The Innkeeper

Chapter 1359  Sales pitch

Lex ended up spending several days in meditation after watching the changes take place within his system. At first, he was merely interested since he found the change to be novel. But then his consciousness got drawn in, and Lex completely lost track of time and place. His mind drifted as he closed his eyes and ended up sitting cross legged on the floor, absorbing everything he had seen.

This was both a good thing and a bad thing for Lex.

It was a good thing because he encountered a natural state of epiphany, falling into a meditative trance and qualitatively enhancing his understanding and application of laws as a whole.

It was a bad thing because the moment he woke up from meditation, his growth was much too substantial to push back the tribulation anymore.

Instead of making use of the tribulation rooms in the Inn, Lex teleported over to the Temple of Fasting. Although the Inn was equipped with the best facilities to help him, Lex's cultivation was too anomalous. He never knew when something might cause a mutation that attracted too much attention, or perhaps put a burden on the realm itself.

The Temple of Fasting, in this case, was an excellent location, for its capability to hide was top notch. It was nigh impossible for anyone outside to know what was happening inside, which was a good thing because now that months had passed since the Inn was reconnected to the universe, a lot had changed.

Initially, only one of the Inn workers had become an immortal. Afterwards, the ongoing war kept everyone busy. But at the same time, it gave everyone the exposure and experience they needed to undergo qualitative growth.

In summary, the number of Earth Immortals working for the Midnight Inn were nearing fifty now, all of them experiencing their tribulations at the Temple of Fasting. Over the next five years, Lex expected that number to quadruple.

The Inn workers were just too qualified, and had too much potential. Even without really trying, all of them were destined to reach the threshold of the immortal realm, if not the actual realm itself.

As soon as he reached the temple, his tribulation was triggered, and it fell down with a ferocity rarely seen in Earth immortal level tribulations. It was as if the tribulation clouds themselves had a vendetta against Lex.

Unfortunately, they were restricted by his realm, which meant the might they could show was limited. Lex passed the tribulation without a single injury, and then spent another short period getting used to his realm.

Ultimately, he had to return. It seemed that Ripley had returned while he was in a trance, and had continued his audit without him. Since Lex had temporarily been excused, he continued to take his time off to finally get a handle on the Inn and the system.

Returning to his office, he focused his attention on the interface, and began implementing the teleportation changes.

For any guests already in the Inn, they would be able to return to wherever they came from, but henceforth admission to the Inn could not be done from across the universe! Instead, it was limited to the Origin realm and the Crystal realm.

Even within the Origin realm, Lex wanted to limit the teleportation even further, but restrained himself. Unfortunately, the Midnight Games were ongoing for a few more months, and it made heavy use of the Inn's ability to teleport guests from anywhere and everywhere.

Moreover, though Lex's personal interest in the war had waned, it was a fact that countless planets across the entire realm were still fighting against the insect abomination used by Sanguis Pluvia.

But that was not the end of the issue.

"Mary, I think now is a good time to continue our previous conversation about the system's operating rules. Although I now have teleportation within my control, the way the Inn connects to places is still incredibly outdated and inefficient.

"We do not even need to change the rule itself. Indeed, with my new, in depth understanding of the fundamentals of how the system operates, I believe I can provide the best possible solution to this conundrum."

Mary appeared before Lex, wearing a black suit and a baby blue tie, looking like an amateur lawyer on their first case.

"The system states that as long as you don't ask it to break any rules, anything is negotiable. More importantly, it is also giving you a subtle warning that a lot of quests might be incoming your way soon."

"Not a problem," Lex said, waving his hand as if dealing with insignificant issues. "On the surface, the system wants me to travel to each and every point it needs to connect to because it relies on me to form a connection to that place. In truth, it subtly uses these opportunities to push me towards numerous unexpected issues or possibly entertaining situations."

Lex paused and gave Mary a pointed look, as if to let her know that he knew the truth now, before continuing.

"Yet as my cultivation level rises, the number of issues and events that can truly entice or intrigue me, or put me in awkward or entertaining situations will decrease correspondingly. As a result, spending days and weeks connecting the Inn to planets where the strongest living being is weaker than me will hardly be entertaining.

"I propose the following amendment. To connect the Inn to realms, Minor realms, planets, and basically any points that can be connected to the Inn, if the highest living being is weaker than me, then I can send a Midnight tavern there instead of going there myself.

"The tavern will serve as an anchor point for the system, it will further push the agenda of making the Inn itself more popular, it will speed things along, and provide the opportunity for entertainment through other characters and Inn workers. Correspondingly, for places where beings exist in my own cultivation realm or stronger, I can go myself to connect them.

"It's really a best of both worlds situation. More importantly, the Inn can continue to expand its reputation in a stable way, and give me an opportunity to balance things out a bit. After all, with at least one Dao Lord within the Inn, no one can really claim I'm not in over my head. Now I need a fighting chance to survive, or the Midnight Inn and myself will lose all entertainment value."