Walker Of The Worlds - Chapter 2085: A Milky Pool
Lady Kang was left watching as Lin Mu casually disappeared into the ground.
‘He really has been holding back on his Spatial Skills… Could he have used this in the previous trail? And what of the Tournament of the Four Guardian beasts?’ Lady Kang wondered to herself. ‘If he simply hid in the ground, most of the enemy attacks would be useless… He would even be able to sneak up on them.’ She reckoned.
While she didn’t know the conditions or the cost of using the Spatial Skills, the woman quickly understood that Lin Mu had actually put a major handicap on himself when he participated in the Tournament. If he really was taking advantage of his Spatial Skills, which he rightfully was allowed to, he would have wiped the competition.
Even in the case of the finalist, Feng Baxing it would have been the same. In fact, there was a chance that even the Imperial Might Talisman he had used would be ineffective, if Lin Mu had employed all his Spatial Skills.
“What else is he hiding?” Lady Kang muttered.
Lin Mu was unaware of all this and was instead focused on finding out what Xiao Yang had discovered.
He sank through the ground and continued downward, passing through soil, rocks and old dead roots that seem to have been there for a very very long time. ‘There’s actually roots left in the ground… interesting.’ Lin Mu thought.
So far Lin Mu had not seen any plant life here but the presence of old roots proved that there were indeed plants here once upon a time. There was no vitality left in the roots and they had also shrunk quite a lot, showing that they had probably been here for centuries or thousands of years.
They had dried to the point where it was impossible to tell what kind of plant they belonged to, and whether it was a spirit herb or immortal herb.
Though Lin Mu was at least sure that it wasn’t a mortal plant.
‘If it was a mortal plant, the roots would have turned into soil a long time ago.’ He thought.
He followed the hole that Xiao Yang had used and realized that it was not made by the snake but was actually a natural gap left in the rocks and boulders in the ground. It was also not straight, and had a rather winding path downwards.
But Lin Mu didn’t have to follow, that as he could simply use his Immortal sense to judge the path of the hole and just move downwards with Phase. ‘It’s actually good that the Formation arrays are all embedded directly into the Spatial Fabric and not into the real world like normal. Or I would not have been able to use Phase freely like this.’ Lin Mu understood.
If there were formation arrays that acted as a restriction or a barrier, Lin Mu would not have been able to pass through them with Phase as the skill did not work like that.
But the unique structure of the Inheritance ground allowed Lin Mu to use Phase as he wanted and basically swim through the ground and other materials if he wished to do so.
Still, the hole went quite far down and Lin Mu was already over five hundred meters deep into the ground. And along the way, he saw several causes for concerns.
‘We definitely cannot dig into this from the top, the empty cavities left from the shifting rocks would have caused the place to collapse quickly.’ Lin Mu thought. ‘If there is something sensitive and delicate below all this, it would get destroyed.’ He reckoned that it was better to be as cautious as possible.
With Phase, he could move without affecting the ground, and caused no interference which kept the ground stable.
It wasn’t until Lin Mu had gone nearly a kilometer into the ground that he finally reached a wide open space.
“An underground cave?” Lin Mu observed the space.
It mostly seemed to be empty and Lin Mu was currently hanging from its ceiling. The area around him was mostly dark, but if he looked down there was a spot that was faintly glowing. “Is that the place, Xiao Yang found?” He wondered and exited the ceiling.
~shua~
Lin Mu’s immortal sense quickly spread in the entire cave, getting a measure of it. ‘About two kilometers wide and four kilometer long… though its height seems to be varying at different places.’ Lin Mu thought. ‘There’s also no stalactites on the ceiling, which means this wasn’t made from water dripping down.’ He noted.
Another importance thing Lin Mu learned was that the ceiling basically had no support. There were no pillars or rock walls propping it up other than the ones that were at the borders of the cave. The middle part of the cave was entirely freestanding and the entire weight of the soil above was on it.
‘Its already a miracle that it is standing like this, especially with the smaller empty cavities in the soil above. Even small tremors could technically make the entire place collapse.’ Lin Mu observed the characteristics. ‘Xiao Yang made the right judgment.’ He thought feeling a bit proud.
After all, figuring something like this out was not easy, even if one had the intelligence to do so. One also needed the experience and wisdom along with it to analyze the situation and then grasp the risks that came with it. For Xiao Yang who was less than a handful of years old, this was already quite impressive as Lin Mu did not think he would have been in another situation like this before.
Lin Mu went to the place that seemed to be faintly glowing and found to become brighter the closer he got. Eventually he arrived at what looked like a luminescent lake that was about fifty meters in size. From the top, it just looked like a small spot, especially with the total size of this cave.
“What is this?” Lin Mu used his Immortal sense and probed the lake, trying to get an idea of it.
The lake itself had a rather shallow depth, being two meters deep. The water inside it had a milky appearance which combined with its natural luminescence made it look quite pretty.
~sniff~
Lin Mu also got to smell the lake, finally understanding what Xiao Yang meant by a good smelling place. ‘This scent… As if its the first rain after a harsh summer…’ Lin Mu thought.
To him, the scent was faint but to a beast like Xiao Yang it was decently intense to find it good. Lin Mu’s Immortal sense probed the milky lake and felt its energy finding it to be very mild. One thing he was sure about was that this was not a Immortal Qi or Spirit Qi pool of any kind. In fact, the milky water had no Qi inside it. The energy that was present inside it was entirely different in nature. Having observed all this, Lin Mu was able to narrow down the potential answers but still had about four choices left in his mind.
“Hmm… only one way to confirm it.” Lin Mu muttered and dipped his finger into the milky water.
He then lifted the liquid coated finger and brought it to his mouth, licking the singular drop of water from it.
As soon as he did, a crisp and refreshing taste spread on his tongue.
This caused Lin Mu’s eyes to go wide, as he finally figured out what the right choice was.
“There’s no doubt… This is a pool of Pure Petrichor Cave Milk!” Lin Mu stated.
It was a unique liquid that was formed over a long time under very specific conditions. As its name, it had to form in caves but there had to be no effect of rain on it. No rain water should reach it and the cave should stay dry.
Then there was the fact that the concentration of Qi in the air should also be low, which was also the case here.
Lin Mu and Lady Kang had felt the moment they had left the previous trial that the Qi in the air had become quite sparse. This was the case for both Spirit Qi and Immortal Qi, showing that the inheritance ground was testing them even now.
With such concentration of immortal Qi in the air, restoring one’s condition to the peak was not easy.
The air inside the first trial was basically devoid of any kind of Qi, as it was meant to be a trial of persistence. If one could restore their Qi naturally from the air, it would defeat the purpose of the trial.
Though of course, they were still free to recover their immortal Qi using other resources which they thankfully hadn’t due to their cultivation bases.
The Pure Petrichor cave milk was very rare, and as such its value was quite high too. In fact, it was something every alchemist desired.