1202 All Alone In Darkness

"AHH! Just how big is this place!?" Lin Mu shouted in frustration.

Rubbing his face he plunked back down on the ground.

"How many days has it even been? I can't even tell the time here." Lin Mu said to himself.

He had been walking for what seemed like several days, but he had reached no end. The area was perpetually in darkness and there were no other topographical changes to the area either.

Or even if they were, Lin Mu's spirit sense was simply too short for him to detect it.

'My body is mostly healed other than my shoulder and my spirit Qi is also at 75% capacity. Considering these developments, maybe it's been around a month now?' Lin Mu estimated to himself.

It had now been around a month since he had left the Xiaofan world and since the battle had ended. So far, Lin Mu didn't know where he was, and neither did he know how to get out of here.

There were several new restrictions on him that weren't there before, and it was rather frustrating to him.

At first it was even worse for him, since he simply couldn't see anything once he left the cavern he was in. The cavern was faintly illuminated by the moss growing there and helped him a bit at first.

Lin Mu even took some of the moss with him and used it as a light source out of the cavern. It lasted long enough for him to recover and be able to use his own spirit Qi to create a fireball for illumination.

But continually letting it burn was not faring well from him. This was when he realized the second restriction he had on him. Whenever he used a Qi skill, his spirit Qi consumption was almost tripled than usual.

This was really absurd since he could tell that it wasn't even his body's injuries that were causing this, but rather the Qi skill itself had become 'inefficient' somehow.

Thankfully, Lin Mu had more than one way of illumination. He had several midnight sun shards with him. These were basically a kind of luxury spirit tool that could absorb the sunlight in the daytime and glow in the night time.

These of course, needed sunlight to work normally, but with some modification in the formations by Lin Mu, they worked on spirit Qi as well.

This was when he discovered another new thing. While the consumption of spirit Qi by Qi skills had increased by a lot, that was not the case for the formations or spirit tools. They still worked on the same amount.

Thus Lin My made several more modifications to the midnight Sun shards and turned them into a multifaceted lamp.

This helped to illuminate an area of several meters around him and was even wider than the range of his spirit sense.

This was how he had continued his travel. But there seemed to be no end to it.

~Sigh~

'Perhaps I need to reassess my situation.' Lin Mu thought to himself after chanting the calming heart sutra for a bit.

"Let's start over again… the area around me is barren and is mostly made up of rocks and soil. The rocks themselves are like smooth pebbles in some parts and broken stones in others areas. The soil is also rather soft and dark brown in color." Lin Mu voiced out his thoughts, hoping that it would help him think better.

"Then there is that small stream in the cavern I woke up next to. Its existence means there was supposedly a river here. The smooth pebbles might also be due to that." Lin Mu analyzed little by little.

The small stream he had seen in the cavern ended a short distance from the exit of the cavern. It simply pooled into a pond and went deeper into the ground, probably joining an underwater aquifer.

Lin Mu had originally hoped to follow the stream to find some people or a settlement, but it was useless.

It didn't help that he couldn't fly here either. That was the third restriction he had discovered. At first he thought it was due to his injuries that he couldn't do it. But later he realized it simply didn't work.

Thankfully, he was also a body cultivator and even while injured, his body was tough enough to endure a long journey on foot.

Another factor that was affecting Lin Mu, which he had not expected, was the lack of someone to speak to. Before this, he always had Senior Xukong or Little Shrubby to talk to and consult.

But now there was nothing. All he was met with was silence.

And it was going to be like this for a long while most probably. Having checked up on both Little Shrubby and Xukong, Lin Mu knew they were still recovering.

Xukong's avatar was simply in a dormant state and was surrounded by a mass of spatial energy, while Little Shrubby was still in the shrunken state of being a seed.

Lin Mu could not estimate how long it would take for either of them to wake up. His only hope now was to find some other people.

"Still, it's strange that there is no animal life here. There is spirit Qi here, so there should have been at least some life. I've seen the glowing moss, but it only grows in that cavern. I haven't seen it anywhere else." Lin Mu wondered to himself.

Laying down on the ground for a bit, Lin Mu let his thoughts wander and his body rest.

An hour later, he stood up and got to walking again.

An unknown amount of time passed before Lin Mu finally saw something different.

"Huh? What's that?" Lin Mu's eyes saw a tall wall in front of him.

The top of the wall could not be seen and neither could its edges. Walking closer to it, Lin Mu could see that the wall was rocky with no weeds or plants growing on it either.