Chapter 675: The Hong Lin Forest

Swords and spears flew around as they decapitated, pierced and killed the Green tailed howler monkeys. In less than five minutes, the entire horde of monkeys was eliminated while Little Shrubby finished up fighting the chief.

He too returned with the corpse of the Green Tailed Howler monkey chief, which was being carried by the prosthetic hands. 

"Well… that was quite a bit of action." Lin Mu said upon seeing the hundreds of corpses that littered the forest now.

"This is unusual though. They should not have been active at this time, not to mention attack us like this." Jing Luo commented.

"Indeed, this does not seem like their natural behavior." Lin Mu agreed.

He then looked at all the corpses and didn't feel like letting them go to waste.

"Little Shrubby, can you pile all the corpses up here?" Lin Mu asked.

~shua~

Little Shrubby didn't even wait to answer before he started collecting all the corpses. With his speed, only two minutes were needed before all the corpses had been stacked into a pile near Lin Mu.

Lin Mu then simply placed his hand on them and stored them into the ring, leaving only the Chief Howler monkey outside.

"You want its bones, right?" Lin Mu asked.

"Yes, I can use that to make a fluted staff." Jing Luo replied as he flicked his hand and set a spirit dagger to butcher the corpse.

"What's the Fluted staff exactly?" Lin Mu asked while watching Jing Luo dissect the Howler monkey chief.

"It's a high grade spirit staff that makes sounds when it is used. It has special holes and groves in it that makes sounds while passing through the air. These sounds can be modified with formations to cause disturbance to the opposing enemies." Jing Luo explained.

"Ah, I see." Lin Mu nodded his head.

While he also knew about staffs and had used some according to the thousand armament blade scripture, those staffs were different as they were all bladed, unlike normal staffs that were blunt weapons.

Overall, Lin Mu had not used as many blunt weapons and thus did not have as much experience with them. Once they were done with the clean up, the trio continued their journey and eventually reached their destination.

"That's the capital of the Hong Lin kingdom." Jing Luo spoke.

The two men stood on top of a hill as the sun rose from the horizon, casting a glow that made it seem like the forest was lit up with red flames. In the center of the forest, a city could be seen which was populated by over a million people.

The city didn't seem out of place in the forest though, as if in harmony. There were Hong Lin trees in the city as well, but they were more uniformly arranged, along with other normal trees and plants.

The Hong Lin forest was a rather unique ecosystem, which was able to sustain itself despite having only one kind of a tree as the majority. All other plants were in the minority, such that only ten percent of the entire forest consisted of normal plants.

It was considered to be one of the miraculous areas of the Great Zhou continent that could be witnessed by both commoners and cultivators alike. Most miraculous areas were inaccessible to commoners and thus were hidden.

Lin Mu could feel the beauty of the forest and felt rather calm.

"This place feels good… it's very comfortable for me." Little Shrubby spoke too.

"Indeed. For you, the fire element of the trees is also a plus point, I guess." Lin Mu replied.

Lin Mu closed his eyes and sensed the spirit of Qi in the area. After a bit, he could sense a different kind of spirit Qi in addition to the basic attribute less spirit Qi.

"Fire attribute spirit Qi…" Lin Mu muttered as he took a deep breath.

Spirit Qi rushed into his body from all seven of his apertures along with the millions of pores on his body. This spirit Qi had the fire attribute spirit Qi mixed in and thus automatically elicited a new response from his body.

As the fire attribute spirit Qi flowed through his meridians for the first time, they reacted to it and it was a bit uncomfortable for Lin Mu at first. But as he kept on breathing more and more, his meridians started to adapt to it and soon formed a small pool of fire attribute liquid spirit Qi in his Dantian.

The pool was small, containing only ten drops of liquid spirit Qi, but the rate at which Lin Mu had made it was astounding. If it were any other cultivator, it would have taken them several days just to be able to sense the fire attribute spirit Qi in the air if they did not have an affinity with it.

Lin Mu was someone who had the affinity with earth elemental Qi and none of the other elements. But despite that, his speed of absorbing was no less than that of a cultivator who had been cultivating using fire attribute cultivation technique their entire life.

In ten breaths, Lin Mu had expanded the pool of fire attribute spirit Qi to a hundred drops. At this point, something else started to change within his body. His heart suddenly started to heat up as waves of energy started coming off it.

As soon as Lin Mu sensed it, he realized what was happening.

'The five Treasures realm… it's progressing!' Lin Mu thought.

Unknown to himself, he had already entered an extremely focused state of cultivation. Jing Luo, who watched the change happening in a matter of minutes, was left with a wry smile.

~Sigh~

"Comparing oneself with geniuses will only hurt our Dao hearts…" Jing Luo shook his head and sat down, deciding to wait till Lin Mu was done with his cultivation.

Little Shrubby joined Lin Mu as well and started to absorb spirit Qi like crazy. To him, who had two beast bloodlines that were of the fire element, it was even faster than Lin Mu!