2396 Fallen Cultivation
"Daoist Lin Mu?" Crown Prince Feng Shun knelt beside the injured man.
"Haah… I might have… a tad bit… overestimated the difficulty." Lin Mu spoke with a breath.
"Thank heavens you're fine." Daoist Chu and the others took a breath of relief upon hearing this.
"Amithabha, how's your body?" Monk Hushu asked knowing that there was no way Lin Mu had come out of it unscathed.
"Not well." Lin Mu said honestly. "My body cultivation has… fallen." He revealed.
"WHAT!?" Hearing that everyone was shocked. "How much?" Elder Hu asked.
"It's now equal to the false immortal realm." Lin Mu revealed, making the man frown.
Elder Hu seemingly thought of something, before suddenly cupping his fists.
"For your sacrifice, and the life debt that we now owe you, this shall be compensated without fail." Elder Hu stated.
Min Ju did the same and knelt before bowing her head. "I thank you for saving Lady Kang." Min Ju said with emotion. "The Kang clan will not forget this."
"It's fine." Lin Mu replied. "More than that, we now need to get out of here." He said, a deep frown appearing on his face.
"Did you learn something?" Ziran questioned.
"Yes… I think Yao Changying might have some control over the arrays of this plane." Lin Mu answered. "That curse which attacked us, came out of a 'stable' spatial rift. Something like that can only be opened if someone had control over the arrays that are covering this Bridge Plane." He explained.
Crown Prince Feng Shun raised his brows as he understood the danger of that.
"So we've been at the whims of Yao Changying all this time?" The Crown Prince didn't like that at all.
"In a way yes." Lin Mu nodded. "Though she doesn't have total control over it, or we might have already been dead. As far as I can tell, she's the reason why the task has not be fulfilled yet. The arrays are simply not approving it." He explained.
"That makes things difficult." Ziran said as he looked at everyone. "If we cannot go out the normal way, we'll have to rely on the method that Yao Changying is using." "That might have been fine before, but not now." Monk Hushu stated. "Daoist Lin Mu's Body Cultivation has regressed and he's injured greatly. Lady Kang is also out of commission for the time being. We've been weakened overall." He pointed out.
"How do we leave then, we can't just keep on hiding can we?" Qiao De asked. "I have a way." Lin Mu replied. "But I'll need time… which I'm running out of." He said with some difficulty.
"What's happening?" Crown Prince Feng Shun could sense it in Lin Mu's tone.
"My bloodline's been… exhausted in a way and I won't be able to stay awake for long." Lin Mu answered. "You all already know about my Great Slumber Bear bloodline." He had told them about it a while back as they had grown curious about just what kind of bloodline he had.
They were certainly surprised about it and didn't expect that Lin Mu would choose such a difficult bloodline. "That's fine, you should rest anyways." Daoist Chu said. "We can hide for that long." He thought, thinking that Lin Mu simply needs to rest like he had before.
"It's not that simple." Lin Mu shook his head. "If I fall asleep now, I might not wake up for a long time."
"How long?" Ziran furrowed his brows. "A century perhaps." Lin Mu answered making everyone speechless.
A century wasn't an unbearable time for immortals like them, but in their current state even a year would be tough to endure.
"How long do you think you can stay awake?" Crown Princess Shang questioned.
"A day or two at best." Lin Mu answered much to their dread.
Even now he was feeling incredibly sleepy and it was actually the pain that was helping him stay awake right now. But once it exceeded a certain threshold, Lin Mu knew that he would simply pass out.
Before, he might have had a few years or even a decade till the forceful activation of the Well of Slumber, but now that Lin Mu had exhausted his bloodline too, that time had been cut. This was normal for the Great Slumber Bear, as they would enter a state of long hibernation to recover from injuries too.
The same was the case for Lin Mu. His internal injuries were bad, but they weren't fatal or irrecoverable. Well of Slumber along with a supply of vitality would eventually heal it all.
The bigger problem was that he would be like fish in a barrel. He could of course, have Little Shrubby and the twins protect him in that state, but doing that in the Bridge Plane was not a good option as things could turn dangerous at any time.
'Yao Changying might not have total control over the arrays right now, but who's to tell she might not gain it later?' Lin Mu thought of a dangerous scenario.
It was one of the things he had considered in all this. He knew for sure that Yao Changying didn't have this control before and was slowly gaining it. Otherwise, the Black Fin Island members wouldn't have had to suffer so much before and they would've already killed them all.
This meant that she had been planning accordingly.
'Gaining control over this Spatial Plane might have been her entire goal from the start too.' Lin Mu reckoned.
He also thought that this was the entire reason she hadn't appeared to fight personally yet. Otherwise, from what he had learned from Crown Princess Shang about Yao Changying's personality, she would've long since come to kill them herself.
~ROAR~
~SCREECH~
~CHIRP~
Just as the group was ruminating over their current situation, a cacophony of beastly cries were heard coming from outside the offering hall.
"What's happening?" They wondered and Daoist Chu quickly went to check.
A few seconds later, his anxious voice was heard.
"Chimeric beast swarm!"