And yet, lying on that soft beast-hide bed, Lin Mu slept soundly — even letting out a faint, even snore.
But the gears of fate are often laden with the most absurd irony.
It was precisely because White Bone Stockade's patriarch Li Mang was too clever, too suspicious — frightened out of his wits by Lin Cang's newly achieved Rank 4 reputation — that he dared not act with his usual open aggression.
Instead, he chose the most time-consuming, most cautious plan available to him.
That Demonic Path tyrant's anxious scheming inside the bone-white great hall had, entirely without intending to, carved out a precious window of undisturbed development for the completely oblivious Lin Mu.
Dawn broke.
Morning light filtered through the latticed window and spread across the stone floor.
Lin Mu's eyes snapped open. After a full night's deep sleep, he felt clear-headed and refreshed, his blood and Primeval Essence restored to their peak.
Time to get to work.
He swung himself out of bed. The shock and exhaustion from last night's first probe of the inheritance were gone. In their place was the cold, absolute clarity of a calculating mind.
To play his hand in the game ahead, Rank 2 was the bare minimum. And the core of Rank 2 combat power lay in the refinement of Rank 2 Gu worms.
After washing up, Lin Mu changed into the deacon's robes that marked his authority and strode out of the courtyard.
The first step of Gu refinement was materials.
His newly acquired position as deacon made things considerably easier.
He went directly to the External Affairs Hall's material circulation storehouse and, using his requisition authority, openly drew a large batch of common supplementary materials — crimson iron ore powder, ancient vine sap, earth-vein rock cores — all at the internal cost price, entirely within regulation.
These items were plentiful but utterly unremarkable on the clan's ledgers. No one would give them a second glance.
The real difficulty lay in the special core materials.
"Absolutely cannot go to Old Ma at the Grey Street Market and buy everything in one trip."
Lin Mu walked back toward the Silent Stone District, his mind running through the details of counter-surveillance at speed.
"That old fox would see right through it. If I buy all the materials for the Blood Attraction Gu from him at once, even an idiot could figure out what kind of Gu I'm refining. Expose your hand, and death isn't far behind."
Back at the courtyard, Lin Mu summoned Lin Ping, who had been waiting outside the gate.
He went into the study, picked up a brush, and scrawled a long, seemingly random list of material names across a sheet of paper. Then he tore the sheet into more than a dozen fragments.
"Lin Ping."
Lin Mu handed several of the fragments to his new attendant. His tone was flat, but carried an authority that brooked no argument.
"Go to the small markets around the stockade — the scattered cultivator stalls, the mixed trading posts. Don't buy from the same place twice. Spend the extra coin on legwork if you have to. Just don't draw attention."
"Understood! Deacon Lin, rest assured — I'll handle it cleanly!"
Lin Ping took the fragments without even glancing at them, thumped his chest in assurance, and hurried off.
Lin Mu watched him go and gave a small, satisfied nod.
A divided puzzle.
Lin Ping only knew that his young master needed a heap of odd and varied things. His limited knowledge could never piece those scattered supplementary materials together into a coherent Rank 2 Gu formula.
"As for the last two or three core primary materials — the truly rare ones that can't be found at ordinary stalls..."
Lin Mu rubbed his chin. "I'll have to make a personal trip to the Grey Street Market in a few days and feel out Old Ma. But mixed in among routine transactions, even he won't be able to read anything into it."
Over the next three days, Lin Ping moved like a diligent worker ant — out before dawn, back after dark — hauling bundle after bundle of materials with all manner of strange smells into Lin Mu's hidden underground chamber.
The chamber was brightly lit.
Lin Mu stood before the wide stone table, surveying the mountain of Gu materials that had consumed nearly half the room, then glanced at the private ledger on the desk. He couldn't help drawing a sharp breath.
Money really does pour out like water.
In just a few days of procurement, his once-bulging coin pouch had shrunk dramatically — over three hundred Primeval Stones swallowed without a sound.
But those three hundred Primeval Stones had bought him more than materials. They had bought him a clear-eyed, even brutal, self-assessment.
"I am not Fang Yuan."
Lin Mu pressed both hands against the stone table and stared at the faintly glowing spirit materials, his gaze frighteningly lucid.
"Fang Yuan could refine high-rank Gu worms with his eyes closed, in the most desperate of circumstances, with effortless mastery. That was five hundred years of terrifying foundations built in a sea of corpses and blood."
