Two days passed by before Lin Mu finally woke up from his trance.
~shudder~
His eyelids trembled and his body shook as he gained control again.
"W-what…" Lin Mu muttered. "What happened?"
~Grunt~
But just as he did that he felt a rush of memories in his mind. He recalled all that he had learned and soon a calm expression replaced his distressed one.
"Are you fine now?" Xukong questioned.
"I am… Senior." Lin Mu answered after a second.
"Did you see?" Xukong asked.
"I did… everything." Lin Mu replied.
"Hmm… you did see it, but it's not everything. You'll see more later as you grow. But for now that's enough." Xukong said, keeping things vague.
By now Lin Mu understood that the secrets of the cosmos were not to be pried into easily and it was best to keep one's distance, lest one was pulled into it and torn apart. The weight of it was not something light to bear.
Lin Mu instead focused on the thing that had started all this: The egg.
"I now know how to make the egg hatch, senior." Lin Mu replied.
"You do?" Xukong asked, feeling surprised.
"Indeed. The egg is certainly special… it absorbed the impure yin spirit Qi from the crystals and grew. But that is not enough… only half of the progress is done.
If it is to be hatched, it will need something to balance the Yin spirit Qi." Lin Mu replied.
"Yang spirit Qi…" Xukong muttered.
"Exactly. Only after the egg is fed a certain amount of Yang Spirit Qi would it regain the balance and hatch.
From what I understood, if we had never given it the crystal, it might have not needed Yang Spirit Qi. But at the same time, it would have taken an exponentially longer time to hatch on its own.
But this will help shorten that time. As long as we can feed it some Yang spirit Qi, it will hatch eventually." Lin Mu explained.
"That will not be an easy task. While Yin and Yang Spirit Qi are literally everywhere in the universe, the problem is in refining it. Even that impure Yin spirit Qi from those crystals would take hundreds of years of refinement to obtain." Xukong said.
"Yes… it will be a tough task. But thankfully we are in no rush for it. We simply need to continue on and wait for the right opportunity." Lin Mu said a smile.
This was a fact, since there was nothing really dependent on the egg hatching. It was just an extra thing that Lin Mu was keeping with him, hoping that something good would come out of it, eventually.
Plus, Lin Mu had far too important things to deal with currently.
"How long has it been, senior?" Lin Mu asked, knowing that he had lost track of time when he was in trance.
"It should be a little over two days," Xukong answered.
"Hmm… not too much. This is far more reasonable." Lin Mu said before standing up.
He then checked the plants in the Sleepscape and found the small change.
"It seems to be slowly increasing the wood attribute spirit Qi in the air too. This might really be a good place to cultivate the five treasures realm, perhaps." Lin Mu spoke, finding it pleasant.
"Actually… you might not even need to consciously cultivate for this." Xukong said and saw that Lin Mu wanted to know more. "I don't know if you've felt it. But the spirit Qi that is generated here is automatically taken in by your body after a certain point."
Lin Mu furrowed his brows and tried to remember if he had felt anything like that.
"I can't tell." Lin Mu admitted.
"That's understandable. You natural speed of absorbing spirit Qi passively is already quite high, thus the addition of this is almost impossible to spot for you. But this place has been adding additional spirit Qi to you all this time.
And keeping that in mind, I think the same would have with the wood elemental spirit Qi eventually. Though cultivating in here directly would still be a bit higher than the passive gain." Xukong explained.
Lin Mu had an expression of realization and felt pleasantly surprised.
"That will be very good. No matter how small the increase, every little bit helps." Lin Mu said.
"You will still need to find an appropriate body tempering technique of the wood element though." Xukong added.
"Hmm… I'll try. Though we do have the one that we got in the Kushao ruins." Lin Mu stated.
"The True Gold Body Forging arts will take a lot out of you. Are you sure you want to use that?" Xukong questioned.
"I might as well if I have nothing else. I do have enough gold for it. And if its about the refinement, I have the assistance of Jing Luo's notes about weapons forging and refinement.
Compared to that, this refinement is far simpler and I can take help of him as well." Lin Mu answered.
"Very well. You can try it out when you feel like it. Though you should also get started on finalizing the shape of your Dao Shell that you have been designing all this time." Xukong spoke in a concerned tone.
"Ah that… I am indeed close. I just have a few minor changes to make and I should be fully ready to enter the Shell Genesis stage of The Dao Shell realm." Lin Mu said with confidence.
Xukong nodded in agreement before disappearing into a Grey orb of light.
~Sigh~
"Let's go back… the Patriarch and others might have already returned as well." Lin Mu said before he controlled his body to leave the Sleepscape.
~shua~
His vision darkened for a moment and when it returned, he had already woken up.
Lin Mu immediately spread his spirit sense around and found several people standing near his courtyard.
"Seems like I am a bit late…" Lin Mu said as he rose from the bed and walked out.