Chapter 716 - Former Adviser
Hearing Lin Mu's words, King Hong sighed.
"The person who returned and recorded his experience... is already dead." King Hong replied.
"Huh? Who was it?" Lin Mu asked.
"Back then he was just a common woodcutter that went a little too far to get some good timber and stumbled into the Wandering sinkhole. Five hundred years later, that man found a way to leave the wandering sinkhole and returned to the kingdom.
He then became an adviser for the king due to the extensive knowledge he had gained during his time in the sinkhole.
He is the Royal adviser from three generations ago surnamed Chu. He died about a year ago and had been serving as the protector of our kingdom all these years. He simply ran out of lifespan. That is also the reason why I am in a hurry to breakthrough since we only have a single Nascent soul realm cultivator in our kingdom now." King Hong replied.
"Huh? Wait a minute, how did you know he died?" Lin Mu questioned, remembering a certain someone.
"We stopped sensing his spirit Qi since then." Adviser Liu spoke.
Hearing this, Lin Mu was quite sure that these people were mistaken.
'If it really is that old man downstairs then it's now wonder that they don't really have a proper clue.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
"Just to confirm... did you see his dead body?" Lin Mu questioned.
To this, both King Hong and Adviser Liu shook their heads.
"No... we don't even know where the former adviser's seclusion chamber is. All that we know is that it is somewhere in the central district." King Hong spoke.
Hearing this, Lin Mu was absolutely sure that these people were mistaken.
"Well, if that is true then... I have both good and bad news for you." Lin Mu said.
"Good and bad news? What?" King Hong asked, feeling curious.
"I think I know where your former adviser is, and the good thing is he is still alive." Lin Mu replied.
"WHAT!" King Hong and Adviser Liu said in shock.
"Indeed... but not for long. His life is slipping away as we speak... I can still sense him. I understand that you all might not be able to sense him, but my spirit sense is far greater than most others." Lin Mu explained.
"WE HAVE TO SEE HIM!" King Hong stood up urgently.
"Before we go, let me just inform you that he might not even be conscious. If his spirit Qi signature fell this much, then there is a great chance that he didn't do it himself but rather his body did it for himself." Lin Mu warned.
He couldn't just say that he had seen the old man and thus this was the best excuse he could come up with.
"We understand. If I get to see him just once, I'll be content. A man like that needs a proper burial!" King Hong stated righteously.
Lin Mu nodded his head and hoped the old man was still having a bit of life left in him. At least enough to talk with them.
"Where do you sense his spirit Qi?" Adviser Liu asked.
"Far in the depths of the palace." Lin Mu replied.
"Below? But there's only the repository and the meeting room there... what else?" Adviser Liu muttered to himself.
"If it is the former adviser, perhaps he got a seclusion chamber made for himself unknown to us. After all, he has been part of the royal court for over five hundred years." King Hong suggested.
"Hmm... that could be it. It isn't unheard of for certain experts making their secret seclusion chambers. A lot of elders in the cultivation sects do the same." Hua San spoke up.
"Very well, we should hurry, then. Every second is precious!" King Hong stated.
"Follow me," Adviser Liu said and brought them downstairs.
The Hua brothers had already seen a few of the floors but the ones below it were only seen by adviser Liu, and King Hong. Lin Mu had seen them too of course, but that was under different circumstances.
About five minutes later, Lin Mu and the rest reached an old room that was filled with old and dusty furniture and objects that were not used for a long time.
"What is this room?" Hua Wu questioned curiously.
"As far as I know, this used to be the personal study of some of the advisers in the past. Later on we added more floors to the palace upward and expanded it a bit, thus the past two generations of advisers have been using a different place." Adviser Liu answered.
"Is the seclusion chamber really here? If it was, we should have known or discovered it at some point." King Hong spoke doubtfully.
"It's below this... I can sense it to be stronger." Lin Mu spoke.
"Then how do we get there?" King Hong asked.
Lin Mu closed his eyes and let his spirit sense wander. Adviser Liu, and the two Hua brothers did the same and tried to see if there were any hidden entrances. When Lin Mu had used phase to go below, he hadn't really paid much attention to the entrance.
He observed the area and realized that there really wasn't a specific entrance to it.
"He may have sealed it entirely when he entered it. He probably decided it to be his final resting place." Xukong suddenly spoke.
"Seems like it, senior. They even placed a spirit sense dampening formation below the floor, thus they can't even tell there is empty space there." Lin Mu replied.
"Just go in, directly. If there is no entrance, make one," Xukong suggested.
Lin Mu internally nodded and looked at King Hong.
