Within Lin Mu's body, a change was happening.
The layer of impurities that had been merged with the dantian was being forcefully separated from it. This was being done by pushing out the spirit qi wisps from the dantian. Instead of letting them pass into the meridians like normally, Lin Mu was pushing them out of the pores in his dantian.
If someone else were to try this, they would likely cripple their dantian forever or even explode it. But because of Lin Mu's saturated vitality, the damage was being repaired just as it was being caused. Large beads of sweat appeared on Lin Mu's forehead, and he bore through the pain.
This was no easy task and many would have given up a long time ago. But with Lin Mu's own determination and the assistance of the severing heart sutra, he held on. Finally, the layer of impurities cracked like the shell of a hard boiled egg and a burst of spirit qi came out of the dantian.
A stream of vital energy started repairing his dantian, and he focused on removing the impurities. He couldn't remove these impurities in the normal way by coughing them out or exhaling them. They were far too dangerous and it was likely that they would taint the other parts of his body if he tried to use that route.
It was now that the voice of Senior Xukong rung out in his mind.
"Control your spirit qi wisps and condense them," Xukong spoke.
Lin Mu knew that doing this normally would result in the spirit qi wisps being converted into liquid drops, and wondered why Senior Xukong would suggest him this, but he could not afford to doubt him now and did as he was told.
The spirit qi wisps were surrounding the 'impurity shell' outside the dantian, and Lin Mu began to condense them. He had already gotten habituated to the entire process and thus didn't have as much of a problem. But once he reached the limit of the saturation point, an uncontrolled reaction happened.
Lin Mu got anxious and was about to forcefully control it when Xukong interrupted.
"Don't! Let it happen," He directed.
Lin Mu held on and watched as the spirit qi wisps became unstable. He had expected that they would explode, but something else happened.
~flicker~
The spirit qi wisps suddenly ignited and a yellow flame appeared. As soon as Lin Mu saw the flame, he realized what it was.
"A qi flame…" He muttered to himself.
"Yes… Now, burn the impurities away!" Xukong ordered.
Lin Mu paused the qi flame into the impurities and they started burning. The flames started to reduce after the first impact, but then Lin Mu made more of them. It only took Lin Mu one to try to understand the concept behind the creation of a qi flame.
If one wanted to convert the spirit qi wisps into liquid form, they needed the specific conditions that were provided by the dantian and meridians. If it was done outside of them, the chances of explosion or dissipation were likely.
But if a certain level of control was applied, those spirit qi wisps would ignite into qi flames instead of exploding due to the pressure. This was the very qi flame that could be used to refine alchemical pills and refine spirit tools.
After months of waiting, Lin Mu had finally managed to learn how to ignite qi flames at this opportune time. The qi flames that he had right now were spirit qi flames as they were created from pure spirit qi and were different from fire attribute spirit qi.
In fact, different types of spirit qi's could be ignited in a similar way and qi flames with different attributes could be formed. This was one of the more complex methods of using spirit qi, and not many could achieve this.
The fire attribute spirit qi flame was the easiest to ignite as it matched its basic features. Making other elements have the same properties was quite difficult, and that was the reason why most pill alchemists and spirit tool refiners had a higher affinity with the fire element.
It was simply much easier for them to achieve the same thing than it would for someone that had the water element affinity. It was not to say that those who had different elemental affinities than fire would be bad alchemists; no, rather they could have the same level of skills. The only difference was that their start would be difficult.
'Even without the affinity for the fire element, he still is able to ignite the qi flame on his own rather quickly. Hmm… though I guess his control over his spirit sense probably compensated for that. This leaves him with ten elements that he could possibly have affinity to.
Due to the ring, he has the affinity to the spatial element, but he definitely does not have the affinity for the other two primordial elements. That leaves him with the four heavenly and four mortal elements.' Xukong thought.
~sizzle~
The impurities started burning rapidly as Lin Mu kept on converting more and more spirit qi wisps into spirit qi flames. The impurities reduced and soon disappeared into nothingness.
~Humm~
As soon as that was done, the spirit qi flames died down and a wave of energy spread out from Lin Mu's body. His cells rejoiced as the vital energy within them thrummed in a rhythmic manner. The final 0.01% that was left finally completed and Lin Mu achieved the Xiantian physique.
Then it was as if Lin Mu's skin had started growing rapidly. Layers of callus started forming on them, and their thickness soon reached one centimeter. After that point, it stopped and another cracking sound was heard.
Lin Mu moved his body and the hardened callus all over his body cracked into tiny pieces. He stood up and the pieces all fell out from inside his clothes. He patted down his body and hair, getting rid of the final bits of the calluses.
"I think you should take a look in the mirror,"