The Innkeeper

Chapter 2381: Things must be bad outside

"Wake up," a voice commanded, filled with unquestionable authority, and Lex roused from his slumbering state, completely fresh and awake. For some reason, he could not help but think back to his first ever encounter with that mysterious man who had shown up inside the Midnight Inn.

Lex’s every emotion, every thought operated according to the whims of that man, as if Lex was a puppet and he the puppet master. Currently, the way his body, mind and soul obeyed the command, he felt exactly the same. The effect actually carried over all the way to Jack, and even almost woke up Lex from his slumber as well.

In fact, technically the command from Romulus actually did wake up Lex’s main body, and it did so completely, even going as far as leaking his Dao aura for a moment. It was just that, since Lex’s body had shown abnormal signs of waking or being triggered before, Daekol had not left anything to chance - especially since he was cleaning the body of curses.

The last thing he wanted was to rid Lex of all the curses affecting him, only for Lex to wake back up and steal the fruit of his labor - even if that fruit was Lex’s own, untainted body.

Thus, he had also made numerous preparations on his side - relying on his own power, the power of his system, and the perks from the Path of Chaos.

Since Lex’s main body waking up was only a residual effect of Romulus’ command, Daekol was able to put him back to sleep so quickly that Lex couldn’t do anything at all. Well, he couldn’t do anything besides give Daekol a taunting smirk, as if everything was within his control.

But besides that, he truly did not do anything. Though he felt his body’s barrier broken, and though he could have found a way to resist Daekol, if only a little, he did not. The time was not yet ripe, and his preparations were not yet done.

His new strategy hinged on the necklace too much, so without it, it would be best if his body did nothing. It was... difficult to not resist, but it was the only way.

Daekol, on the other hand, was not phased by Lex’s smirk or taunting. Instead he focused solely on the reason why Lex could have woken up, and made some reasonable deductions. Lex had a soul clone somewhere out in the universe - one that even he could not look into.

He would have to make even more preparations. He would not shy away from working on Lex’s body out of a simple fear of retaliation or some trouble. It was clear that Lex had many impressive methods, but wasn’t the same true of him?

Meanwhile, within the Gilded Hollow, Lex stood at the ready to respond to Romulus. The qilin, however, was not actually paying attention to Lex. Instead, he was putting the finishing touches on his treasure, making sure that nothing would go wrong.

That’s when Lex noticed something. The Fortune stronghold was gone. He was certain he was in the same location as he had gone to sleep, but there was nothing around him save a massive pit the size and depth of which he could not fully fathom.

"I don’t know what is going on outside the Gilded Hollow, but it must be something truly, genuinely insane because it’s messing things up even in here," Romulus said in a troubled tone, explaining the situation to Lex almost as if to report to him to avoid any misunderstandings.

Over the past few years, he’d had a greater look at the karmic injury that had been caused to the Dao Lord who tried to mess with Lex and came to the prompt conclusion that whoever did it was incalculably stronger than Romulus himself.

He found it hard to believe that someone like that could exist in the universe. After all, who had more resources than him? The answer was an ancient spider who could grow genuinely primordial things, unlike him who merely cloned them without an ounce of Primordial aura. He, however, did not know that and dared not pry into it either.

In fact, he thanked his lucky stars that this happened now. Imagine the horror if he acted arrogantly outside the Hollow and provoked such an opponent.

Thus the reason he valued Lex was not simply because of his backing, but also so that he could get some guidance about the universal situation from whoever backed Lex. Best not to provoke someone needlessly.

"There is a universe-wide war going on," explained Lex. "At least, that was the case when I entered the Hollow. Things are probably much worse if you can feel it all the way in here."

He would not explain his connection to Jack, not that Jack got all the latest news.

In fact, the only meaningful thing he learned from Jack was that it had been over a decade since Lex actually went to sleep within the Hollow.

"Trust me kid, this doesn’t feel like a war. It feels like an extermination. Things will be even more dangerous for us moving forward, so unfortunately I won’t be able to let you go off on your trip to get that treasure that little whale wanted. But I know you promised to give it to him, so I just grabbed it for you. Give it to him wherever you want - it’s the Beast Core of a genuine, dead Primordial World Shell Turtle.

"Although the name has turtles in it, it’s a now extinct race from which whales originated. The World Shell Turtle is like a kind of whale with a turtle shell. They were direct descendants of the being that developed the Dao of Worlds. It’s quite the noble lineage."

Lex was stunned, and not just because of what he had just heard. The weight of the knowledge about the ancient Daos - the ones that had nurtured and developed the budding laws of the universe itself - was too great for him to take so easily.

In fact, merely hearing about it put Lex in a kind of trance where he saw what the universe had been like before the Dao of Worlds was developed. Flat plains, great land masses, existing as islands within Chaos Seas within the boundary of realms.

The vision barely lasted a fraction of a second, and Romulus woke Lex up from the vision before he could see much more, as if to protect him.

"It would have been more meaningful if you got it yourself, but we can no longer take any risks. The Hollow’s retributions are becoming more severe and I need to complete my mission before we can leave. You’ll have to stay within the Fortune stronghold in the meantime."

After saying that, Romulus grabbed Lex and threw him inside a ruby ring he was wearing, except the ruby of the ring was actually a realm within which he had put the Fortune stronghold.

Yet even within the stronghold, he appeared within the Fortune castle where a live projection showed him everything that Romulus saw as the qilin began to head deeper into the Hollow.