"If you don't mind, I can just make an entrant for us?" Lin Mu asked.
King Hong thought for a bit, but agreed.
"This matter is of grave importance. You can go ahead, it doesn't matter if this place gets, damaged we can always repair it.." King Hong replied.
Chapter 717 - Old Generation's Gift?
King Hong's reply was exactly what Lin Mu wanted, and he was pleased.
"Very well then, please get back." Lin Mu spoke.
He picked a location that was a bit far from the old man's position just so that he would not be disturbed excessively.
~shing~
The short sword was summoned from his ring and floated in front of him. Lin Mu had stopped keeping the short sword on his waist for a few weeks now. It was mostly because of the new disguise he had taken up, though.
King Hong and Adviser Liu gazed at the short sword, finding it to be of impeccable quality.
"Excellent blade! I don't think I've ever seen anything of this level in our sect.." Hua San praised.
"Where did you get this Senior Lin Mu?" Hua Wu asked.
"Oh, I got this from the patriarch of the Jing clan." Lin Mu said, stunning the three.
While he had told them that the Jing clan was still alive, they had not expected Lin Mu to have a weapon like this.
"No wonder..." Hua San muttered.
~SHING~
Lin Mu controlled the Short sword expertly and let it slide into the floor as if it was a hot knife sinking into butter. Seeing this, the others were even more shocked. The floors were tough and made out of dense rocks that were hard to break.
Yet here Lin Mu was cutting through them as if they were paper. A circular opening was quickly carved out onto the floor.
~shua~
~thud~
"No, no! You can't fall!" Lin Mu said as he quickly grabbed onto the circular piece of floor that he had cut.
His fingers directly dug into the solid rock as if they were a block of tofu.
~gulp~
Seeing this, Hua Wu couldn't help but swallow his saliva. He knew how much strength a Nascent Soul realm cultivator had and it was even different when just physical strength was considered excluding spirit Qi.
And from that he knew for sure there would be very few that would be able to puncture through a meter thick rock with the same ease as Lin Mu did.
Having grabbed the piece of the floor, Lin Mu set it to the side and the five men finally felt the gush of spirit Qi coming from it.
"So much spirit Qi? But how?" King Hong couldn't help but feel curious.
"Seems like there is a spirit Qi gathering formation along with several spirit herbs in here." Lin Mu said.
They breathed in the dense spirit Qi for a bit before coming to their sense.
"Let's get in." Lin Mu said and flew down.
The others followed behind him and they finally reached the seclusion chamber, which was made out of several halls and a huge outer courtyard. There were spirit herbs planted according to formation array which promoted their growth and increases spirit Qi.
"I could have never believed this... so many rare and precious spirit herbs..." King Hong said in surprise.
"I believe this might have been an additional security that the former adviser had for the kingdom. I reckon once he died, the formation array that concealed this place would have stopped working and you would have sensed the place." Lin Mu spoke.
"Hmm... that does seem like what the former adviser would think. He was that kind of a man..." Adviser Liu spoke.
"You met him, uncle?" King Hong asked.
"I have indeed... though only a few times. Back then I was quite young and was barely in the Qi refining realm." Adviser Liu spoke.
"How far ago was this?" King Hong asked.
"About two hundred years ago, I suppose. The adviser back then was your grand uncle. And the old adviser here is two generations before that." Adviser Liu replied.
"That was a long time ago..." King Hong muttered. "I wasn't even born then..."
The five of them looked around a little bit and finally reached the end of the corridor where an old hall was located. At the center of this hall, a cushion was on which the old man was sitting.
"It... it's really him... it's Former Adviser Chu!" Adviser Liu said in disbelief.
The others were a bit taken aback by the old man's appearance, though. This was perhaps the oldest looking person he had seen.
"Senior brother, is he...?" Hua Wu whispered.
"Indeed... he's undergoing the final decay of mortals." Hua San replied.
Lin Mu heard what the two brothers were speaking and knew of the 'Final Decay of Mortals'. This was nothing but a term that was used when a cultivator used the end of his lifespan.
The strange thing was, it was actually a rather rare thing to see. Most cultivators never actually reached the true end of their lifespan and would mostly die before that due to other reasons.
Either they would die due to a mistake during cultivation or die due to some other external danger, including being killed by cultivators, beasts, heavenly tribulations, and many more.
Another reason why it was hard to observe it was because most cultivators that underwent it would enter seclusion and would thus not be seen. By the time people found out about them, they would have already turned into dust and bones.
The old man who was named Chu did not respond when the five men got close, and it was obvious that he was in an unconscious state.
"What do we do now?" Hua Wu asked.
