Learning that the cauldron still had some surprises, Lin Mu was pleased and continued to heat it as the gold ingots inside started to soften. 

Hours passed as the gold finally turned to liquid and filled half the volume of the cauldron. The cauldron was a little over six thousand liters in capacity and looked more like a large water tank instead, but was perfect for a large refinement like this.

Once all the gold was melted, Lin Mu got to removing the impurities from it and then finally starting the refinement process that would reduce its volume.

'This one will be the hardest and the longest process. I need to reduce it to ten percent of the original volume… seeing as it is half filled, the volume of gold in this should be around three thousand liters.' Lin Mu calculated. 

"Then reducing it to the tenth would mean… I'll be left with three hundred liters of refined gold. Should be just enough to fully soak me inside it." Lin Mu muttered to himself.

While doing this calculation in his mind, Lin Mu continued to stir the gold with his spirit Qi in a spiral while infusing it into it as well. 

Hours turned into days and days turned into weeks.

It was the third week since Lin Mu had begun the entire process and he had been working nonstop to make sure that no error was made. 

"Just a little bit more…" Lin Mu said in an exhausted tone.

Even with his large spirit Qi capacity, Lin Mu had to infuse a massive amount of spirit Qi into the Liquid gold. In the last two stages, the quantity was still enough that Lin Mu wasn't strained enough.

But now the quantity of gold was many times that and the refinement needed to be at a higher level as well.

The more the volume that was to be shrunk, the greater the amount of spirit Qi required. If one were to calculate the amount of spirit Qi that Lin Mu had used in this, it would quite possibly reach the entirety of a small sect's spirit stone reserves!

But on the twenty-second day, Lin Mu had finally finished with his work.

~huu~

"That was way more tough than I had expected…" Lin Mu muttered in an exhausted tone.

His eyes were slightly baggy and his complexion paler than normal.

"You did good. For most others, this would have been very difficult or impossible to do. Even Jing Luo would have failed as he would have simply not had the spirit Qi needed to do it despite having greater skills." Senior Xukong praised.

He knew all this was well deserved, and the feat was worthy of being praised.

"Thank you, senior… though it left me dead tired." Lin Mu said.

"Well, that was expected. Though now that you are done, you can rest for a bit before starting with the final step." Xukong replied with a chuckle.

"Yes," Lin Mu said and looked around for little Shrubby.

The beast had left a couple of times during the refinement process because the people at the sect had called for him. Once he was called by the Noon Grass sect to intimidate a herd of beasts that had started harassing the disciples while the second time was by none other than Jingming Shang.

The sly businessman needed someone to deliver some sensitive documents at the earliest possible time, and Little Shrubby was the best fit for it, since the location they were being taken to did not have a teleportation gate.

After that time, Little Shrubby had returned but had gone out to hunt nearby.

~WHOOSH~

Sensing that Lin Mu was calling for him, the beast returned in a blur, but not without bringing a tree with him.

"Are you done?" Little Shrubby asked.

"Yes, I am… but what's up with the tree?" Lin Mu questioned.

He looked at the tree and could tell that it was just a common pine tree. Other than being rather large, there wasn't anything special about it.

"I wanted to make new skewer sticks." Little Shrubby said, and threw the tree to the side.

~THUD~

The tree created some cracks on the rocky ground but stayed fine itself.

"Huh… okay… you can do that later." Lin Mu stated.

"Do you want me to take over the heating now?" Little Shrubby asked.

"Yes. I want to rest and the gold needs to be kept liquid." Lin Mu spoke.

"Alright. Don't worry and just rest." Little Shrubby said to which Lin Mu nodded.

With the amount of spirit Qi Lin Mu had exhausted, it would take him a while to recover it, even with the help of some resources.

Lin Mu took out large blocks of spirit stones and directly sat upon them as he started to cultivate. He also popped a few alchemical pills that would help in recovering spirit Qi faster from time to time as well.

About a week later, Lin Mu had finally recovered to the peak and was in the same state when he had started a month ago.

~Phew~

"Didn't think that just refining the gold would end up taking this long for the third step… I'm already extending past the time line I had set originally." Lin Mu muttered to himself.

He checked the communication jade slip to see if there were any messages and found a few. Lin Mu and Jing Luo wanted to head to the north so that they could find Jing Wei, but that plan was getting delayed more and more.

~Sigh~

'Not like we can do anything… we simply have too many things to do.' Lin Mu thought.

Thankfully Jing Luo didn't mind the wait, as he too knew that Lin Mu cultivating was very important. The man was now cultivating as well and had left a message that he too was preparing for his breakthrough to the Dao Shell realm now.

He had already finished teaching the elders the method to assemble the teleportation gates and had made enough gates that they were all sent to the locations intended for them.

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