The Saintess watched Lin Mu teach with faint interest from afar.
Lin Mu remained there for a while, offering guidance, correcting posture, refining intent. His improved comprehension made his words sharper, clearer. Each correction landed deeper than before.
Days turned into weeks.
The spatial channel remained steady, carrying them inexorably toward the Fox Scion World.
Lin Mu divided his ti between teaching, study, and introspection. He worked with the Saintess to examine materials, observing how different substances behaved under pressure, heat, and elental influence. Yet without a reliable way to isolate fundantal constituents, progress was slow.
So Lin Mu turned inward again.
If the world was built from these things, then living beings must interact with them constantly. Not just through cultivation, but through existence itself. And unlike the external world, his body seed to know how to separate them.
And it wasn't just his body, every creature seed to be capable of doing this. As such Lin Mu turned to the flesh for advice.
It took three months for the answer to reveal itself.
It happened during an ordinary ditation.
Lin Mu was seated, breathing slowly, awareness turned inward. With his perception heightened, he followed the path of breath itself.
Air entered his lungs.
And sothing felt... different.
He focused.
Within the inhaled air, certain components were absorbed more readily than
others. Not qi. Not elental energy. Sothing more basic.
When he exhaled, a different component left his body.
Lin Mu's eyes snapped open.
He imdiately called the Saintess and explained what he had felt. Together, they observed carefully.
With her perception, confirmation ca quickly.
"The gas you absorb," the Saintess said slowly, "is fundantal."
"And the one released?" Lin Mu asked.
"A compound," she replied.
Lin Mu's heart pounded.
He had found it.
A true fundantal elent, essential to life itself.
He nad it without hesitation.
"Life Breath."
The na felt right.
After that discovery, Lin Mu's days settled into a rhythm of quiet obsession.
After identifying Life Breath, he had expected the rest of the fundantal elents to reveal themselves more easily, as if a door had already been cracked open. Instead, he quickly learned that Life Breath was the exception, not the rule. It was cooperative, abundant, and interacted clearly with living bodies. The others were far more elusive.
He spent weeks observing air again.
At first, everything felt the sa. Air entered his lungs, circulated, left. With the Saintess's help, they isolated portions of air and examined them again and again, separating gases, compressing them, dispersing them, recombining them. Most of it led nowhere. So components behaved identically no matter how much they were refined. Others vanished into nothing when probed too closely.
Then, one day, the Saintess frowned.
"This one," she said softly.
Lin Mu opened his eyes and looked at the faint, barely perceptible wisp she had isolated. Even with her celestial perception, it was difficult to observe. It did not hold a stable form. It shimred, twisted, and seed to resist being alone.
"At first, I thought it was simply scarce," the Saintess said. "But it is not."
Lin Mu narrowed his eyes. "Then why is it so hard to isolate?" "Because it does not like to exist by itself," she replied. "It combines. Constantly."
They tested it.
Whenever they separated it, it tried to latch onto sothing else. Life Breath. Other invisible components of air. Even trace moisture. It was restless,
unstable, almost eager.
For weeks, they failed to understand it.
Then, during one experint, Lin Mu made a mistake.
He introduced a spark of mundane fla.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The isolated wisp detonated with a sharp flare, not violent enough to harm
them, but sudden enough to force Lin Mu to raise a hand defensively. Heat
burst outward, bright and clean.
And then, sothing strange happened.
The fla vanished.
In its place, a thin cloud of vapor lingered in the air.
Water vapor.
Lin Mu froze.
The Saintess stared at it in silence.
They repeated the experint.
Again and again.
Each ti, the sa result.
The mysterious fundantal elent burned explosively when ignited, releasing energy far greater than its volu suggested. And once it finished burning, it transford. Not into ash. Not into smoke.
Into water.
Or rather, into the vaporized form of water.
Lin Mu felt his breath catch.
"...It combines with Life Breath," he murmured.
The Saintess nodded slowly. "Yes. That is what it is consuming when it burns."
They tested it further.
Without Life Breath present, the elent resisted ignition. With Life Breath nearby, it burned readily. Mortal fire, which did not rely on Qi, failed without Life Breath. Fire needed it. And once the burning was complete, water
remained.
Sothing that burned turned into sothing that extinguished.
It was paradoxical. Elegant. Terrifying.
Lin Mu laughed softly, a sound filled with disbelief and wonder.
"I'll call it Ignition Breath," he said.
The Saintess did not object.
Life Breath and Ignition Breath.
One sustained existence.
The other fueled transformation.
Lin Mu felt as if he were staring at the bones of the world itself.
But after that discovery, progress slowed to a crawl.
No matter how they searched, no other fundantal elents revealed themselves. So were too stable. So too rare. So too deeply bound
within matter to be separated at his level.
Eventually, Lin Mu accepted that he had reached a temporary limit.
So he turned inward again.
This ti, he studied not the air, but himself.
Water.
His Water Core humd gently within him, responsive and alive. With careful
focus, he began manipulating the water inside his body. At first, it was subtle. Encouraging circulation. Guiding moisture through muscles and organs.
Then he pushed further.
He accelerated the flow of blood by influencing the water within it.
The result was imdiate and painful.
His heart thudded harder. Pressure built. His muscles burned as blood rushed
through them faster than they were ant to endure. And then, suddenly, pain exploded in his arm. The force seemingly separated water from his blood.
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