"Seeing his state, I don't think we can wake him up directly. That may just end up killing him." Adviser Liu spoke.
Now they were in a dilemma about what to do. While they had managed to come here, waking up the old man and gaining information was another obstacle.
It was now that Xukong spoke again.
"Use the healing technique. While it won't heal his deep seated injured due to aging, it should still give him enough to wake up. If we're lucky, it might just work." Xukong suggested.
"Let's try it then..." Lin Mu said and walked ahead.
Chapter 718 - Third Attempt At Healing
Lin Mu placed his hands on the old man's chest gently while keeping an eye on whether he would respond or not. Usually, cultivators such as these that entered such a deep seclusion would only wake up in times of distress.
Thus there was a chance the old man might still wake up if Lin Mu touched him, but surprisingly, he did not.
'He's far deeper in this...' Lin Mu thought and used his spirit sense to check the body of the old man.
There he could see the years of damage and aging. Over sixty percent of his meridians were damaged and the spirit Qi flowing within them was weak. His muscles had already degraded to a dangerous level and there was no chance of them getting healed.
The same could be said before his skin and bones, which had turned weak. His blood vessels were also blocked with hundreds of small clots that obstructed the blood flow and prevented proper circulation.
While Lin Mu was checking the old man, the others were observing him. They didn't know what he was doing, but for now, Lin Mu was the best option that they had at getting out of this situation.
After about five minutes of a detailed check, Lin Mu finally decided to peer into the man's dantian.
'Huh? Why is it like this?' Lin Mu couldn't help but wonder.
The old man's Dantian was like a stone and it was hard for him to enter it. But with Lin Mu's spirit sense, he did manage to penetrate it, of course. Finally, in the Dantian he could see a dried up spirit Qi sea, which was more like a small pond now, and a Nascent soul that looked similar to the old man floating above it.
Seeing the scene, Lin Mu understood that this might be one of the effects of the Decay of Mortals. But having observed it all, Lin Mu now had an idea of how to use the healing technique.
This would be the third time he was using this technique, but compared to the last time, his cultivation base was vastly different.
~shua~
Lin Mu started injecting gentle streams of spirit Qi into the old man's body and they entered his meridians. There they started to first clear up some of the blockages made from injuries and impurities gained over the many years.
Lin Mu had to take it slow to ensure that no extra harm was brought to the old man. Bit by bit, his meridians recovered and by the time he was done, the old man's meridians were about seventy percent functional.
While they were not fully repaired, it was still far better than before. Lin Mu then moved on to his other tissues and muscles, trying to fix as much as he could using the spirit Qi that circulated within the old man's body.
Due to being old, the man didn't have much of his own vitality left. That was what the technique used to heal a person, but in this case, Lin Mu had to supply some of his own vital energy to the man.
Hua San and Hua Wu, that were watching Lin Mu were shocked at this point.
"Is he... Is he healing him?!" Hua Wu said in shock.
"What? That's not possible. Adviser Chu's injuries aren't direct but due to his age. They aren't something that can be healed with a pill or something like that." Adviser Liu said, unable to comprehend that a technique like the one Lin Mu was using even existed.
The king though kept his silence and let Lin Mu do whatever he was doing. An hour passed like this and by the end of it, the observers could certainly see some differences between the previous state of adviser Chu and the current state.
While his body was still old and wrinkled, the skin had eased up a bit and the age spots on his skin had also reduced.
~Huu~
Lin Mu took a deep breath and lifted his hands from the old man's body.
"How is it senior Lin Mu?" Hua Wu questioned.
"I've done all I could. Now the rest is up to him. He is in a deep slumber caused due to his body slowly shutting down. I managed to heal some parts, thus he should at least be able to wake up." Lin Mu answered.
"How long will it take?" Adviser Liu asked.
"Can be anywhere from an hour to a day." Lin Mu replied.
"I see..." Adviser Liu muttered.
"A day is nothing if we can get something out of this and get to talk with former adviser Chu." King Hong nodded.
"Exactly," Lin Mu said and sat down on one of the cushions that were lying around.
Lin Mu noticed one thing: that this hall was clean, unlike the other ones. He spread his spirit sense around and found the reason for it; there was actually a cleaning formation embedded into this hall as well.
Lin Mu remembered his own cleaning formation that he had placed in his old house in the northern city. While he had abandoned that place now, he had taken away the graves of his parents and thus his home could be wherever he wanted it to be.
The others also sat down and waited for the old man to wake up. The spirit Qi on the floor was concentrated and thus it was not like it was uncomfortable for the others. They could very well stay here for days if not months here with no problem.
