Chapter 2118 More Than Half The Keys
~SHUA~
Crown Princess Shang took out several of the keys that they had obtained.
"Oh? That's a lot." Lin Mu was stunned seeing over thirty keys.
"So you all got less… No wonder our trial was so bothersome." Crown Princess Shang spoke, feeling upset.
"Perhaps… but we don't know how the number of keys vary as the trials themselves seem to be random." Lin Mu replied. "Though seeing there are nine circles here, there are probably nine different trial zones." He added.
"Volcanic land, Frozen wasteland, and a Marsh… That's just three out of nine." Monk Hushu counted, wondering what else could be there.
"We'll know once the others arrive." Daoist Chu said. "You two should cultivate and restore your Qi stores for now, as there isn't much to do." He explained.
"Yeah, that seems to be the case." Monk Hushu replied before looking at Lin Mu. "What do we do with the keys?" he asked.
"Oh, there." Lin Mu pointed to the elevated platform.
Because of how bothered they had been due to their condition, Monk Hushu and Crown Princess Shang had managed to entirely miss the platform with concentric keyholes.
"So that's where we use the keys." Crown Princess Shang said before walking up to it.
~CLACK~CLACK~CLACK~
She inserted all the keys and turned them, causing more than half of the holes to be filled.
~SHUA~
Once she did that, three of the circles started to glow.
"Half done… Now others need to get the rest of the keys." Lady Kang muttered, seeing the state.
Lin Mu observed the platform, using his Immortal sense and seeing if he could find any insights into how it worked or what it would be doing. But nothing could be perceived yet.
Even when he used his Spatial Perception, it wasn't of much help. There was nothing beyond the platform, and the formation arrays woven into the fabric of space were spread too broadly for Lin Mu to pry any information from it.
'A celestial's treasure really is beyond the understanding of an immortal,' Lin Mu thought to himself.
Him even being able to observe the formation arrays was a miracle that was possible due to his skill with the space. Otherwise, even for a Transcendent Immortal, this would be an incredibly difficult task.
Lin Mu's gaze lingered over the platform for a bit while the others went to do their tasks. Monk Hushu and Crown Princess Shang still needed to recover their minor injuries along with their Immortal Qi, thus they focused on that, while Lady Kang and Min Ju cultivated.
Daoist Chu returned to reading whatever book he was, being the slight outlier.
Lin Mu glanced at all of them for a moment before sitting back down some distance away. Now that there were more people, he had to put more distance between them.
'Back to Omnicore Ascendancy…' Lin Mu thought and took out more ore and started breaking it down into metal elemental wisps and rapidly absorbing them into his body.
Time passed fast and Lin Mu didn't have any interruptions for about two weeks. In this time, he managed to bring the Metal Core to the Immortal level and had used up a lot of his low quality materials in it. Though he still had several mountains of them leftover which had no use for the time being.
Though Lin Mu reckoned there could always be more use for them in the future.
After having finished bringing the Metal Core to the level of the other three cores, Lin Mu finally moved onto the last Basal Element.
'The fire core…' Lin Mu thought of the Fire Elemental materials that he had, which wasn't that high compared to the other elements. 'Compared to the other elements, I don't have the 'raw' materials for fire. I can't exactly just keep fire inside my ring anyway. It'll go out after a while.' He thought to himself.
But then he recalled a copious amount of hot fluid that he had stored.
'Wait… I do have some. But it isn't something for the mortal level… The Lava I got from the trial is something useful for the immortal level.' He reckoned.
He had quite a lot of Lava which he could definitely use, but it won't be good at the start since he wanted to begin from the very basics.
'Looks like I'll just have to use mortal herbs then.' Lin Mu thought as he took out a rather common spirit herb.
It was a small red fruit the size of a strawberry but was slightly oblong in shape, like a grape. It had fine fuzz on it that could cause one's throat to itch if they ate it directly.
~SHUA~
But it was not a problem for Lin Mu, as he directly used the Omnicore Ascendancy to break it down into fire elemental wisps. The red wisps were quickly absorbed into his hands and guided into the location of his heart.
~Huu~
Once it reached there, Lin Mu couldn't help but take a deep breath as a heat filled it.
'That was more intense than the other cores for sure…' Lin Mu noted.
The heat faded away after a couple of seconds though, thus he didn't think anything was wrong at the very least.
Lin Mu took out another herb and used Omnicore Ascendancy again, observing what would happen this time. But once the fire elemental wisps reached his heart, the heat couldn't be felt.
'No difference huh… Was it only a one time thing?' Lin Mu wondered, and decided to keep an eyes on it.
~SHUA~SHUA~SHUA~
One after the other, Fire elemental spirit herbs started being broken down and the Fire Core in his Heart slowly started to form.
Similar to others, it was just a tiny grain of sand before starting to grow. About a month passed and Lin Mu continued to cultivate.
None of the teleportation gates activated and when it was finally the fifth month since they had arrived here, both Lin Mu and Lady Kang became worried.