The Innkeeper

Chapter 2492: Just kidding

Lex felt incredibly suspicious about how easy it was to get Regal Embrace. This was not a simple cultivation technique. It carried a hidden, secret karma that was so well hidden that Lex couldn’t even sense it. Its origins were a mystery to him, not to mention how the technique itself could adapt to whatever species cultivated it.

So it made sense that something like that would be quite difficult to control, or get his hands on a second time. The first time he got it, he hosted 2 Demi-Dao Lords inside his Inn for a quest that asked him to get his first guests. Considering the sheer difference in what he had done to get his hands on it, he was highly suspicious. But there was no danger he could sense, so he could only move forward with it.

It wasn’t like Lex could have known that Death had mysteriously disappeared after getting beaten up by Eclipse, and that the technique came from him. That was a secret hardly anyone in the universe knew, including the other Archons, for everyone simply assumed Death went into hiding - just like every other Archon was doing!

Lotus did not have a physical location within the Inn where it could be found. It was fused with Lex, and then the Midnight realm, and thus it was in a state where the realm itself was its body. For that reason, when time had accelerated through the realm, Lotus got tremendous feedback which ultimately made Lex stronger as well.

The problem was that at this point Lex was so strong that he could not tell how much stronger the feedback made him. A lot, probably, but it did not advance his Dao Body and that’s where Lex’s real focus lay at the moment. Cultivation levels and other feedback were things he would not reject, but also things he could not quantify at this moment.

Whether Lex killed an ant using a nuclear bomb or a black hole made no difference to the deadness of the ant, which was kind of the situation he found himself in. Compared to most other Celestial Immortals, Lex was so strong that he couldn’t even tell how much stronger he was.

Yet... there were still Immortals in the universe capable of hiding from him, such as Damian. So he also didn’t allow himself to get arrogant. The universe was vast, and it was best not to underestimate what it could throw at him.

Lex quickly arrived at his destination: his own cultivation room. He took out the Gabana fruit and sat on his old cultivation mat before taking out the Regal Embrace and summoning the lotus tattoo on his back.

"I need you to cultivate this and tell me how it goes," Lex said, focusing on his own tattoo. Lotus, among all other companions, was an incredibly reliable one. It just silently helped him get stronger without giving him any problems - very unlike a certain pup that was still out there somewhere in the universe.

"Yes sir," the Lotus responded, speaking in a cute, squeaky voice of a very young child. Compared to their ordinary lifecycles, Lotus was probably not even the equivalent of an hour old baby.

Lotus reached out with its spirit sense and Regal Embrace disappeared from his hands. The cultivation technique that had started his journey had, in a way, returned to him. It felt quite comforting.

But that was it. Lex tried talking to Lotus or probing it, but got no response. Unlike Lex, it had not begun to use this technique at its weakest, so he could not guess what the process would be like for it.

Thus he turned his attention to other things. Since he was sitting on his cultivation mat, and he didn’t want to start any other major projects until his current situation was resolved, he decided it was time to go through his loot.

Daekols body, his system, and many other things that he had accumulated along the way, were all waiting for him to go through.

He started with the most mundane object in his loot - a wallet belonging to...

Just kidding. Lex immediately took out the puppet within which Daekol had been hiding and finally took his time to study it. Unfortunately... this thing was not Daekol’s body, it was a puppet. By the looks of it, it might have been a system reward as well.

The only saving grace was that while he seemed to not have gotten the Sovereign’s body - since it was most likely destroyed by the massive axe - the puppet itself had absorbed enough of Daekol’s aura from his soul that it gave off the aura of a Sovereign.

Lex could not help but sigh. It was tragic being so strong that you accidentally destroyed all the loot.

After spending a few seconds in genuine grief, Lex began to study the puppet. What began at first with random curiosity quickly turned into a flicker of excitement.

Daekol had used this thing to hide himself and try to survive. But the puppet was actually a tool that could act as an external clone. If Lex put a small piece of his soul inside, the clone could act as him, and it was strong enough to sustain combat against peak Celestials. Of course, the amount of strength it could show was dependent on Lex’s soul, but that shouldn’t be a bottleneck.

Honestly, Lex didn’t need more clones, but there was one task in particular that was on his mind. He could not leave the Inn, but he wanted to finally rescue Belle now that he had found a trace of her. But he doubted she would follow anyone else if he sent them. It was clear to Lex that she was probably avoiding him, and he wanted to know why.

He also wanted to bring her to the Inn so she could rest and be safe. Those were two things she’d probably never known her entire life!

There was also the thing that Eclipse said to him. If the strongest Dao Lord in the universe handed him a piece of paper saying that he would not be able to handle the death of one of his loved ones, he was definitely going to treat it as more than a generic warning. He assumed that she foresaw something.

The puppet made meeting Belle possible, but it would need to be tested first. As for convincing her to follow him... he’d figure that out when it was time. For now, he put the puppet aside and brought out Daekol’s system.