The Innkeeper

Chapter 1824: Tracing karma

Lex returned to his office, his eyes fixed on the Karmic Bead. Honestly, it had not taken him too long time wise to get the bead, compared to some other things he’d done. Abaddon, for example, took so many years for him to get through, and compared to that the bead didn’t take long at all.

Still, it felt like forever. There was no point in continuing the wait any longer. Lex reached out and touched the transparent bead, imbuing a single drop of blood into the bead, and channeling his spiritual energy into it.

Before he could use the bead, he had to bond with it. The blood, and even the spiritual energy, that he fed into the bead was not how he would form the bond, though. Unlike other treasures, such as Naraka, bonding the bead was not done through energy. No, it was done through karma itself.

The blood and energy were simply a conduit for his karma. Lex himself did not know what to expect during the bonding process, which is why when the bead suddenly responded to his attempt, he was ready for anything.

The first change that occurred was in the color. The transparent bead, devoid of all karma, started to turn black, with tiny sparkling lights in the color gold. The bead looked like it contained within it a part of the nightsky, if all the distant stars were all gold instead of white.

What was interesting, though, was that it wasn’t stationary. No, the lights kept twinkling within the darkness, and some even seemed to be moving at noticeable speed.

But that was only the beginning. As the fusion continued, Lex fell into a sort of trance as the bead fused with his karma itself. So long as Lex existed, in any form or shape, the bead would forever be connected to him through his karma, everywhere and anywhere, forever.

But for it to completely attune itself to his karma forever more, it first had to take on the full weight of all the karma he had ever experienced.

That began, not from the moment of his birth, but from long, long before then. The universe existed in such a way that should the circumstances for the birth of a certain race or species be met, then through a series of seemingly coincidental occurances, that species would be born.

In some cases, that was through evolution. Starting out from a single celled organism, all the way to complex beings. In other cases, it was a result of mutation from a race that already existed. There were also countless other ways in which they could be born, even including spontaneously being born from the surging spiritual energy, depending on the specific race being born.

As such, not all races actually shared a common origin. For example, although there were a few humans at the beginning, known as the human kings, not all the humans in the universe were their descendants. In fact, most of their heritage was lost, meaning that most of humanity came into being through other means, supported by the universe.

As such, it wouldn’t be a stretch for Lex, too, to have a heritage with a history much shorter than that of the human race.

In fact, as the Karmic Bead traced the roots of his karma, it seemed like his mothers line was one such example of humans appearing out of the machinations of the universal laws. Her origin was that of Earth, and at least in that regard seemed simple. Or so it seemed at first.

In his trance, Lex could not discover his true karmic origins. He only vaguely detected what the bead was doing, and currently it was searching anything and everything that might have resulted in his birth, starting from his mother.

While her origins remained mundane, there was a faint karmic connection she had formed within her life that affected Lex greatly. That connection seemed to originate from an ancient past...

But the connection was severed, and even the Karmic bead could not trace its secrets. Regardless, that was the extent of Lex’s own karmic origins from his mothers side.

From his fathers side, however, it seemed his karma was quite complicated.

As the bead began to trace his karma back through each and every generation of his family, the karma within the Inn began to fluctuate, as if it was being affected by something devastatingly powerful.

Many noticed the change, but none could understand what was causing it - including Wu Kong. Many astutely guessed that the Innkeeper was doing something again. Some even began studying the changes. Yet the truly powerful remained confused. Why was it that they couldn’t detect the origins of the changes at all?

It was as if there was a veil around the origin, protecting it from being discovered. It was similar to how even the Dao Lord Dragons had been unable to detect Jack’s origins.

As they watched, and some even sent back reports to their backers of the unusual changes, what they didn’t know was that the spectacle... had only just begun.

Lex watched as the bead kept traversing the history of his family, searching for the root of his karma, and he even managed to learn a few random secrets about his family along the way. The bead traced his origin all the way back to William Sephore, the refugee to the Origin realm. For the briefest of seconds, the bead seemed to pause there, as if that was his origin.

Yet it was only a pause, not a complete stop. At that point, the bead continued to travel back even further, this time with such speed that Lex could barely make anything out.

The name Sephore, it seemed, had great origins and immense karmic ties which were greater than Lex had imagined. He could not detect the exact reason why, but Lex could sense that there was more to the history of his family than even the Jotun emperor knew. That was because Lex sensed something familiar, something that those at their level should not have been able to identify. He sensed the aura of a Dao Lord.

The further back in history that the bead went, the quicker it began to trace his origins. The speed became so fast that Lex became entirely unable to comprehend what was happening at all.

From hundreds of thousands of years, it went to millions, to hundreds of millions, to billions... right up until nothingness. The bead was unable to trace his true origins, because it had been erased, right at the end of the first age!

Lex’s mind reeled at the insinuations, yet the bead itself did not stop. This was merely the beginning of fusing with his karma, for it had started with his origins. Now, it would begin with his life.

Unbeknownst to Lex, the more karma that the bead absorbed, the stronger aura it exuded, and the heavier it weighed against the karma around it. The bead, to be able to manipulate karma, needed to have some karmic weight of its own as an anchor, and the greater that karma, the more it would be able to affect other karma.

It had not even begun to absorb the actual karma Lex had gained in his life, and already it was giving off a pressure that was affecting the entire Midnight realm.

Orin, perhaps, was the only one who could have guessed what was truly happening. The others, though, were starting to get concerned.

Only the strongest of Celestial Immortals could detect anything at all, yet the hint of that ancient aura which went back to the first Age was something that alarmed them greatly.

Instantly, countless speculations about the Innkeeper began to fly out, being sent to all the organizations they were from.

Most of them concluded, though, that he was some ancient entity from the first age! As unbelievable, as improbable as that speculation sounded, it actually ended up being the most common one.

The bead began to absorb the karma from Lex’s life, and most of it seemed pretty inconsequential. Most of it. One event, however, seemed to have much greater significance than Lex expected.

Since the bead was no longer searching such a distant past, Lex was even able to gleam some hints as to what that event was. It was the day... his parents consulted the oracle who foretold he would be fine until fifty if he never cultivated.

But then, the bead moved on, not giving Lex any time to ponder, leaving him confused. Karma and fate were not the same things. That day should have been the one that most heavily influenced his fate and destiny, setting up the course of his life for years to come. But what did that have to do with karma?

Lex didn’t have much time to ponder, because he quickly reached the day he got his system. That... was when the show truly began.