Chapter 2063 A Mistake And Learning
Lin Mu knew that he would need a lot of resources to practice the Omnicore Ascendancy. But what he didn't know was that the sheer amount would exceed his imagination.
"I've emptied out seventy percent of the Wood Elemental herbs." Lin Mu muttered as he looked at the empty open shelves.
Twenty five days had passed since Lin Mu had entered the ring, and he had been practicing the Omnicore Ascendancy nonstop, while also comprehending it further. Most of the drawers were open in the wood elemental section and stacked straight up in the towner. It basically showed how far he had progressed.
Other than the wood elemental herbs that he couldn't use due to simply hitting the quantity limit, Lin Mu had basically used them till they were exhausted. He had started from the most basic, and was now at the False Immortal realm.
"I guess this will be the Transition point… Let's see how much effect something above the spirit realm has." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
~shua~
An immortal herb that was in the form of a thick and succulent leaf flew out from one of the upper shelves. It was light green in color and had multiple thin spines on it. "Spiny Immortal Belladonna… Rather poisonous." Lin Mu picked a different choice.
Unlike the other herbs which were mostly beneficial in nature and were used in pills and medicines, the Spiny Immortal Belladonna was a poisonous herb and was very dangerous. Even for First or second tribulation stage immortals, it could easily kill them in small doses and those above might still be debilitated.
But even if it was poisonous didn't mean that it wasn't of the Wood Element.
Lin Mu was curious whether something like this would work for Omnicore Ascendancy too. 'In a way its potency is actually higher than other herbs above its level. But if it is just the wood element within it that Omnicore Ascendancy needs, then this should still work.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
If it worked out, Lin Mu would have another source of resources that he could utilize for the technique. It would basically be expanding his options and would speed up the process.
"Here goes nothing…" Lin Mu took a deep breath and activated Omnicore Ascendancy.
~SHUA~
This time, the process took a bit longer. The Spiny Immortal Belladonna floated up and started to glow. It hovered for a bit before finally starting to dissipate. 'Huh?' But when it did, Lin Mu saw that there weren't just green wisps of light there. 'There are dark blue wisps too… what element is that?' he wondered.
The green light wisps were clearly the wood element as established earlier, but the dark blue wisps did not seem like the water element at least.
Feeling a bit apprehensive, Lin Mu raised his focus and let both the wisps to be absorbed into his body.
~shua~
The wisps entered his liver and that's where the conflict happened.
"Ugh…" Lin Mu felt a sharp stabbing pain in his liver, and a wave of dizziness spread in his body.
It made him waver, but he did not lose his focus. He found that the green wisps had successfully joined the rest of the wood elemental energy and was now condensing. But at the same time, the dark blue energy that he had absorbed, seemed to be causing trouble in his liver.
He could see parts of his liver turning black.
'Dammit, so that was just pure poison essence?' Lin Mu had never seen something like that and thus hadn't recognized it.
Realizing his mistake, Lin Mu now needed to fix it. Thankfully, he had a body cultivation equivalent to the Fourth Tribulation stage of the immortal realm. As such, while the poison of the Spiny Immortal Belladonna could affect him, he could still resist it.
Which was exactly what Lin Mu did.
He let his body detoxify it which was an easy enough task, since the poison had directly entered his liver. It was the organ that detoxified, and as such was the perfect place the poison could enter. The blackened parts of his liver soon recovered while Lin Mu's vitality surged out from the surrounding cells and supported the recovery of the affected cells. About fifteen minutes later, the poison was gone and Lin Mu felt normal again.
"Guess that's another risk of the Omnicore Ascendancy… I need to be careful when using Poisonous herbs." Lin Mu noted it in his mind.
But this also gave him the chance to observe how the technique managed to separate out the pure poison essence from the Spiny Immortal Belladonna. Because of how different it was from poison itself, Lin Mu hadn't felt a threat from it. 'Now that I know it, I just need to leave the poison essence behind and only absorb what I need.' Lin Mu reckoned.
Though with this resolved, he was now free to observe the wood elemental energy in his liver. 'Oh? It's grown.' The condensed wooden energy that was about the size of a dust spec was now the size of a sand grain!
It was significantly bigger than before, and was also observable properly.
'So the increase from a stronger immortal herb was indeed much better.' Lin Mu understood. But because he had missed the exact way it happened, Lin Mu knew he needed to repeat it to see the exact increase.
"Let's try again." Lin Mu picked out another Spiny Immortal Belladonna Leaf and activated the Omnicore Ascendancy.
~shua~
A few seconds later it turned into pure wood element and pure poison essence. But this time around, Lin Mu only drew the green wisps into his body, leaving the dark blue wisps behind. Of course it wasn't as easy as that, since the dark blue wisps actually tried to go along the green wisps. Lin Mu had to consciously push them back, to prevent them from entering his body. Even if he could detoxify them, nothing good would come out from consuming poison willingly.
"And there we go…" Once that was done, the green wisps fully entered his liver, while the Dark blue wisps faded away into nothingness.
Without the influence of the Omnicore Ascendancy the pure essence could not exist on its own for long and would decay fast.
'The increase is also significant.' Lin Mu thought as he observed the tiny core in his liver.
It was still the size of a grain of sand, but it was fractionally bigger. Lin Mu could barely estimate it to be around ten percent increase.
'Still small, but a steady increase.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
With a more quantifiable increase, Lin Mu now wished to see the limits of false immortal herbs. He drew out another leaf of the Spiny Immortal Belladonna and used Omnicore Ascendancy. Separating out the two essences, Lin Mu absorbed the good one and left the bad one behind.
'Hmm… ten percent increase again.' Lin Mu observed before repeating the process.
Three leafs… four leafs… five leafs…
The increase in the sand grain's size was ten percent each time, until the sixth time.
~shuuuu~
The Spiny Immortal Belladonna simply dissipated and didn't turn into wood element.
"So five's the limit… lower than the spirit herbs but considering the overall higher energy, I guess it is still a new gain." Lin Mu analyzed.
He added this information to his notes and moved onto another herb. This immortal herb wasn't exactly poisonous, but could be overwhelming for some cultivators.
"Broad Leaf Immortal Nepenthes." Lin Mu muttered the name of the carnivorous immortal herb that exclusively ate beasts as nourishment. Because of its unique diet. Not only did the Broad Leaf Immortal Nepenthes contain the wood element, but also had high vitality. But this high vitality was volatile and could end up harming normal immortal Qi cultivators.
One needed a tough body in the form of a body cultivator, or suppress the effects of the Broad Leaf Immortal Nepenthes with other herbs. For most immortal Qi cultivators, the herb was turned into a dual immortal Qi restoration as well as a healing pill.
But for Body Cultivators, it could be consumed to progress their body cultivation. Thus the Broad Leaf Immortal Nepenthes was actually quite a valuable herb, and with its diet of beasts, it was not cheap to grow either for most individual cultivators.
But Lin Mu had a decent stock of them which he had bought in the capital city along with several other herbs. ~shua~
He activated the Omnicore Ascendancy and watched as the Broad Leaf Immortal Nepenthes broke down into pure elements.
There were the green wisps of wood element, but along with it were vibrant red wisps.
This time though, Lin Mu could reorganize it. 'The blood element…' The amount was quite low, as there were just a couple such red wisps, but they were still recognizable to him.
'The blood element isn't part of the Omnicore Ascendancy… what kind of effect will this have?' Lin Mu now wondered.