The Innkeeper

Chapter 1977: Why should I?

Lex stared at the human who looked like Leon, his own dad, and then checked his karma one more time. Then he turned to Vox, and then Fenrir. One was a half Sage, half Jorlam and the other was a pure blooded Fenrir so these two couldn’t be their parents, so...

"You got anything you want to tell me?" Lex asked, looking at Mango.

The goldfish was stunned, then looked at Lex gravely offended.

"No, I am a pure blooded goldfish through and through," he exclaimed, horrified.

Lex nodded, and turned back to the human who looked like his own dad.

"Sorry, you must have the wrong group," Lex said seriously.

Vox stifled his laughter, and pretended as if he hadn’t seen or heard anything, while Serene and Leon looked stumped. They had spent a long time imagining what their reunion would be like.

It was not lost on them that they had wronged each of their children in highly specific ways, and that Lex, for being left out, would no doubt be pissed or angry or upset with them. They had imagined all scenarios from a physical fight to a huge shouting match, but the genuine sincerity with which he told them they had the wrong group was... was...

Leon’s lip twitched as he tried to contain his irritation.

"It has been a long time, so maybe you are having trouble recognizing us, Lex. We are your parents," Leon said patiently.

Lex rolled his eyes.

"Look buddy, I ain’t got a single string’s worth of karmic connection to you, so go peddle this scam to someone else. I have things I need to do," Lex said very seriously, and then walked past them, leaving the both of them stumped.

Serene’s jaw had even dropped. This highly anticipated, extremely suspense filled reunion, for which she had waited so long, was not going the way she had expected. Then again, she couldn’t really blame Lex either - who knew he would be so skilled in observing karma that he’d locked onto one of their precautionary measures.

"Lex, please, can we talk?" Serene asked pleadingly. "We can explain things, including the karma strings, preferably in a private setting. Some details are... sensitive."

Lex paused, and frowned. He was not so dumb that he could not determine his real parents, though he genuinely was wary of scams. This close, his instincts and bloodline both confirmed that the two standing before him were closely related to him, at the very least. The thing was, his instincts could be fooled.

Much more importantly, though, now face to face with these two, all sorts of negative emotions had crawled back up. Away from them, he had somewhat become indifferent to them. Faced with them, however, Lex could not help but be filled with genuine anger. He didn’t even care about whatever they had done to him - he had long since stopped caring about that entirely. But a million years would be too short to forget what happened to Moon.

"Give me one good reason why I should listen to you, or why I should care," Lex said, not even turning towards them as he spoke. "I have built a fine life without you. Why should I include you in it now?"

"Lex you-" Serene began to speak, but Leon held up his hand to stop her as his expression slowly became solemn.

"That is what you may think, Lex," he said. "That is what you think, but the truth is, you have built a fine life because of the sacrifices we made for you. But even if you don’t care to understand, or care to include us in your life, at least hear us out. At the very least, that will allow you to understand what dangers you and your sisters may face in the future, with or without us."

Lex turned around and looked directly into Leon’s eyes. This was not how he remembered his parents. They used to be normal archeologists, working with different companies across the world. They used to travel, and crack lame jokes, and held their family close together.

Then again, that was never true to begin with, was it?

"Fine," Lex said. "Let’s go. I will listen to what you have to say. Vox, can you spare some place that’s private where we can talk?"

"Of course, right this way," said Vox in his most professional tone, showing the least bit of interest in the family drama that had appeared right in front of him. Fenrir, on the other hand, walked right up to Lex, accompanying him while walking between him and his parents.

Mango, too, understood the seriousness of the situation, and swam up to Lex.

"Their power percentages are fake," he told Lex through his spirit sense. "At a glance it seems like both of them have a percentage around 8%, but that is a facade. Even I cannot see through their real percentage."

Lex showed no outward indication of the news he had heard, although he had admit that the mystery surrounding his parents began to increase. In truth, he was not nearly as emotional as he was showing them he was.

Lex was a man who had experienced things far beyond normal, and saw things from a point of view few in the universe shared. The arrival of his parents would not make him lose his composure. The only reason he showed himself as emotional was so that he could gauge their reaction.

After all, he needed to learn the truth about his own physique from them, if nothing else. He was also wary of anything they might need or want from him. After all, he was no longer a nobody. Even Vox, a Demi Dao Lord, wanted things from Lex, let alone two lone humans in Arch-Heaven.

He carefully built a number of strategies in his mind about how to proceed, while ignoring the strange look Serene was giving him.

Internally, though, Serene thought she was losing her mind.

"Does he have... Dao material in his body?" she asked herself.