Lin Mu took this time to observe the area in better detail. Last time he was afraid that the old man might wake up and thus he had not used his spirit sense as much, but now he had the full freedom to do so.
Though what Lin Mu was looking for was any old records or documents that might come to his use here. Seeing how old the former adviser was, Lin Mu reckoned there must be something.
Chapter 719 - Adviser Chu Wakes Up
"He's... he's... moving!" Hua Wu said out loud.
Lin Mu and the rest ended up waiting about twelve hours, after which the old man moved for the first time. Their attention went to the old man and they could see his fingers trembling.
After a few more minutes, his face started to twitch as well and then his eyes opened with great difficultly.
~HUU~
The old man took in a breath and looked around with his hazy and glazed eyes. One of his eyes was possibly blind already, as there was a cloudy layer on it. His left eye though, looked to be fine enough.
The former adviser noticed the people sitting in front of him and for a second there, a strong wave of spirit Qi emanated from him.
Everyone except for Lin Mu trembled at the pressure that was exuded by the old man in that moment and a cold sweat broke on their backs and foreheads..
"That... strong..." Hua San muttered.
The pressure that the old man had just emanated was no less than some of the elders of his sect that he had met. This was a lot compared to most cultivators that did not belong to sects.
~gulp~
Hua Wu and Adviser Liu couldn't help but swallow their saliva upon feeling that pressure. King Hong, on the other hand, didn't really feel it accurately since he was not at the Nascent soul realm like the others.
While he did feel the spirit Qi fluctuation, he did not feel the oppressiveness from it. Lin Mu on the other hand, only felt like a breeze of wind passed by him. Though he was aware that this was emanated by the old man.
Lin Mu stepped forward and spoke, "can you hear me adviser Chu?"
The old man slowly lifted his gaze and looked into Lin Mu's eyes. Lin Mu felt as if the old man could almost peer through him and gaze into his soul. It made him shudder a bit, but he held on.
~Sigh~
The old man let out a sigh and lightly shook his head.
"The youth... overcome the elderly..." the old man said for the first time.
Hearing the hoarse and old voice of the man, Lin Mu felt uneasy. He was once again reminded of the mortality of humans and the limitations that they had. His determination to grow stronger was reaffirmed again.
King Hong and adviser Liu also came forward and kneeled on the ground before cupping their hands and lowering their heads.
"It is a great honor to meet you again, Adviser Chu. I am Hong Liu," Adviser Liu introduced himself first.
"And I am King Hong Qiqiang, grandson of King Hong Liqiang." King Hong said, relating himself to the king two generations ago.
Since he had never seen the adviser Chu before, there was no chance he would recognize him. Even his father's name might not do well since the man was very old and he didn't know if his memory would allow him to remember his father.
After all, when adviser Chu held his position, it was during his grandfather's and great grandfather's time.
After hearing these words, the old man did not respond and simply stared emptily at the people.
"How long has it been?" The Old man questioned.
"It has been two hundred years since the reign of King Liqiang, adviser Chu." King Hong answered.
~Sigh~
"It has been too long... I have been on this earth for far too long." The old man spoke in melancholy.
"If adviser Chu allows it, we would like to formally venerate you in the ancestral temple. We know that your lifespan is at its end and there is little we can do, but we can't afford to let your contributions go to a waste." King Hong spoke.
"Spare me the trivialities child... I have seen far too many of them in my time... speak, what is it that you need? This chamber is not something anyone should have discovered unless I was dead." Adviser Chu spoke in a calm voice.
"This... we have a request of you." King Hong spoke, calculating his words.
Adviser Chu looked at King Hong's face and suddenly spoke, "you want to ask me about the wandering SinkHole don't you?"
Hearing this, King Hong and adviser Liu were shocked and wondered if the old man had read their minds.
"How did you...?" King Hong muttered in surprise.
"When you've lived as long as I have, making prediction becomes easier. Besides, there are very few things that would be worth getting from me and my knowledge about the Wandering Sinkhole is the only thing that might be worth this effort.
I do not know how you managed to wake me up like this as I was sure my meridians had already shut most of my body down." Adviser Chu explained.
"I see... well yes, we do want information about the wandering sinkhole." Lin Mu was the one to speak this time.
"Hmm... fine. I'll tell you all that I know... I don't know how much time I have right now anyway." The old man stated.
Hearing this, the ears of everyone in the room perked up and they got ready to listen to it.
The old man closed his eyes for a couple of minutes and seemed to be meditating. Only after he was done with it did, he opens his eyes.
