418 A Surprise
~Shing~
~Splatter~
The short sword soared through the air as it cut the neck of a snow fox.
~thud~
Before the beast could even let out a cry, its life was ended and it collapsed on the ground.
~huu~
"Almost got me…" Lin Mu muttered.
It was the fifth day, and Lin Mu was woken up by the howl of a few beasts. He had thought that they were somewhere far away, but he suddenly detected something approaching him at a rapid speed. Little shrubby saw it too and tackled the beast with all its force before it could touch Lin Mu.
Lin Mu frankly did not expect for Little Shrubby to do that as he could very well use flicker to dodge it. But he was still touched, nonetheless.
After that, the deal was sealed pretty quickly and all it took was a flick of a sleeve before the beast was slain.
"Are you okay?" Lin Mu asked Little shrubby as he kneeled.
"Okay," Little Shrubby replied.
Lin Mu quickly scanned him with his spirit sense and didn't find any injuries or such on his body.
"Alright, you're all good." Lin Mu nodded and looked back to the corpse of the snow fox.
Its fur was white, which allowed it to meld with the snow easily and its speed also seemed to be quite fast. It was at least faster than Lin Mu, but less fast than Little Shrubby.
"Oh? It's actually at the early stage of the core condensation realm…" Lin Mu said feeling surprise.
He quickly found the core of the beast and dug it out. Holding it in his hand, he actually saw a pattern of a fox on it.
"Whoa! It's even a beast with an awakened bloodline!" Lin Mu said, this time feeling shocked.
He had already seen what kind of an effect the bloodline crystal of the Trunk faced cow had when he had exploded it, and he was wondering if he should make something like that again. It seemed like a good trump card that could be used to surprise enemies.
But more than that, Lin Mu could practice refining a bloodline crystal once more before actually making one from the Great Slumber bear. Although Senior Xukong had already told him that he could do it on his own, he wanted to be prepared.
Little Shrubby walked up to him and looked at the beast's core in his hand.
"Want!" He said.
"You want it? Umm… you can't have it, I need it to practice." Lin Mu denied.
The beast seemed a bit disappointed but quickly recovered, "okay!" it replied.
Lin Mu nodded his head and stored the corpse of the snow fox and the core into the Ring. He checked upon Senior Xukong and saw that his eyes were twitching.
'Hmm… seems like he's gonna wake up soon…' Lin Mu thought.
He glanced at the spatial energy streaks and found them to have calmed down a bit. They weren't moving as fast as they were a couple of days ago. Xukong waking up was important to Lin Mu as without him, refining the bloodline of the Great Slumber bear would be an extremely difficult task.
"Come on, let's continue." Lin Mu said to Little shrubby and started running ahead.
Little shrubby followed behind and they traveled through the snow, leaving behind footprints that soon faded away due to the snow that kept on falling. This part of the journey was getting a bit hectic for Lin Mu as his legs kept on getting sunk in the snow.
"Bah! We'll just fly," Lin Mu decided, and controlled the short sword to float in front of him.
He picked up Little shrubby and jumped on it. Flying on the short sword was incredibly convenient, and it didn't even take him ten minutes before they reached the mountain where the Great slumber bear was sleeping in. Lin Mu was going to leave Little Shrubby on the smaller cave on the other side of the mountain as he didn't want it to get hurt during the process.
Lin Mu could see signs of beasts around the cave and guessed that one of them may have made this their nest. He quickly scanned the cave with his spirit sense and did not find anything in there.
"Huh, was I mistaken?" Lin Mu wondered.
They stepped into the cave and half way there, little Shrubby stopped in his tracks.
"Not like," he said.
After hearing his words, Lin Mu realized that the aura of the great slumber bear may be keeping the beasts away. They would come close to check the cave but would run away after sensing the aura of the great slumber bear.
"Alright, you stay in this part when I go ahead." Lin Mu said.
"Okay!" Little Shrubby replied.
Lin Mu was going to check the condition of the great slumber bear for now, as he wanted to wait till Senior Xukong woke up. He also wanted to see what was the cultivation base of the great slumber bear now, and if it had fully recovered from the invader or not.
Back then it was still expelling the invader from its body and was violent. In order to expel the invader, it had to consume its cultivation base and remove it bit by bit. According to Senior Xukong's estimation, the beast would have reached the early stage of the core condensation realm by the time it expelled all traces of the invader from its body.
"Here we go…" Lin Mu muttered before using phase and walking through the end of the cave.
It was still damp like the last time he had come in, but the chill had reduced quite a bit. The inside of the cave was much warmer than the outside.
'This is a bit unusual… it shouldn't be this warm…' Lin Mu thought after sensing the increase in the surrounding temperature.
He could tell that it was at least twice as warm as outside in here. Only when he reached the main cave where the great slumber bear was sleeping did he find out why.
