Shrubby paused to watch it. The beast was rather interested in this technique and wanted to learn to make fire too. At the kitchen in his house, it was using the fire from the oil lamp to ignite the stove and thus found it a bit inconvenient.
But seeing Lin Mu create flames in his palm like that greatly interested him. He returned to cutting more meat, and Lin Mu began to take out some skewer sticks. He had bought a lot of them back at Wu Lim city when he went shopping during the first day and that had made it convenient for him now.
The skewers were pieced with the meat ribbons and Little Shrubby started cooking some on his own, while Lin Mu did the same. They ate their fill and Lin Mu replenished his vital energy and spirit qi that had been consumed that day.
He sat down in a cross legged posture and chanted the severing heart sutra. He perceived the condition of his body and sensed that the conversion of his cells from normal to Xiantian cells had reached nearly to completion.
It could be said that it was at 99.9% now, and he only needed that one push to reach the full completion.
'Hmm… I should reach it rather quickly now…' Lin Mu thought to himself.
Time passed, and it was now nearly midnight. Lin Mu opened his eyes and looked at little shrubby, who was lying at his side.
"I'll sleep now, tell me if anything comes close." Lin Mu said.
"Okay," Little Shrubby said before standing up.
Lin Mu pulled out a bedroll from his ring and placed it on a layer of tree branches before laying on it. He placed his soft white bolster and rested his head upon it before entering the Sleepscape.
Inside the Sleepscape, Lin Mu appeared in front of the spirit apple tree and saw the ripened apples that were growing on it. He plucked more of them and placed them inside his ring. He had appeared in the Sleepscape after a few days and he had an aim today.
Lin Mu choose a location that was at a short distance from the spirit apple tree and kneeled down there. He placed his hand on the ground and withdrew the graves of his parents. The entire chunk of the soil that Lin Mu had taken from his back yard was pulled out as it fell to the ground.
Then, as if it had a mind of its own, the ground of the Sleepscape melded with the soil from the graves and they automatically leveled to become the same as they were before.
"Rest well… mother, father…"