Hearing Lin Mu's words, Little Shrubby approached the hundred year old Hong Lin tree and probed it with his spirit sense. He then touched the tree and smelled it before scratching the tree and tasting it as well.

Lin Mu watched on and let the beast do its thing.

"Hmm… I can tell that something is different about this tree than the other ones here. I think I may be able to find more of them." Little Shrubby spoke.

"Alright, please go ahead and find them. I'll try to cultivate in the meantime." Lin Mu stated.

Little Shrubby nodded his head and flew away in search of more hundred year old Hong Lin trees. Lin Mu, on the other hand, followed the methodology that was described in the technique he got from the repository and sat down with his back facing the Hong Lin tree.

While it was a bit uncomfortable at first, Lin Mu managed to find a position in which his back made maximum contact with the tree trunk as it could. Once that was done, Lin Mu closed his eyes and tried to sense the energy within the Hong Lin Trees once again.

After about a minute, he was able to sense them again, this time without even touching with his hand. The main use of this step was to let the cultivator get used to the Hong Lin tree and learn about the energy within it.

Even if Lin Mu had his back to the tree, he wasn't actually using his back to sense the energy within the Hong Lin Tree, as that was not how the technique worked. He could only sense it directly with his hands as they worked through his hands' meridians and not his back's.

This step was to see if the cultivator could still sense the energy within the Hong Lin trees without a direct link. Now that Lin Mu had sensed the energy hidden within the tree, the next step was to pull the energy towards him.

This was the 'Embracing the heart of Hong Lin' part of the mnemonic.

This was also a far harder step than before, and it took Lin Mu over an hour before he was able to even make the energy move a millimeter. But once that happened, he found the next parts easier.

As minutes passed by, Lin Mu was able to pull the energy within the Hong Lin trees closer and closer. And when the energy finally reached close to his body, Lin Mu realized something.

"This… this is vital essence?" Lin Mu muttered. "No, wait… there's is some difference between this vital essence and my own. I guess this is what makes it possible to cultivate…" 

Lin Mu thought to himself that this technique really did work as was said and continued the process. With this step completed, it became far easier for him to do the next step. The vital essence from within the Hong Lin tree entered his back and then spread over the skin.

Little by little, it trickled into his body before passing through the muscles, bones, and sinews. The strange thing was this vital essence didn't merge into his cells directly like his own vital essence did.

'This separation might be one of the factors that make this technique possible…' Lin Mu thought to himself.

The transmission of vital essence was rather slow within his body, and it took over an hour before it reached his internal organs. Once it was there, it didn't go to any other organ and started moving towards the Heart.

It was as if the other organs were repulsive to it and only when it reached his heart did the vital essence start getting absorbed into it. The moment it did, Lin Mu could feel the cells of his heart starting to strengthen.

Normally, since a heart was involved in the pumping of blood, it came in contact with a lot of vital essences that Lin Mu's body normally produced. But even then, it only stored a certain amount of vital essence in its cells.

It did not actually absorb the vital essence directly to refine itself. The process was a bit strange and hard to understand. If one were to compare it to something, they could think of it as using a jug of water to pour a glass and then using that very water to fill the jug back up.

Overall there was no net change of energy, and thus it would stay the same. This was where the cultivation techniques came and the need for external resources and requirements.

One needed something of 'high potential' to increase their own 'low potential'. 

Lin Mu calmly continued to cultivate using the method and kept on absorbing the vital essence of the Hong Lin tree. Eventually, the cells stopped absorbing the vital essence and started to divide.

'My Five Treasures Realm cultivation… it's increasing!' Lin Mu detected.

Seeing this, hope lit up in Lin Mu's eyes and he focused even more in the absorption. Once the replication of cells stopped, his heart could absorb more vital essence from the Hong Lin Tree.

Just like this another three hours passed before the Hong Lin Tree had run out of all Vital essence.

~huu~

Lin Mu opened his eyes and checked his condition.

"That… this is at least two percent increase!" Lin Mu exclaimed.

While this increase seemed minuscule, one must remember that even this was a great progress compared to before. His heart was now 32% refined and Lin Mu was assured that as long as he kept this up, he will surely reach 100% completion and also break through to the Third Stage of the Five Treasures realm.

Lin Mu stood up and took a look at the Hong Lin tree finding it to be the same as before. But when he placed his hand on it, he could see that it was now fully drained of the energy that was present in it.

"No wonder the first king liked the Hong Lin trees so much. They were the ones that helped him cultivate and he wanted to increase their numbers while protecting them.." Lin Mu said.

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