"And me?"
"Even if I have the original story's settings memorized cold. Even if my tactical thinking is generations ahead. When it comes to Gu refinement — a craft that demands the most precise micro-control, a near-instinctive command over Primeval Essence output..."
Lin Mu laughed at himself, a short, self-deprecating sound. "I am, without question, a mediocrity. A pure apprentice who has never once walked through a complete Rank 1 to Rank 2 refinement."
A mediocrity seeking to break through has no shortcuts.
The only path forward was: spend money, and grind.
The concept of "saturation" — Lin Mu applied it to Gu refinement with ruthless pragmatism.
Afraid one set of materials would fail? Buy three. Three not enough? Buy five. Throw an overwhelming volume of trial-and-error costs at the problem until muscle memory forms — until that elusive thing called proficiency is beaten into existence by sheer force.
Lin Mu drew a long breath and began sorting the materials on the table into categories, laying out a clear and precise refinement schedule for what lay ahead.
Category One: Rank 2 Earth Birth Gu — for apprentice practice.
This was the most common, most ordinary, and nearly harmless Earth Path Gu worm in the Southern Border. Its only virtue was cheap materials and a simple refinement process — just two Gu worms: the Rank 1 Mud Skin Gu and the Rank 1 Grey Stone Gu.
On the far left of the stone table, Lin Mu had prepared five full sets of Earth Birth Gu materials.
This was pure money burned for the sake of the exercise — nothing more than a way to find his footing and practice the fine control of Primeval Essence fusion before touching anything expensive.
Category Two: Rank 2 Metal Rend Leaf Gu — core combat system advancement.
This was a refined formula passed down through Black Blood Stockade for hundreds of years, tested and proven countless times, and extraordinarily stable.
It used Lin Mu's Vital Gu — the Rank 1 Iron Leaf Gu — as the base, fused with the precious Rank 1 peak-grade offensive Metal Rend Gu, supplemented by large quantities of Morning Star Sand and Iron Mother Essence.
If the refinement succeeded, the iron leaf — which had previously only performed physical cutting — would undergo a qualitative transformation, inheriting the Metal Rend Gu's armor-piercing attribute that left nothing unbroken.
This was the card Lin Mu was most familiar with, the one he had the greatest confidence in, and the one that would determine his core combat power going forward.
Category Three: Rank 2 Blood Attraction Gu.
On the far right of the stone table, three sets of supplementary materials sat neatly arranged, each carefully wrapped in oilcloth.
This was the key to unlocking the first layer of the Black Bone King's "heart" inheritance. It touched on the esoteric Blood Path — the target Lin Mu had the least confidence in, yet the one he absolutely could not afford to fail.
"Though there's no rush for this one yet."
Lin Mu glanced at the three incomplete sets. "The Blood Attraction Gu is still missing two primary materials, and the core Gu worms aren't ready either. I'll need to wait for things to settle a little more before visiting Old Ma to probe the situation. The immediate priority is building up my technique first."
Everything was in place. Only the final piece remained.
Lin Mu walked to the chamber's entrance and turned the winch. A low, heavy rumble sounded as the thick stone slab descended, sealing the only passage completely.
He activated the sound-dampening Gu. The entire underground space fell into absolute silence.
Lin Mu returned to the stone table and sat cross-legged.
He closed his eyes and began to breathe — long, deep, deliberate. With each exhale, he worked to clear the noise from his mind, reaching for a state of perfect equilibrium.
Half a shichen later, when Lin Mu opened his eyes again, his gaze had become still as a dead pool — utterly undisturbed.
He did not reach for the expensive Rank 2 materials.
Instead, he calmly extended his hand and picked up the most basic, most inexpensive set on the far left of the table — the supplementary materials for the Rank 2 Earth Birth Gu: a shriveled lump of mud ore, a withered stalk of earth-root grass, and two Gu worms sitting motionless as stones — the Mud Skin Gu and the Grey Stone Gu.
Hiss——
A thread of Primeval Essence — extremely faint, yet controlled with extreme steadiness — flowed from Lin Mu's fingertip and seeped slowly into the two Gu worms.
A dim light kindled in the darkness of the chamber. It was the first spark of life and Dao Marks beginning to intertwine.
The evolution of Lin Mu — Gu refining apprentice — had officially begun.