The Innkeeper

Chapter 2329: For the first time, but not the last I

As with so many other things, for example the Dream realm, entering the Gilded Hollow brought Lex to an area that coincided with his cultivation level. The problem - not for him, but everything else - was that Lex was as strong as the average Celestial Apex while still being in the Heaven Immortal realm.

Fortunately, Lex wasn’t the least bit interested in carrying out a mass slaughter. He was only interested in resources.

He did not stroll, or saunter across the Hollow. No, for once, Lex was not interested in stopping to smell the roses. The necklace shot out like a rocket, speeding through the Hollow at a speed no other living being could follow. Any resource that was even remotely useful to him that came within 5000 miles (8000 km) of the necklace was pulled from the ground and teleported to him, only for him to absorb it in the very next second.

Since he had no idea how long the Gilded Hollow would remain open, he would make the best use of it. While a portion of his mind focused on reaping resources from the Hollow, a small part of his mind was focused on detecting the dangers of the Hollow. He hadn’t forgotten that even Dao Lords died here.

The remainder of all his attention was focused on developing the necklace. At the moment, he was working on three aspects of it. The first was making sure the necklace could absorb an abundant amount of energy regardless of its location. The second was in developing an independent space within the necklace, created using solely Lex’s application of space laws and the nourishment of the resources he provided.

He didn’t want to risk tearing out a piece of space from the Hollow, only for it to disappear once he left.

Surprisingly, creating space was not impossibly difficult for him. In fact, due to his fusion with Lotus, and his deep understanding of space laws, this was actually a task he could complete with little strain.

The third task was to begin construction of a very basic system. For now, it would not have any complex tasks or requirements. Instead, the system would artificially regulate the laws within the space within his necklace, forming a fake realm.

The laws of this fake realm, which he was in the process of creating even now, would operate according to his whims. For now, he just needed to be a stable space that could support simple, mortal life.

Once that was achieved, he would begin to grow and expand not only the fake realm within the necklace, but the scope of the system’s actions and capabilities.

Was he trying to create a portable realm similar to the Midnight Realm wherein he could control every aspect of it, like he did inside the Midnight Inn when he put on the Host Attire? Yes. Absolutely yes. In fact, he was aiming for something far greater than that.

His newest, most powerful weapon to date would be a realm he carried with himself wherein he was the only Sovereign, and only master. Weapons such as swords, at his current power level, were becoming somewhat limited in what they could accomplish. He needed more complex weapons at his disposal.

To create his fake realm, Lex needed resources which contained hints of laws trapped within them, just like the Cosmic Erosion Elixir Lex had used to gain a spatial affinity back in the day. Fortunately, this place was filled with such items.

Thus, piece by piece, Lex acquired the required resources and forged the space within the necklace to grow larger and stronger. Moreover, he kept using the Ink he’d received from his previous clearance of Karev’s inheritance to write down arrays and formations within the necklace itself.

The tool was, naturally, affected by the laws outside of itself, but once these formations were activated, the system Lex would design would take control of the laws and determine how they behaved.

This was too grand a task, and for now Lex could only broadly outline how the laws would be affected rather than go into details.

Once Lex actually began the work, he realized that he had even more advantages than he’d originally realized. He had witnessed the birth and development of the Midnight realm with his own eyes.

Even if, back then, he could not understand the ways in which the laws operated, merely witnessing the event provided him with a tremendous amount of insight. Previously, all of that knowledge had remained dormant. Only now that he was trying to create his own realm from scratch did it start to become useful once again.

At that point, his comprehension of laws underwent another growth spurt. Lex was now certain that the moment he left the Hollow, or perhaps the moment he reimagined control of his body, he would undergo another Major tribulation. It wasn’t that he wanted to become a Celestial Immortal - it was more like the universe itself found his cultivation level unacceptable for the extent and depth of his understanding of laws.

If Pearl, who spent decades barely beginning to understand the laws of fire, were to ever learn how quickly ’Cliff’ was expanding his understanding of laws, she might faint - or straight up just give up cultivation forever. It was a good thing she wasn’t around.

Busy as he was, three years passed by within the Gilded Hollow without any changes. It wasn’t that Lex didn’t encounter any dangers. Instead, the dangers he faced were so weak compared to his strength that they barely qualified to attract his attention.

He’d made great progress during this time, and there were no signs of him slowing down at all. For him, this was practically a vacation.

The rest of the universe, however, was not having nearly as great a time as he was. In three short years, according to the flow of time of Major realms, over a dozen Dao Lords had been killed in the war, and two had been killed within the Dream realm.

Such earth-shattering news rocked the whole universe, for so many Dao Lords had not faced death in countless years, and now they had died in quick succession.

But that... was far from the worst thing that happened. On that particular day, a certain piece of news spread like wildfire across the universe, shocking all. The Pokore Major realm had been conquered, and had new owners now. Before anyone could process that news at all, it was quickly followed by the news that... the Major realm had been destroyed!

For the first time in this Age, a Major realm had been destroyed! Not just that, the destruction was clearly not accidental. Someone had done it on purpose. It was just that... no one could understand what that purpose was!