A day was passed in cultivation as Lin Mu's mental state finally returned to normal. 

He had been chanting the calming heart sutra endlessly during this time, yet found that it was not being as effective as before. 

'The demonic path is as domineering as always, it will take him longer to get used to it. Even though he also has the approval of the Buddhist path, he hasn't grasped the essence of it yet. While the demonic path is much easier to grasp, all it needs is rage.' Xukong thought.

Lin Mu opened his eyes and let out a breath. His face was tranquil and no trace of the previous distress was seen on it. He had thoroughly been cleansed of his previous condition.

"Senior, from what I've experienced yesterday, it seems like I need to use the burning heart sutra and gain better control over it." Lin Mu spoke in a calm tone.

"Oh, just as I thought of it. Yes, that is indeed what you should do. Once you get used to it and become familiar with that state, not only will you have better control over it but you may even increase your strength by another fold." Xukong replied.

"Mmmhmm," Lin Mu hummed in response before a determined look appeared on his face.

The words of the demonic figures appeared in his mind as he repeated after them.

"Ignite thy heart as a furnace, let your rage fuel your strength and unleash rampage upon the worlds - Behold, The Burning Heart Sutra."

Lin Mu's expression soon changed to a strained one as veins popped up on his face and his muscles grew taut. His eyes were closed, but underneath his eyelids, they had turned bloodshot as well. 

Upon reaching his state, his mind started to wander as he had no target to unleash his rage upon. This made his memories of the past came back to him and the sorrow accompanied it. And along with this sorrow came unprecedented rage.

Lin Mu clenched his fists in rage as he tried to control it. He stayed like that for two minutes before Xukong called out.

"Enough!" He ordered.

Lin Mu snapped out of his thoughts and stopped chanting the burning heart sutra. His face and eyes went back to normal and his body also relaxed.

~Phew~

"This is much harder than when I killed those men," Lin Mu said with a tired voice.

"Indeed, when one does not have a goal in mind, their will starts to waver. Right now you don't have a target on which you can focus this power on thus it ends up targeting yourself," Xukong said with a straight tone before continuing, "Hmm, you should use the burning heart sutra once a day like this. But, you need to reduce the time period. Thirty seconds should be good for now. Two minutes is clearly more straining on you. When you killed those men, you barely spent a minute in that state. This is a taxing technique, better to be reserved with it for now." 

Lin Mu carefully pondered over Senior Xukong's words and agreed with them. The stress that the technique put on him was certainly large. He didn't know if it could have harmful effects, thus it would only do him good to be prudent.

"That does seem to be the better choice right now." Lin Mu agreed before standing up.

He took a look outside the window and saw the cloudy sky and the swirling snow.

"The winter should be ending in a month now. Not much time left." Lin Mu muttered to himself.

He sat back down to cultivate and returned to his routine, except this time another task had been added to it. The task being the daily usage of the burning heart sutra.

***

Days upon days passed as another month came to an end.

Xiangwei city was a city that was well known in the Shuang Qian kingdom and was also known in other parts of the Great Zhou Empire. There were two reasons for it, one it was one of the biggest cities of commerce and thousands of trades happened there every hour. The second being that it was home to a lot of big and prominent mercenary companies.

The climate in the Xiangwei city was also completely different from that of Wu Lim city. While it was also cold here, it was not on the same level as that of the Wu Lim city and there was no snow here either. The sky was also clear and the sun shone brightly.

At the south of the city, there existed the mercenary district. This was the place where most of the mercenary companies' bases were located. While the smaller mercenary companies had their head bases here, the bigger ones like the ashen cloak mercenaries had a smaller administrative base here.

The bigger mercenary companies had their main bases located outside the city in special areas that had been allotted to them. This was an honor that was only reserved for the most powerful mercenary companies. 

Still, the mercenary district was the central hub of the mercenaries as this was also where the office of the mercenary union was located. The building which housed it was rather large and took up around ten percent of the entire mercenary district.

This was a shocking thing for a single building to occupy such a large area. But it was a given, as the building had many different departments in it that performed different functions.

Some dealt with the requests and commissions that they received, some dealt with the legal aspects of the job, some dealt with the goods that they obtained while some parts functioned as a dorm for the mercenaries.

Thought the most important part of the mercenary union was considered as the grand meeting room. This was where the most important meetings were convened and big decisions were taken.

Currently, in this very room, a meeting was taking place. There were more than a hundred seats in the room and all of them were filled. 

Right now, a man was standing in the center of the room and was speaking to everyone. This man was none other than Teng Xiaolian. He was currently informing everyone about the events that had happened in the northern town and forest.

Nobody knew, but this meeting was the start of the upheaval.

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