"The wandering Sinkhole is a unique phenomenon that occurs in the Hong Lin forest. Most people think of it as a mystery or even a curse. But in reality, it is nothing but the entrance to a minor plane.
I entered it accidentally when I was a teenage lad and fell into it. Thankfully, I fell into a body of water and managed to survive otherwise I would have been dead. But even then, a fall from that height into straight water was not without injuries.
I broke several of my bones and got a lot of bruises in the process." The old man said and took a pause, his breath heavy.
Chapter 720 - The Story Of Adviser Chu - I
Having rested for a few seconds, Adviser Chu began to speak again.
"After falling in, I barely managed to pull myself out of the water. Only after coming out of it did I realize that it was a deep lake. I laid on the ground, tired and in pain, as I stared up at the sky.
It was then that I realized another thing... It didn't look like the top of the sinkhole anymore. Rather, it looked just like a normal sky to me with no borders.
I was naïve and didn't have any cultivation base back then and didn't know how all this happened. Terrified and confused, I laid there until eventually, the pain became too much for me to do nothing.
I crawled around to find something that may help me. I knew of some herbs and plants that could help with pain in the Hong Lin forest and I wondered if I could find one of them here.
.
Since my Body tempering realm cultivation was only at the fifth stage of the Body tempering realm, I couldn't heal my bones faster either. I ended up spending two days in a helpless state.
In the end, I was far too exhausted and fell unconscious. When I woke up after an unknown amount of time, I found my body to be completely fine. My broken bones in my legs and ribs were fully recovered.
But that was not all as I also discovered far more strength in my body than before and along with it a different kind of an energy in my body other than the vital energy. I later realized that this was spirit Qi!" The old man spoke.
"Huh? You directly broke through to the Qi refining realm? How is that possible?" Hua San asked.
"Back then, I didn't know either. But after spending about a month there, I started to learn more about the place. The large lake I had fallen into actually had mysterious properties that healed my body and even increased my cultivation base.
I started to explore and wander around the area and learned more about it. The lake was just one part of the sinkhole and there were many more unique areas in it. There was the forest that was filled with dangerous beasts who could easily kill me at that time and poisonous plants that would kill me if I got too close to them.
The dangers were many and, knowing that I was in the blind about that place, I just observed from a distance. For food, all I could eat were some tubers I found growing near the lake.
Making fire was easy enough, and water was easy to procure as well. What I didn't know was that everything around that lake was beneficial for one's cultivation. The water contained medicinal properties while the tubers contained spirit Qi.
I spent about a year in that area, unable to proceed any farther because of the danger. The beasts would kill me the moment I would step out of a certain radius." Adviser Chu explained.
"Wait, then why did the beasts not attack you near the lake?" Lin Mu questioned.
"It was due to the water of the lake as well. Apparently, it was good to repel beasts though, for plants and humans. I guess it was very beneficial. Though in that one year I had a lot of gains.
My cultivation base reached the late stage of the Qi refining realm in that span. I of course, took full advantage of the lake water and the tubers around it, but I realized the lake water started to lose its effects after a few months.
While the tubers still provided me with spirit Qi, they started to run out of numbers. By the end of the first year, I had no tubers to eat. At that point, I realized that I had to leave the place or I would starve.
I had no cultivation technique and thus all I could do was to use my raw strength while strengthening my limbs with spirit Qi. My first battle was with a small beast that looked like a mix between a dog and a raccoon.
It was the most difficult battle I had gone through, and I was quite injured by the time I managed to kill the beast. It was a bit strange since the beast was actually at a far lower cultivation base than me.
I realize that unless I gained better control over my spirit Qi, I would probably not be able to fight many more beasts. I did my best to learn about spirit Qi while also hunting more and more beasts.
Another two years passed like this before I was able to continue onwards. It was also during this time that I broke through to the Core Condensation realm. After that, things became a bit easier for me and I could see the rest of the sinkhole.
The area was rather large and even after ten more years; I had barely covered half of the area. There were many different areas in the sinkhole, from lakes to swamps to forests and even some tombs.
I had not given up my search for an escape route but was unable to find anything. Even now I didn't have any cultivation technique and had to depend on external resources to increase my spirit Qi.
If I depleted my spirit Qi, I would not even be able to recover it actively. I would just have to wait for the spirit Qi to passively regenerate. This often led to some rather dangerous situations in the sinkhole.
The beasts, along with the dangerous areas, made for a bad combination and could make you stuck in one area for a long time.
It wasn't until a hundred years passed that I actually found a cultivation technique in one of the tombs. It was made by another cultivator who had perhaps fallen in an unknown amount of time ago." The old man spoke in detail.