That deeply tempting notion circled in Lin Mu's mind for a moment before he pressed it down with cold composure.
"A good fallback plan for the future is still a matter for a year from now."
Walking the road back to the Silent Stone District, his emotions gradually cooled. The ripples stirred by Jia Fu settled completely.
"External forces are ultimately unreliable. Iron must be forged from within. If I can't even get past the obstacle right in front of me, what future is there to speak of?"
Resources, connections — all of it was external. Only the strength held in one's own hands was the true foundation for survival.
Back in the dim underground chamber in the Silent Stone District, Lin Mu set the ancient wine jar he had obtained from Jia Fu carefully on the stone table without a moment's hesitation.
With this, every prerequisite for refining the Rank 2 Four-Flavor Liquor Worm had finally been met in full.
There was no time to waste. The refinement could not be delayed.
Lin Mu sat cross-legged, drew several slow, deep breaths, and brought his mind to a state of absolute stillness.
A single thought, and the two plump, white Liquor Worms in his Aperture flew out obediently, hovering in the air before him and releasing their enticing fragrance of wine.
Arrayed on the table in a line were four jars of varying sizes.
Each contained one of the four exceptional wines he had spent considerable effort gathering over this period — the jar of "sour wine" with its rich, sharp fruit-acid aroma; the thick, honey-dense "sweet wine" that Lin Ping had procured; the extreme "bitter wine" supplied by the Jia Clan Caravan; and the harshest, most throat-scorching "spicy wine" obtained through Lin Wuxie.
Sour. Sweet. Bitter. Spicy.
"Begin."
Lin Mu's gaze sharpened.
The method for refining the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm was nothing like the brute-force approach used for ordinary Gu — where Primeval Essence served as the furnace and the worm was simply forced into shape.
This refinement used the wine itself as the crucible. It demanded a seamless, harmonious fusion.
Driven by Lin Mu's forceful will, both jade-white Liquor Worms dove together and plunged directly into the first jar of sour wine.
Hum!
An abrupt transformation erupted.
The moment the two Liquor Worms entered the sour wine, it was as though two red-hot coals had been dropped into ice water — the reaction was immediate and violent.
A mass of white light churned furiously within the dark liquid, accompanied by a sharp, crackling hiss, illuminating the ceiling of the dim chamber as brightly as daylight.
"Suppress it."
Lin Mu's expression didn't change. His left hand blurred into motion.
Without a second glance, he grabbed fistful after fistful from the small mountain of Primeval Stones piled beside him and hurled them into the roiling white light above the jar.
Ten. Fifty. One hundred.
The Primeval Stones crumbled to ash.
The flood of natural primeval energy bore down like the heaviest of millstones, grinding relentlessly against the violent, clashing wills of the two Liquor Worms as their Dao Marks collided within.
Under the furious injection of energy, the raging mass of light that had been threatening to burst free from the jar was finally crushed down — compressed inch by inch into a fist-sized sphere.
At the same time, the essence of the first jar of sour wine had been completely wrung dry, reduced to a layer of flat, spiritually inert liquid.
"Second flavor!"
Lin Mu moved without hesitation, seized the second jar of sweet wine, and upended it — jar and all — directly onto the fist-sized sphere of light.
Boom!
The moment the thick, oil-dense sweet wine touched the sphere, it was as though an utterly desiccated sponge had been plunged into water.
The volume that had just been suppressed exploded outward again in a violent surge.
The extreme conflict between sour and sweet sent the repulsive force within the sphere skyrocketing.
Fine beads of sweat broke across Lin Mu's forehead in an instant.
He had to divide his focus — holding the two Liquor Worms' increasingly violent clash in check with sheer force of will, while simultaneously repeating the same process without pause.
Grabbing Primeval Stones and feeding them into the reaction for another brutal round of compression.
It was a grueling, monotonous, and lethally dangerous process.
In the world of Gu refinement, even a single moment of distraction — even a tenth of a second — could shatter the balance entirely, ending in the Liquor Worms detonating in a backlash and leaving nothing but ruin.
Lin Mu clenched his jaw until it ached, his eyes shot through with red, mechanically and precisely cycling through the rhythm of expansion and compression.
Then came Jia Fu's jar of bitter wine.
And finally, the crock of fierce spicy wine that Lin Wuxie had bought.
Bitter and spicy intertwined. Sour and sweet collided.
Four extreme, opposing flavors underwent an impossible fusion within this confined space, catalyzed by Primeval Essence and a staggering volume of Primeval Stones.
Hummm —!
When the very last drop of spicy wine was fully absorbed by the mass of white light — which had now survived four cycles of violent expansion and extreme compression —
The sphere detonated in a blaze of radiance so intense it stabbed pain directly into Lin Mu's eyes.
But the brilliance lasted only half a breath. Then it collapsed inward all at once, swallowed into nothing like a whale drinking the sea.
"It worked."
An uncontrollable surge of elation rose in Lin Mu's chest.
Guided by his will, a brand new Gu worm drifted up from the bottom of the drained jar, swaying gently, and settled lightly into his palm.
