The Innkeeper

Lex got home and the first thing he did was chug another bottle of Botlam Dew and throw himself in bed. He slept for nearly 12 hours and woke up disoriented and in pain, and EXTREMELY hungry. Wiping the drool from his face, Lex grabbed his phone to check for notifications...and maybe order a lot of home delivery. He knew how to cook, but you couldn't expect an injured man to cook, right? That was totally the reason.

Unfortunately, he did not get the notification for the money from Marlo yet - which was expected. He did however have countless missed calls and messages from Harry and Elaine, his former coworkers and friends. He had completely forgotten to contact them and it had been a while since he quit as well.

He sent both of them a message saying he'd gotten an exciting new job which is why he had been extremely busy, and would reach out to them soon to catch up. He felt a tinge of guilt lying to them, they had accompanied him through many things, but for now safety was all that mattered. Once he stabilized things and was at a higher cultivation level, who knows maybe he would introduce them to the world of cultivation as well.

Groaning, he got out of bed and limped to the bathroom. He removed his clothes and stood in front of the mirror and grimaced at his condition. He wasn't black and blue all over like when he had just returned, but his entire body was still covered in bruises. He pulled up his status to get a better understanding.

Name: Lex Williams

Age: 23

Sex: Male

Cultivation Level: Regal Embrace Body Tempering Stage 1

Health: Suboptimal (developing brain tumor), serious muscle damage (recovering), serious exhaustion (recovering), multiple hairline fractures (recovering), vitality overdrawn (recovering), spirit drained (recovering), soul slightly damaged (recovering)

Midnight Points: 5151

Midnight Inn Level: 2

Inventory: Bathroom Slippers, Self Defense Butter Knife, 1 Golden Tickets, Host Attire, Serene Whistle

Midnight Events available: Trials

Quests:

New Quest: As the most renown Inn in the universe, the Midnight Inn does not only host the rich and the powerful! Setup and develop the Pro Bono wing of the Inn and accept your first Pro Bono guest!

Remark: Keep working hard! If you raise your cultivation high enough, one day you'll be able to cast illusions to make yourself look better!

Sudden Quest initiated: With a great personality and abundant energy, Marlo is a great candidate to serve as a valet for the Inn! Hire Marlo as your first valet!

Quest Time limit: 1 month

Quest Reward: 1 small staff dormitory, 1000MP, +1 Midnight Inn Level

Quest failure punishment: -1000MP (if host is unable to pay, it will result in immediate death!)

Lex was slightly alarmed when he saw the new ailments in his status affecting his vitality, spirit and soul and completely missed the rest of his status.

"Mary, what is going on? How did my soul and spirit get damaged? And what does it mean when it says vitality overdrawn?"

"Maybe you can check your status history to figure out when your spirit and vitality were hurt. As for vitality, I can tell you that it was probably also hurt during your fight with the zombies. When a normal person gets hurt, their body recovers for them, and the same is true for cultivators. When a person gets hurt to an extent that they cannot heal even with the use of medicine on the same tier, their vitality gets hurt. At that point, for a person to recover, a medicine above their cultivation tier must be used to first treat their vitality to allow their body to heal.

"Your body was probably hurt beyond its capacity during your fight with the zombies, but you used Botlam Dew which can heal those below the Foundation realm, which is what probably helped you recover."

Lex got chills when he heard the news, and quickly went over his status history to determine what affected his spirit and soul! Quickly he found the answer, and it sent further chills down his spine!

The status read:

Received cut by tier 1 zombie, infected by mutagen. Body resisting mutagen x 7

Received cut by tier 2 zombie, infected by mutagen. Body unable to resist, mutagen multiplying x 2

Mutagen affecting spirit x 8

Mutagen altering soul x 4

Botlam Dew absorbed in blood. Botlam Dew purifying mutagen, spirit and soul returning to normal x 3

Thank the holy system for Botlam Dew! Lex chanted in his heart, and finally realized how close to his demise he really came. But, he also learnt something incredible: Botlam Dew could purify the zombie mutagens, which meant that at least the zombies he encountered weren't like the ones he'd seen in movies that didn't give the victim any chance to resist. Another thing was that the transformation wasn't instant, so a victim would have time to treat himself.

Well, no point in stressing himself out further over the fact. The situation had already been remedied so better to focus on the future for now.

