The Innkeeper

Chapter 1872: Names

Lex was very familiar with characters. They were like weak imprints of laws present within reality, and contained hidden power. He used them to make arrays, which were self powered and could create incredible results. Even the Book of Changes had some new and unique characters for Lex to study.

Yet the characters on this obelisk were very different.

"Whatchu looking at, homeboy?" the first character that Lex looked at asked him, its voice erasing a hint of pollution that had slipped into Lex’s spirit undetected. It sounded aggressive, carrying in its voice a real provoking tone, as if hoping that Lex would give it a reason to respond. Yet hidden within it was also a kindness, like that of a grumpy old man who hated noisy kids, but secretly also looked after them.

"I am looking at history," Lex casually responded, though his eyes were already sliding across many other characters on the monument in front of him.

During his research, Lex discovered that this form of Spiritual tribulation was unique to the human race, and was a testament to the advantages of belonging to a powerful race, or at least a race with a powerful history.

This obelisk was a sort of monument or record of the history of the human race, forming a unique power that could only be accessed during a Spiritual tribulation. Reading the obelisk was supposedly impossible for it was written in a dead language, with its meaning protected through certain laws. Yet humans could interact with the characters even so.

During the Spiritual tribulation, all races would have their spirit brought into a unique space through their dreams. The space was filled with an invisible, undetectable pollution that slowly eroded their minds. They had to survive in this space for extended periods of time, exposed to that pollution, and maintain their spiritual integrity by either enduring or fighting against that pollution.

According to many theories, that pollution was actually the corrupting influence of certain, incredibly obscure and arcane laws. Others claimed it was the influence of a certain Dao. Whatever the case, that pollution in no way helped anyone’s spirit, but fighting against it, resisting it, or expelling it from one’s mind strengthened the spirit, thereby forming the only way to benefit from the Spirit tribulation.

In theory, this tribulation was simple. In practice, it was actually extremely dangerous. One of the best ways to survive against the pollution was to have a strong spirit, but having a stronger spirit also resulted in a longer dream, and more exposure to the pollution, resulting in the strength of spirit actually being pointless. That is also precisely why Lex treated this tribulation so seriously, because his immense strength would actually work against him in this case.

The existence of the Spirit tribulation, thus, became one of the greatest road blocks in the cultivators desire to traverse the cultivation path. Since strength of spirit could not work in resisting the pollution, all beings explored many other ways to do so, and even had varying levels of success.

Certain races specifically evolved in such a way that they could endure this pollution well. Others developed techniques that could allow them to constantly refresh their spirit, enduring the pollution for longer periods. More powerful races developed unique methods to pass this tribulation.

Whether this obelisk was something that was formed naturally, or was formed as a result of something the humans did purposefully, was entirely unknown. All that mattered, at least for humans, was that by interacting with the characters on the obelisk, one could cleanse the pollution in their minds.

The existence of the obelisk was a huge cheat that helped the humans immensely, and yet, the lethality of this tribulation could not be understated. For most human Immortals, this obelisk was the only thing that made passing this tribulation even remotely possible, not a given certainty.

After all, this tribulation - and the accompanying pollution, whatever its nature - was born from the bedrock and framework of the universe itself. A few tricks and minor cheats here and there could make the tribulation easier, but they absolutely couldn’t erase the actual difficulty of the tribulation itself.

Lex had a few ideas about how to pass the tribulation, though he couldn’t test any of the theories until the actual tribulation itself. The first and most obvious was to use his own healing ability to heal his spirit - but in this dream, that seemed impossible. He tried, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Then came donning Domination around him like a protective suit of armor. For the first time ever, not only did Domination not help him, it made his situation worse. The aura ability could not resist the corruption, and instead just increased the area through which the pollution could directly affect his mind, so he let the ability fade.

Then he thought of his cultivation technique - ever the reliable tool against anything harmful. But this was a dream, and he was only here in spirit. No matter how he tried, he could not utilize his cultivation technique, and thus could not make himself immune to the pollution.

Then, he tried using his tenet, and to his unexpected pleasure, it worked. The reason this was surprising was because it was well documented that the corruption wasn’t a law in and of itself, and that generally, tenets did not work on it. He could not specifically determine why his tenet seemed to work on it - it could be any number of reasons. All that mattered was that it did.

The corruption was silent and subtle, not really letting the target know of its existence until it was too late. Even though Lex himself did not feel anything affecting him, he knew it was there. That was another thing that made the corruption so dangerous: generally, one could not feel it, and by the time there was enough of it that one might feel it, their spirit was already too far gone for them to do anything about it.

Using his tenet, Lex was able to get a sense for the amount of corruption around him, and how much was pouring into him and the revelation startled him. It wasn’t that there was a lot of corruption around him that was surprising. The issue was that it was pouring into him like he was a blackhole, sucking it in as quickly as possible, so much so that there was a current forming of all the surrounding corruption.

His pupils shrunk when he realized exactly how dangerous his situation was. According to his research, there were a few best practices when fighting against corruption. First was to use some kind of meditative or visualisation technique that refines or strengthens the spirit. Second was to take advantage of any and all racial benefits available, which in his case was the obelisk. Third was to pray to the universe, or in case one was religious then to their respective Deity, and hope that you survived.

Lex was not about to pray to Bob, so instead he focused on the first two. After using all his various abilities and skills, Lex determined that only his sword intent and tenet were helpful, which was quite surprising honestly considering how versatile he was.

The tenet helped to perceive corruption but not influence it, while his sword intent allowed him to reduce the speed at which the corruption entered him, though he could not stop the corruption entirely.

All that was left was to use the obelisk to purify his corruption, and just generally tough it out. Fortunately, Lex had one other advantage over literally everyone else, which was that his universal translator came in handy once more, allowing him to read the characters on the obelisk.

What was written were not some huge secrets, nor was it a record detailing anything about the obelisk. The characters were not the same characters used for arrays either. Instead, each character was actually a name.

Lex focused on a random character, attracting its attention as well.

"What do you want, kid?" the character asked, its voice once again soothing Lex’s spirit and purifying a hint of corruption. Generally, the characters only spoke once, and if he did not respond to each character, the next one would not speak to him at all. However...

"Not much, Sir Charles Henry Reginald III," Lex said, addressing the character. "Just wondering why your name is one the obelisk."

For a moment, there was silence. That much was expected, but Lex was hoping for something more as he continued to stare at the same character. After a few seconds, his hope turned into reality.

"You... you can read my name?" Reginald asked, his voice suddenly full of shock. This time, his voice had a greater cleansing effect on Lex, as if a reward for getting the character to speak for the second time.

"Yes, Reginald, and I couldn’t help but wonder why your name is on the obelisk? Why are all these names there at all?"