It was slightly larger than the Rank 1 Liquor Worm, its head still bearing that same pair of small, bright, lively black eyes.
But its body — once as purely milky-white as the finest mutton-fat jade — had undergone a breathtaking transformation.
Across its shell, four vivid colors flowed and shifted in a continuous, cycling gradient —
The crimson red of spice. The deep blue of bitterness. The jade green of sourness. And the bright gold of sweetness.
The four colors cycled and alternated across its rounded body, radiating a mesmerizing luminous halo.
The strange, shifting light involuntarily called to mind something from Lin Mu's past life — the beautiful spectrum diagrams from a science class, long ago in another world.
Rank 2 — Four-Flavor Liquor Worm.
Huu...
Lin Mu leaned back against the cold stone wall and let out a long, slow breath, thick with the mingled fragrance of four wines.
Only now did he realize his back was completely soaked through with cold sweat — as though he had just been pulled from the water.
"Luck played an enormous part in this."
He looked at the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm resting in his palm, and a chill of retrospective fear passed through him.
The failure rate for refining Rank 2 Gu worms was extremely high. He had prepared thoroughly, but this was still his first attempt at refining a Gu of this difficulty. Succeeding on the first try was nothing short of heaven's favor.
Had he failed, he would have lost not only one of his precious wild Liquor Worms, but the half-jar of bitter wine he had gone to such lengths to obtain from Jia Fu would have been wasted entirely.
Gathering all these materials a second time would have been nearly impossible.
He looked at the thick layer of Primeval Stone dust covering the floor, then back at the small worm that had cost him so dearly.
In that moment, Lin Mu felt — truly, deeply, in a way that would stay with him — the cruelty and hardship of cultivation in the world of Gu.
Raising Gu drained wealth. Using Gu drained Primeval Essence.
And refining Gu drained one's very lifeblood, all while carrying the ever-present risk of losing everything in a single instant.
And this was merely a Rank 2 Gu worm.
Lin Mu recalled the cold records from the original story. The path of Gu refinement grew more despairing the higher one climbed.
At Rank 4 and Rank 5, the success rate for refinement fell below ten percent. And those lofty Rank 6 Immortal Gu — one in a hundred at best — were truly singular, one-of-a-kind existences.
Many times, Gu Immortals poured decades or even centuries of accumulated wealth into refining a single Immortal Gu, only to be answered by the dull thud of a failed furnace — all their foundations reduced to ash in an instant, and sometimes their lives along with it.
"The path of a Gu Master is a hard one..."
In the dim underground chamber, Lin Mu cradled the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm in his hands and let out a deep, heartfelt sigh from the bottom of his soul — the exact same sigh that Fang Yuan had once breathed.
A sigh that crossed time and dimensions. One that only a transmigrator who had personally walked this thorned road could truly understand — with all its bitterness and weight.
But after that sigh came the immense joy of a great harvest, and the exhilaration of a qualitative leap in power.
"Absorb."
Lin Mu's will moved. He immediately refined the precious Four-Flavor Liquor Worm and drew it into his Aperture.
The moment it entered, the small worm — its body cycling with shifting light — dove with tremendous excitement straight into the shallow-red sea of Rank 2 Primeval Essence that had only recently taken form.
Like a traveler parched for three days in a desert, it gulped down the pale-red initial-stage Primeval Essence in great, greedy mouthfuls.
Then its plump little body gave a slight, rhythmic undulation — and from its mouth, it expelled a stream of Primeval Essence so refined and concentrated it was like the purest, most potent of spirits.
Hum!
The Primeval Sea within the Aperture, calm until that moment, erupted into a boil.
In the Rank 2 classification, initial-stage Primeval Essence was pale red. Middle stage was crimson. Upper stage was deep red. And peak stage was dark red.
Now, under the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm's unreasonably powerful refinement, the pale-red Red Iron Primeval Essence in Lin Mu's Aperture — which had belonged to Rank 2 initial stage — was forcibly elevated and refined into a vivid crimson.
Rank 2 middle-stage Primeval Essence.
Feeling the instantly heightened quality of the Primeval Essence within him, Lin Mu's eyes blazed with a fierce, startling light in the darkness.
The leap in Primeval Essence quality meant not only that the power behind every Gu worm he activated would multiply.
It also meant that the pace at which he used high-quality Primeval Essence to wash and temper his Aperture walls had just been fitted with a supercharger.
As long as he had enough Primeval Stones to feed the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm, the threshold of Rank 3 — a wall that ordinary Gu Masters spent lifetimes trying to breach — was no longer an unreachable barrier for him.
It was simply a matter of time.
His foundation had surged to an unprecedented height in this single moment.
Lin Mu slowly rose to his feet and stretched his slightly stiffened limbs. In the darkness of the underground chamber, his black eyes gleamed with the hungry, unwavering light of a starving wolf.
"Refining the Four-Flavor Liquor Worm — the first hard requirement has been met."
"Next..."
He drew a silent red line in his mind.
"The Red Iron Relic Gu. I will have it."