The Innkeeper

Chapter 1825: More like Hell than Heaven

It was a strange day at the Midnight Inn, though the frequent guests at the Inn somewhat expected such a thing. Besides the phenomenal services, top quality products, and interesting events, one of the greatest attractions of coming to the Inn was the possibility of encountering some random, realm altering event, possibly even a universe influencing event, that could progress one’s cultivation talent as well as one’s cultivation level.

Take, for example, Jill. Once upon a time there was a contest within the Inn called the Lady Cosmos, and it was in essence a beauty pageant. Jill was a participant in that contest, but because of that she attracted the attention of a particularly unsavory fellow.

He attacked Jill a few times, trying to kidnap her, but the security at the Inn kept her safe. Now, she had spent so much time inside the Inn, and experienced so many power ups, that she no longer feared the slug that had been attacking her. In fact, in a few years, when she honed her newfound power, she intended to go look for him and settle matters once and for all.

From being a victim, to now on the path for justice, she had come far, and it was all because she stayed at the Inn no matter what.

She wasn’t alone in maintaining such a mindset. So when, on this particular day, people noticed something unusual going on, they were more excited than concerned. But the strange thing was, most people couldn’t even sense what was happening.

In the levels dedicated to mortals and low level cultivators, nothing seemed to be happening at all. It was only the very strongest who seemed to notice the changes. At first, they seemed to only care about reporting the oddity to their respective organizations, but the longer the situation continued, the more alarmed they seemed, to the point of being horrified.

At the moment when the Karmic Bead finally reached the point in Lex’s history where he got the system, many stumbled, and almost fell to the ground!

The karmic weight accumulated by the Karmic Bead became so vast that the system itself had to intervene, categorising the influence as passively harmful, protecting the guests from it.

By that point, even Heaven Immortals could sense it, though they did not fully understand what they were sensing. How could they, when the occurring situation was a result of Lex’s madness tapped into the vast history of the systems?

Once again, just as Lex saw the bead trace his karmic origins, the bead began to trace the karmic origins of the system, so as to calculate its influence on Lex.

Right off the bat, just the karma of the system meeting Lex was greater than the sum of all the karma Lex had accumulated before, but then as it began to trace its history, the karma accumulated.

His system, before coming to him, was trapped somewhere within the deadzone, resting within a massive meteor. Lex never thought about how his system, which once belonged to Mary, arrived within the Origin realm, and how it reached him. He had wondered if there had been others that the system had fused with, but hadn’t been able to survive.

A part of him hoped that there hadn’t been any other hosts, and that the system had remained as it was since Mary. Another part of him wished that others had attained the system, with all its power. That would prove that Lex survived not because the system had empowered him, but because he himself had been worthy.

Though, both parts were actually quite small. A majority of Lex was indifferent to whether there had been other users or not. His self worth was not tied to external things. Instead, it was tied to his 25 years old, normal weighted self.

The years slipped by, with millions of years quickly passing, up until a point in the history of the Origin realm where... the dead zone appeared! It seemed that the dead zone hadn’t always existed. Instead, there was some kind of turbulence at the boundary of the realm with the Void, causing the entire region to become devoid of all kinds of spiritual energy.

It seemed that the system, and more specifically even the crater it was trapped within, had entered the realm as a part of that turbulence. Before that, the crater had been traveling the Void.

Millions of years quickly turned to billions of years of nothingness, so much so that Lex even vaguely felt an age might have gone by. Time was once again passing by too quickly for Lex to tell much, yet when the darkness of the Void suddenly disappeared.

Time passed too quickly for him to be sure, but Lex could have sworn he felt a familiar aura. It was the same aura that had asked him to become an Augur of Heaven, except the faint trace of karma he detected were anything but divine. In fact, it seemed like it was closer to a Hell rather than a Heaven. The only thing he could be sure of was that he sensed Mary.

Regardless, Lex was unable to glean much about the end of Mary’s time with the system, and in fact he was entirely unable to see to detect anything that happened while Mary had the system, as it was blocked, yet the bead continued to trace the karma so it must not have been erased.

Many years went by once more, and the system was once again revealed, this time in the form of a mere, glowing light. That is what the system must have been like in the beginning.

The karmic trace once again disappeared towards the end of the first age, indicating it was no longer possible to trace the origin.

Regardless, the Karmic Bead had gained a tremendous weight by now - one that would have warped the karma of the entire Inn itself had the system not been protecting it. But even if the Inn was protected, the many Celestials, and even Wu Kong, could sense that weight.