The Innkeeper

Chapter 2013: Message in a Glass Bottle

Lex sat back in his chair, thinking, plotting. Things were moving fast, and enemies were conspiring against him from the dark. As if that wasn’t enough, there was some unknown danger targeting him as well - and the unknown was the greatest threat.

Lex was not foolish enough to think that just because the danger seemed to have disappeared, it had really subsided. On the contrary, he had a feeling that when the source of the danger he felt revealed itself, he would end up facing one of the most critical dangers of his life.

It was a gut feeling, and one he wasn’t going to ignore. Yet just as his enemies were in the dark from him, he too could take some actions while his enemies remained unaware.

Lex had three days before the Governor visited, so he spent those days thinking and planning. In fact, for all three days, he did not move from his chair at all, his gaze sometimes wandering to the Midnight Inn, and other times looking down on an empty Go board in front of him. The fact that his ’chair’ was the Gabana fruit made no difference either.

He was considering many things. What could be the worst case scenario for him? If the Inn was destroyed, all his workers and friends killed, the system taken from him, and he was also killed.

But what was an acceptable loss?

It wasn’t like Lex was getting ready to make some heavy sacrifices - he needed to understand his own weaknesses better. He was now at the level where he himself was no longer his greatest weakness. Unless he was ambushed by a Demi-Dao Lord or someone equivalent, Lex was more or less certain he could not be trapped or killed.

Of course, he would never say never. Anything was possible and he could run into some super freak who could fight against even Lex. Heck, he was fairly certain that all the kids of any random Dao Lord would have the means to seriously mess him up, so he needed to be humble.

The point was that while he was not invincible, he was no longer weak, so now he needed to identify his weaknesses and cover for them. He would not be caught unprepared again.

When he first discovered Moon, in a matter of months he had worked with the members of the Inn to take down a massive terrorist organisation.

Well now, he was faster, stronger, smarter, had better resources, and his allies were stronger too. So while in truth it seemed like he was sitting still for three days, in secret, Lex began to prepare many contingencies.

Firstly, he discovered that while sitting on the Gabana fruit, he could charge the Butter Knife much quicker. In only three days, he had charged it enough to completely kill anyone at the Earth Immortal level or below. Heck, feeding on the Gabana fruit’s energy, he could charge it even further, but Lex didn’t do that.

The energy within the fruit was reserved for himself. It was crucial to his cultivation, so he could not share it.

Secondly, he oversaw the arrival of Powell into Obsidian.

Lex had been watching carefully. If Powell did not react to the news of systems, or was confused by the others, then it would become apparent that he had made a mistake. Yet for two days, that guy didn’t show up at all. Just when Lex was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to show, he showed up on the morning of the third day - though he wore a peculiar form.

Powell wasn’t actually human, that much Lex knew. Yet when he showed up in a form with dozens of tentacles in place of feet, Lex was really surprised. Guess you never really know a guy until you watch them join your secret cult, huh?

The guy was also... a level 8 Celestial Immortal, but was severely wounded which had lowered his cultivation. This was not a result of the system scan - the system couldn’t scan other system users, which basically confirmed his theories about the Emporium. No, he discovered that through his own eyes, which could now easily see through Powell’s defenses.

Just as he expected, Powell showed some minor surprise at learning that this was a gathering of system users, but not too much... almost as if he had encountered such a thing before!

Lex narrowed his eyes and observed him closely. Prior to Powell, the strongest system user was an Earth Immortal cultivator who seemed to have the Cultural History museum.

Powell strolled around for a while, before turning to the quest board that Lex had set up. Since he had quests which allowed him to level up systems, he expected that Powell would quickly start contributing by fulfilling quests. He wasn’t wrong, he merely underestimated the scale on Powell’s contributions!

With a flip of his hand, Powell submitted hundreds of millions of small bits of secret news, ranging from all levels right up to the movements of the Henali within the Origin realm. As if that was not enough, he even directly submitted hundreds of treasures - system generated treasures - to acquire Obsidian points.

It seemed like in just a few minutes, Powell had earned a personal meeting with the Obsidian Sage.

Lex, on the other hand, had his eyes locked on a certain item that Powell had submitted. As always, Lex flashed them into the Gift shop for a split second to learn about their details, and saw the one item he had been searching for so long.

Slowly, deliberately, Lex placed his Karmic bead on the Go board in front of him, causing all the karma around him to fall into chaos. For one, split second, none of his actions seemed to create any karma.

Within that second, Lex took out the necklace he had been wearing - the one he did not even dare to think about - and put it inside what looked like a glass bottle, sealed by a cork. The item was called Message in a Glass Bottle, and had a peculiar function. Once something was sealed inside of it, the bottle would disappear, teleported somewhere entirely random, and entirely unpredictable.

As advertised, the bottle disappeared, and Lex picked up the bead from the board, returning things to normal.

Things... were finally falling into place.