Chapter 22 - First Battle
The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.
What Lin Mu saw behind the ape beast was a plant that was 2 feet tall. It was dark green in colour and had 6 leaves on its stalk. There was a purple-coloured fruit the size of a grape hanging from it. Lin Mu thought he was hallucinating at first when he saw faint wisps of smoke arising from the fruit.
"Wait, that’s not smoke, that’s spirit qi!" spoke Lin Mu out loud, before slamming his mouth shut upon remembering what kind of situation he was in.
Thankfully, the beasts did not seem to notice when Lin Mu spoke out loud. The plant that the ape beast was guarding was a spirit herb and that too, one that had already borne fruit. The conflict between the two beasts seemed to be due to the spirit herb.
Beasts had their own innate cultivation talent and did not have the need for cultivation techniques to enter the qi refining realm like humans. But beasts could still consume spirit herbs to increase their speed of cultivation.
Because of this whenever a spirit herb or spirit fruit grew in the wild it was usually fought upon by multiple beasts and sometimes even humans if they discovered it.
Lin Mu had seen some spirit herbs and spirit fruits before, but none of such high quality. The spirit apples which grew in the orchards of Northern town were of the lowest quality of spirit fruit and still cost one gold coin each, Lin Mu could not even imagine how expensive a spirit herb of this quality was worth.
At this moment, wild thoughts were running in Lin Mu’s mind. He was imagining all methods he could use to snatch the spirit herb and obtain it for his own use.
’If I can obtain that spirit herb, I’m sure I will enter the qi refining realm with the help of the calming heart sutra.’ Thought Lin Mu.
Lin Mu kept on observing the beasts while formulating plans for obtaining the spirit herb. Currently, the two beasts were growling at each other, trying to intimidate each other. The ape beast seems to have been guarding the spirit herb for some time, while the panther beast seemed to have just discovered it and was coveting it.
After a couple of minutes, the panther beast could not take it anymore and made the first move. The panther beast pounced on the ape with its claws drawn. The ape beast howled loudly at the panther’s approach and extended his arm to intercept the panther. The panther scratched the ape on the chest while the ape slammed the panther with its long arm on its side, which made the panther retreat.
Lin Mu waited for 5 minutes before approaching the panther. He carefully poked the panther with a stick and checked whether it was still alive. Confirming that it was dead, Lin Mu pulled out the short sword from the chest of the beast. A stream of blood then started flowing from the hole in the panther’s chest.
Lin Mu put the corpse of the panther into the ring and did the same with the corpse of the ape as well. He then approached the spirit herb and plucked the fruit hanging from it. He was about to pull out the stalk from the ground as well when it withered in an instant and turned to dust. This surprised Lin Mu as he was not expecting this to happen.
Lin Mu examined the small grape-sized purple fruit in his hand. No wisps of spirit qi could be seen rising from the fruit anymore after it was plucked from the stalk. Lin Mu stored the fruit in the ring and prepared to leave the forest.
Lin Mu was lucky enough to not only acquire the fruit of the spirit herb today but was also able to obtain two corpses of possibly high tier beasts. He was lucky that the merchants would be arriving at the town tomorrow and he would be able to sell the corpses along with the box made of fragrant wood. He will definitely be making a lot of money tomorrow, which will hopefully last him the entire winter.
When Lin Mu reached the hunting shack 3 hours later, the first thing that came to his mind was to build a sled so that he would be able to carry the beast corpses to town. He could not let anyone see his usage of the ring, thus could only use this method.
He chopped down some suitable trees and tied them with some tough vines to form a flat sled. He then wove the vines together and attached them to the ends of a wooden pole he made from a sapling, to make a handle with which he could pull the sled.
By the time he was done with all this, it was nighttime. Lin Mu had already set up some meat and rice to cook, so could eat as soon as he finished building the sled.
After eating dinner, Lin Mu immersed himself in practicing the boulder collapsing fist. He practiced all the way until midnight when his concentration finally broke, and he sat down to chant the calming heart sutra.
With the practice that he did in the morning, Lin Mu already sensed that he was close to a breakthrough and thus was not surprised when he finally did, after assimilating all the vital energy from the meat. He felt his skin tingle and itch when he broke through to the 6th stage of the body tempering stage.
He was about to stand up when he felt the ring buzz and lost his balance as a spatial rift appeared right where he was sitting.
"Oh, F*ck." Cursed Lin Mu as he shifted to the side to prevent himself from falling into the rift.
His arm was completely sucked into the spatial rift, leaving him stuck in an awkward position on the ground. If another person was to see Lin Mu in this position, they would probably burst out in laughter.