The Innkeeper

Taking even steps, Lex walked slowly up the path on the mountain, the fingers of his left hand dragging against the wall in the path cut into the mountainside. At his current pace, it would take Lex years to reach the focal point, but his mind was not on that. Instead, currently, he was doing multiple things at the same time.

The state of 'flow' was remarkable, and gave Lex the mental clarity he needed to sort out various matters, as well as notice many things he had overlooked. The first thing he noticed, though he could not really blame himself for this, was that due to how busy he had been, Lex had made no progress at all in his cultivation. Lex felt great satisfaction in his achievements so far, and at his amazing performance in general, but he had only just stepped onto the starting line of the Foundation realm. His performance would improve exponentially so long as his cultivation also improved.

But for that Lex needed time he didn't have, so he directly dismissed the thought. The second thing he noticed was a peculiarity of Regal Embrace. It was excellent at helping him learn defensive techniques, but caused him great issues if he tried to learn offensive techniques. Yet it gave him no benefits or obstacles when he was performing either defensive or offensive arrays. The difference was that arrays were not fueled by his own spiritual energy despite being drawn using it, which is where the influence of Regal Embrace vanished.

This helped him determine that his spiritual energy had certain behavior. But what was the underlying cause in the difference in behavior? It wasn't like the cultivation technique could read his mind to determine what kind of technique he was using, or else he could just say he's learning a defensive technique while learning attacks. After all, self hypnosis was a thing. That meant there was something on a fundamental level about the makeup of these techniques that he did not know about that influenced how his spiritual energy behaved. If he could figure out what that was, he could overcome the obstacle of his techniques.

A simple analogy of the situation could be made using magnets. If Lex had two magnets in his hand, and wanted to join them, but kept trying to do so by pushing the north pole of each magnet towards one another, he would face great resistance. Yet the same situation could easily be resolved if just used the opposite pole for one of the magnets. The situation with Lex's techniques was no doubt much more complex than simply swapping poles, but as long as he understood the difference, he would be able to channel the speed at which he learned defensive techniques into all other kinds of techniques.

This, again, was a topic that required a lot of time to conduct research, and so Lex pushed it to the back of his mind. The next thing he noticed was his greatest problem with arrays. While drawing one, he could do almost nothing else, and was stuck in place. This made sense, after all, the characters would remain stuck in the place where he drew them, right? That was actually incorrect. If his control over his spiritual energy was enough he could make an invisible platform on which he could draw the characters. That way, he could control the platform to move with him.

This level of multitasking was simple for him in a state of flow, but without it, it was still beyond him. This let him appreciate how truly skilled Alexander was, back when he was fighting in the Midnight Games. He would use different spiritual and body techniques simultaneously. He did not even have the advantage Lex had of being able to use all techniques with the same energy, and would have to make sure to fuel his techniques with the relevant energy. Yet not only was he seamless, he controlled six floating blades behind him at the same time as all those techniques.

Truly it was only when you became more familiar with something that you could appreciate the difficulty it involved.

But Lex was getting sidetracked. His focus had been on arrays. While drawing, his speed and stability greatly depended on his finger, but did he really need to use his finger like a pen? Instead of moving his finger to draw, couldn't he directly control the spiritual energy to take the relevant shape?

That was the experiment he was conducting as he slowly walked. The state of flow was not a miracle, and Lex didn't automatically become able to achieve the task. It did, however, speed up the learning process endlessly.

This was all Lex had been doing consciously. That did not, however, mean that Lex did not leave any tasks for his subconscious mind. It occurred to him that so far he had been treating his instincts as a radar for danger, but was that all they were limited to? He hypothesized that it was not so.

The concept of identifying danger or a threat signified that his instincts had a sense of self, and could gauge what was good or bad for him. In that case, his instincts should not only react to harmful things but also notify him if there was something beneficial to him nearby. In simple terms, along with being a radar for danger, his instincts should also work as a radar for treasures that were beneficial to him.

It was for this reason that he was running his fingers across the wall. He was using as many of his senses as he could to absorb all the information from the environment. From the toughness of the rock, to the natural grooves formed by different layers of rock, to the temperature, all of it could end up playing a part in guiding him.

Everything he did portrayed a lack of urgency, which was the opposite of what he should have been doing, considering he was in a rush to gain the realm. But in the state of flow, Lex had a slightly different perspective. In this state, his emotions were considerably numbed, though not completely, so he felt no anxiety or stress to influence his decision making. He simply retained his objective and made the necessary decision.

As things were, he was already late to this realm by many days. There was a chance that no one had found the focal point yet, but based on the premise of assuming his competitors were extremely competent, it was most likely they had a lead on him. The more this was so, the more Lex had to remain calm. If he rushed, he could easily fall into any traps they had set for following competitors, or give away his position. He also believed that, based on the same premise, if his competitors had not yet taken the focal point, it meant they likely faced some obstruction. It was best to gain a full understanding of the situation before making any decisions.

In the end, Lex maintained his slow tempo for a couple of hours, and only sped up when he made decent progress with drawing arrays while walking. By increasing his speed, he also increased the difficulty of drawing the array, but at this point, it was all training for him.

The pattern of maintaining a certain speed until he got accustomed to drawing arrays, then speeding up, continued well into the next day.

Just as he was due to speed up further and launch into a fast jog, he instead stopped. It happened. His instincts were acting up, and this time instead of danger, it was greed Lex felt. He felt it in his entire body, from his gut to his muscles, down to his very bones! There was something nearby that his body was craving!

He took a short break to replenish his stamina before launching into a run. The closer he got, the stronger the sensation became, to the point where his physical desire almost started to interfere with the calm the state of low provided.

At a certain point, he had to step away from the path, and had to climb the mountain with his hands and legs. With the dexterity of a spider, Lex crawled up the mountain until he found a small, hidden tunnel. His body blocked the light from the reflecting crystals as he entered the tunnel, but he didn't really need his sight to guide him.

At the opposite end, he exited to a small clearing with a cozy little hut carved into the mountain beside a small fountain. Crystal clear water seemed to drip from the fountain, but evaporated before it could fall to the ground.

The hairs on his body stood up and he could feel his body longing for that water. Curious to see what its effects were, he put his hand into the fountain, only to see his hand sucking in the water like a dry sponge.

Then his fingers began to turn to stone.