Lex took a long, warm shower, washing off a lot of dried blood and dirt from his body, and returned to his living room just in time to collect the ridiculous amounts of barbecue that he'd ordered.

Several drinks and an entire cow`s worth of meat later, Lex decided to relax for a bit before tending to the Inn. Too much work wasn't good for a boy`s soul. In commemoration of his recent accolades, he decided to play a zombie game. He turned on his pc, chose a game and started playing.

At first when he started playing he felt a little uncomfortable: the game was too rigid, it didn't match his experience. Furthermore, the more he played the more he felt like he would rather be training so that he'd be able to handle the situation a bit better the next time he faced them.

Just as he was about to quit the game, his character in the game did a certain action, and like a bulb turning on Lex felt like he'd gotten an amazing idea! He made his character repeat the action, and the more he did it, the more he felt that his idea was amazing. He had an epiphany and suddenly he felt clearheaded.

He realized that he had been confused, but didn't even know it himself. He had been deluded and had somehow gone down the wrong path when it came to combat, but fortunately he had come to realize the truth!

He played for a few more hours to confirm his idea, and the more he played the more he felt that he was an unprecedented genius. Somehow, without realizing it, he had been influenced by some preconceived notions he had about combat, but he had finally broken free of those chains. That got him thinking, if he had been affected by false notions in terms of combat, what else had he overlooked? Since video games had liberated his mindset, he turned to the arts to free himself further.

To get some ideas for what he should do with the Inn he pulled out his phone and searched for the most popular cultivation novel these days. He found one and started reading, and what a book it was!

The main character, who had been abandoned at birth and raised by his "distant family" was severely ousted at every opportunity and treated horribly. Every single person he ever met hated him beyond comprehension and went out of their way, so far as to even inconvenience themselves, to harm the main character.

However, as the main character, the young boy of fifteen had stellar morals and never needlessly harmed others and never hated anyone and always helped anyone he saw - because somehow surrounded by all that negativity the inner morals of the MC could never be corrupted.

The only person who was decent to him was his adopted sister who he had found as a child and raised himself even though he himself was a child. She was devastatingly beautiful to the point where anyone born before or after would never again be as beautiful, but somehow no one other than the main character ever noticed because her clothes and her face were covered by a little dirt because they used to do manual labor.

She was also in love with him because apparently it's mandatory in cultivation novels for adopted siblings to either betray one another, or fall in love with one another. One day this group of people tore through the fabric of space and time and appeared in front of the main character and beat him up for no good reason. Then they spent several paragraphs insulting him. Then they beat him up some more.

When they stopped the main character's sister somehow found them and lurched at them to stop them, but she was caught. It turned out those cultivators had descended to the mortal plane because the saintess of their family had somehow gotten lost and they were finding her, and the main character's adopted sister turned out to be the saintess.

Happy that they found her, they decided to kill the main character because how dare he take care of her and raise her causing her to have feelings for him? The saintess sister threatened suicide if they harmed him, but agreed to go with them if they spared him. The group agreed and spared him, but little did everyone know as they left, instead of killing the main character they decided to blow up the whole world he was in.

That way they wouldn't technically be directly killing him, thus not breaking their promise to the saintess sister, who at this point had been recognized to be so beautiful the universe itself was crying in admiration, because the little bit of dirt on her face had at some point fallen off.

When the world was destroyed and as the MC was about to die, his heart was filled with hate and sorrow, for he didn't hate those guys for killing him but rather all those "innocent" people in the world who had also died - the same people who had been insulting him his whole life.

This was because he had a heart of pure gold. In the moment before his death a treasure that his mysterious parents had left him started to glow, and saved him, granting him a second chance at life and cultivation.

All of this happened in the first chapter of the novel Lex decided to read. Honestly, he was impressed by the word-count to cliché ratio the novel had achieved. Nonetheless, it did give him an idea. In most novels he'd read previously, the MC goes out of his way to collect rare opportunities and treasures that could help him grow.

But as the owner of the Inn, he had access to several worlds, not just one. He could collect treasures from all over the universe and make them available at the Inn, thus making the Inn even more luxurious. Such an amazing idea!

Where else could he find inspiration? He opened up his computer and started listening to the latest songs, trying to see if the lyrics inspired him some more.

In the background Mary was floating in the air and watching Lex with a stupefied and irritated look. Whatever, she would ignore him for now. His spirit was damaged which affected how he thought. Once his spirit recovered, so would his sanity. She hoped.