The Innkeeper

Unlike many of the many whims he enacted in his early cultivation days, Lex was well aware of the dangers he would face by cultivating with dragon fire. He also took into account the fact that the dragon who would be breathing that fire was two major realms greater than himself, and those were two immortal levels!

But he was still confident, and the reason for that was the thorough preparation he had taken for this. Over the past fifteen years, Lex had been focused solely on filling in the massive knowledge gaps he had when it came to cultivation, as well identifying the direction for his future growth.

Naturally, the many quests he completed for his system and their rewards had helped him in this as well. Getting accustomed to the two differing flows of time, one in the Origin realm and one in the Midnight realm, was actually much easier than he guessed. As a result, he had his tavern travel the Origin realm while he used his projection to complete his quests over there, while here he focused on self improvement.

So, while the tavern was out in the Origin realm for about five years, Lex had been tempering himself for fifteen years. He had forced himself to slow down his cultivation, for it was absolutely ready to improve, to not only temper himself, but also so that he could get a better understanding of how he wanted to proceed.

Becoming an Immortal required Lex to define his tenets of immortality. If he had continued to use Regal Embrace, he would have had only one tenet, and that would have been absolute defense. But since he did not, Lex had to decide on those for himself.

The tenets were exceptionally important as they would define the foundation of his power and growth in the immortal realms, so he took his time over the past few years and thought about this in great detail.

During this time, he also took his time and properly settled into the Midnight realm and became fully accustomed to it. He adventured to his heart's content, and for once enjoyed not being pathetically weak compared to everyone else for once.

This was very important, as his Midnight tavern had to remain exceptionally lowkey for the last few years. With the whole realm at war, high powered cultivators were even more active, which is one of the things that prompted him to learn how to remain hidden behind the scenes. Unless absolutely necessary, he used the tavern to fulfill all his quests and change the destinies of many, all without attracting attention to himself and the tavern.

The conclusion he eventually came to was simple. He enjoyed being anonymous, but being anonymous because he wanted to observe everyone without being detected, and being anonymous because he was trying to avoid attracting trouble were two different experiences altogether. Basically, it was only enjoyable if it was on his own terms.

That led him to figuring out a vague idea of what he wanted his tenets to be. In the meantime, he decided to grow as strong as possible while in the Nascent realm.

As it turned out, his ability Heaven's furnace was great for that. Lex had named it Heavens furnace because at the time he created it, that's essentially what he was using it for. But with more practice he learned other great things about it. It was great to trap people in, since his furnace could tolerate extreme shock, heat and pressure. In fact, so far, he had not encountered a single situation where the furnace was even near collapsing, so it was great as a prison.

At the same time it could be used defensively, since if he placed something inside, someone would need to break the furnace to get to the item.

But most importantly, Lex learned that the furnace could condense and purify anything put into it. It was even able to mix two or more items together to make a single item that was greater than the sum of all parts.

As such, the furnace drastically improved his ability to manufacture treasures. More importantly, it allowed Lex to face much greater force and pressure than anything else in the Midnight realm could provide, giving him the perfect area to hone his defense.

Lex regularly trained in the furnace using his own Dragon fire, and today finally he reached the point where it could not harm him at all.

Now he would go test out his body in the Cosmic Sea once more, and then tomorrow he would face real dragon fire. After that, he would have to unseal the Midnight realm.

While this fifteen year gap was great for him and his workers, allowing almost all of them to reach the Nascent realm, to grow any further, they would need the Origin realm, and more importantly, the Temple of Fasting. Most importantly, he was mere days away from the very specific date Vera had given him to go to Yildirim Utopia.

She still did not mention what it was about, but only a few days ago she came back and reminded him that the deadline was approaching. She was mainly worried that the Inn wouldn't open in time and he wouldn't be able to go.

At the same time, she was also worried about herself. Since they had spent fifteen years here, all of them were fifteen years older. Vera was finally old enough to date, but had been stuck here unable to search for her destined beloved.

Yes, that meant that Vera had reached the age of 30 without getting a single boyfriend. If they were going by soul age, Lex had also crossed the age of 30, though his physical age was only 15.

Like him, all the workers at the Inn were technically physically teenagers as well, though good old Jimmy and his gang of peacock warriors had officially entered their 20s.

Lex couldn't help but sigh.

"They grow up so fast," he said. Fortunately, Gerard and Lilith were still only just dating and hadn't moved on from that yet. Dating for multiple centuries was a very common thing among devils, so she didn't see that as odd.

Lex wouldn't know what he'd do if Gerard, like Harry, had a kid. Being an uncle was surprisingly stressful.

Lex teleported away to the Cosmic Sea, pushing his thoughts away. It was time for a quick dip, and hopefully he would keep himself from being assimilated by the sea this time.