The Innkeeper

Chapter 1940: Limits

Author’s Note: For priv readers, I redid Chapters 1937 & 1938 to fix some mistakes I made. Please clear cache and read again. Thanks for understanding and sorry for the mistake!

Once he went through understanding his basic surroundings, Lex focused on the flow of time. After careful comparison, Lex determined that the flow of time here was the same as that of a Major realm, which was fortunate. If the flow had been too slow, he might not have actually had enough time to complete his quest.

"Mary, can you hear me?" Lex asked, checking in on his system.

"Yes, I can," said Mary as she appeared on his shoulder in her tiny form, observing his surroundings. For once, she was not wearing an unusual outfit, opting instead to stay in the Midnight Inns uniform. Perhaps it had something to do with the dreadfully serious expression on her face.

"What’s wrong?" Lex asked, noticing the obvious oddity in his assistant.

Mary scrunched her brow as she observed their surroundings, as if trying hard to recognize the place.

"I’m not sure," she responded slowly. "I don’t have any obvious holes in my memory, yet the moment you came here, I couldn’t help but feel that I had forgotten something very significant. I feel like I might have very important memories related to this place. Perhaps if I see something, my memory will be triggered. Or perhaps I need to recover more before I can remember anything."

Lex merely nodded, accepting that Mary did not have much to add. The reason he contacted her to begin with was to ensure that the system was working fine. His exit plan was to use the golden key to return to the Inn, so it would be kind of a bummer if the system wasn’t working.

Lex started walking towards the clearing, intending on exiting the forest. He now had to find a Heavens Puppet, and while he had no idea how or where he would find one, exploring the surroundings could only help. It would also allow Lex to fully test out the limits of his abilities here.

Even at 1% of his power, a simple fall should not have been enough to harm his body. The fact that it had meant that there was more to this place than a simple suppression of his power.

He began by extending his spirit sense, finding that it only went about 10 feet (3.3 meters) from his body, and that it was far from being as useful as it normally was. It was incredibly weak, meaning he could not pick up or manipulate items with it. At most, he could use it to observe his surroundings and communicate his thoughts.

He then tried to alter his form, entering the soul state or turning into a thought, and found that he was entirely unable to change his body in any way. In fact, that went as far as limiting him from entering his various forms as well, including the Dragon, Lotus and Jorlam forms.

Lex summoned Naraka and, fortunately, discovered that at least his sword intent had not been dampened in level. Of course, its power, however, was still limited to 1%. At least it maintained the same quality.

The Karmic Bead, similarly, was still usable, but its uses were extremely limited. This was because Lex discovered that while he could sense, and even touch laws with his tenet, he could not, in any way, influence them.

The laws here would not budge, no matter how Lex tried. It was as if they were firmly locked in place, entirely uninfluenced by external factors that weren’t a part of the laws themselves.

That gave Lex pause, because if he couldn’t use laws, his strength would drop tremendously. His instincts, though, were telling him that things were far from as simple as they seemed. There should be some way for him to make use of laws, he just had to figure it out. For example, while his sword intent was no longer strong enough to cut through laws, or maybe the laws here were too strong to be cut, the laws governing his sword intent still reacted when he used it. However, the laws were reacting not to his will to manipulate them, but instead to the natural operational requirements of the laws themselves.

Fortunately, Lex was experienced in manipulating laws in ways besides his tenet, so with a certain amount of experimentation, he should be able to figure things out. That did not change, however, the extent to which this Arch-Heaven unsettled Lex.

He had barely scratched the surface of the mysteries of this place, yet everything seemed to counter his tenet! He could have no Supremacy here. Or, to be more specific, he could only exact his Supremacy according to the clear and distinct rules of this place. In that case, it was not Supremacy at all. It was more like... like he was a child, being given permission to play with his toys.

Lex tried to teleport and found that he could not do that at all. After some experimentation, Lex discovered that the suppression was very thorough, and yet had subtle nuances. He discovered that he was, more or less, limited to the actual limitations of his body... or to be more specific, the limitations of his race.

The 1% freedom from suppression he had was not 1% of his power, but 1% freedom from the limitations of his race. If that was the case, the human race was severely restricted here, whereas stronger races would have much more freedom.

But... for some reason, Lex felt that even his new insight into the Arch-Heaven was lacking. If race was truly what governed the limits of power here, then this place would not be so scary for Dao Lords. After all, most Dao Lords were actually from stronger, more well established races.

While considering the extent of the limitations, Lex suddenly thought about his physiques. Technically, he had two physiques the last time he checked, something which in itself was abnormal. He had the Soulforge Unity, and the Empyrean Resonance physiques. Soulforge Unity basically just meant that his body, soul and spirit were one and the same - a gift of the Regal Embrace. The Empyrean Resonance, however, was something that allowed him to help other humanoid races evolve - and to an extent, under certain conditions, even his own body.

Most of the time, Lex never thought about his physiques, mainly because he didn’t need them. There were so many things he could do on his own that he did not need to rely on his physique. Heck, his own cultivation technique allowed him to evolve his body with greater efficiency than his own physique, so he hardly ever thought about it.

Now, though, that he was limited to the limits of his race, or maybe his body, he wondered if his physiques would still come in handy.

Little did Lex know, technically speaking, he no longer had two physiques...