Lin Mu was currently sprawled on the ground in the soft snow, while rubbing his bulging belly. He had eaten for the first time in a quite a long while because of which the food only tasted that much delicious.

He had also gotten to taste Little Shrubby's cooking which was acceptable to say the least. Without any spices or condiments, the beast had done well. Lin Mu had eaten a little from what Little Shrubby had cooked and the rest he had made himself.

He still had plenty of spices and condiments left in his ring and they would probably last him for a month or two if he kept the same rate of consumption. Little Shrubby was also lying on the side in the snow but the snow kept on melting under its body heat. Eventually, he just broke a few pine branches and laid on them.

Lin Mu laid like this for a while and thought of his plans. The first step was to get the Mortal Strengthening Scripture to the second stage and then to go and gather information from the nearby settlements.

Another thing that Lin Mu was a bit surprised about was that not a single beast dared to come near the area that they were in. Except for a few small animals, Lin Mu couldn't see any other beasts.

"That is because of Little Shrubby. With his strength, he is already a dominant beast that others will not challenge. Even a peak stage core condensation realm beast is not likely to come out on top due to Little Shrubby's speed and abilities." Xukong explained.

Lin Mu nodded his head and wondered how much fast Little Shrubby had gotten. He knew that while hunting the Horn Helmed Wolf, it had not used its full speed and it could go even beyond that.

Even when little shrubby was at the late stage of the Qi refining realm it was already faster than most Core condensation realm beasts. But now it has only increased by a lot more and Lin Mu was looking forward to seeing it.

'Wait a minute… can I do that?' Lin Mu suddenly had an idea that appeared in his mind that excited him a bit.

He temporarily put this idea at the back of his mind and sat down to cultivate. He needed to refine more spirit Qi and then further refine it into earth attribute spirit Qi. He took out the box of basic Qi pills and popped in five of them in his mouth all at once.

With his current cultivation, five pills were easy for him to handle and in less than ten minutes he had already assimilated the spirit Qi wisps and was now converting them into liquid form.

His speed had certainly increased by quite a lot and his core would passively convert the wisps into drops as well. While the speed could not be compared to when Well of Slumber was active, it was still three times as fast as before.

Lin Mu watched as the spirit Qi accumulated into his Dantian again. He spent the rest of the day doing this and by night he had enough earth attribute spirit Qi for him to use for the mortal strengthening scripture.

"Master, I brought food!" Little Shrubby announced.

While Lin Mu was busy in cultivation, little shrubby had taken the responsibility of procuring food. A pile of beast corpses could be seen kept near a side and a bloody scent that was mixed with burning was wafting from it. Lin Mu could see the scorch marks on the corpses, evidently the work of Little Shrubby's claws.

"Thank you," Lin Mu said with a smile and quickly cooked some food for him and little Shrubby to eat.

The beast was also enjoying the added flavor of the spices and watched closely when Lin Mu applied it to the meat. Lin Mu would have given it some spices to use as well, but they would have to figure out a method for him to use them.

"Wait, senior! Can beasts use spirit tools as well?" Lin Mu questioned.

Xukong who had been busy in his cultivation, woke up due to the question and replied, "yes they can, of course. It is just that not all spirit tools are compatible with them and they would need some special ones made." 

"Hmm… I guess we can get something made that will help little shrubby in cooking." Lin Mu muttered.

Xukong looked on in awkwardness as he imagined a large cat cooking while using an expensive spirit tool that was the form of a spatula. 'Hmm… that would be a first. I don't think anyone has gotten a spirit tool made for a beast, that too for cooking.'

Xukong left Lin Mu in his thoughts and returned back to his own cultivation. It had spent most of the time teaching while in the Sleepscape and thus hadn't had enough time to cultivate himself.

He had already restored his cultivation back to the state it was in before dealing with Gu Yao and had even exceeded it a little bit. Currently, he just hoped to reach a stage where he would be ready for anything that was thrown at them.

"That strange feeling I've been having… is it a premonition perhaps…" Xukong muttered to himself.

Lin Mu meanwhile was now practicing the Mortal Strengthening scripture. He had already covered a certain part of the second stage and only needed to finish it now. He started pouring the earth attribute spirit Qi he had refined before and its amount in the Dantian started reducing.

The brown layer appeared on Lin Mu's skin again and stone like patterns started appearing on it. They kept on getting more and more clear until a glowing light was emitted by it. This signified that the second stage was now complete, and it had taken about half of the entire store of earth element spirit Qi Lin Mu had refined.

~huu~

"Let's test it again…"

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