The Innkeeper

With danger imminent, his instincts once again began to do their job and provided him with a solution. The answer to his problem was straightforward. The network of tunnels he was running through was extremely complicated as is, and had an added layer of difficulty due to the fact that they were arranged in a formation of some kind.

The purpose of the formation seemed to be specifically to confuse him. No matter how much time he took, and how he explored the tunnels, he would not be able to find an exit.

In such a situation, the answer should have been simple. All Lex needed to do was dig upwards to exit, right?

Unfortunately, even that seemed to be a trap. Vaguely, he could sense that gravity was being manipulated within this vast underground network. What he thought was down and up may actually be deceiving. There was no way to determine which direction the exit was in.

Although Lex was not out of options, for once he had no way at all to see through the formation that trapped him. When he looked with his left eye to study the laws, he was indeed able to see the ways to make the formation stronger or weaker. His left eye always showed him a way to progress or degrees how the laws behaved contained within anything he looked at.

The only difference was that previously, whenever he saw a method to weaken or breakthrough, there was an element of physical weakness to it that he could exploit. But the formation around him was exceptional in ways that were beyond his understanding. If he wanted to destroy it using physical strength, he would have to grow stronger by an order of magnitude!

The next easiest way to unravel the formation, or manipulate its associated laws was by manipulating some other laws to act on it in certain ways. That was beyond Lex's ability.

In short, he was too weak to destroy it, and lacked the relevant abilities to unravel it. He was sure that there must be other ways to escape the situation since the test was ultimately designed for Golden core cultivators. But he was unable to discover that method in the limited time he had available.

But this was far from enough to demotivate him. Even if Lex could not escape, there were other things he could do. Despite the fact that he had a new cultivation technique which allowed him to learn offensive techniques and master other things, till now what he was best at was defense.

Lex stopped running and studied his surroundings. The tunnels seemed like they were made entirely out of one massive rock with no breaks or joints in between. There was no lava flowing through the tunnel where he stood, but one could easily imagine that this would soon become a path for lava to flow through once the eruption occurred.

Perhaps as the size of the tunnel might even increase as the exposed rock slowly melted under the raging heat while the lava flowed. This meant that even the rock around him was not enough to withstand the heat, but if there was enough of it…

Lex's eyes gleamed as he summoned his sword and walked to the tunnel wall and began cleaving. His sword, channeling a torrent of his spirit energy through it, cut through the stone piece by piece, leaving behind small, misshapen blocks.

His right hand held the sword, but his left hand was focused on drawing arrays. The heated spirit energy in the cavern surged towards the arrays Lex drew, and then seemingly disappeared. For a while, there was no visible reaction. Another tremor spread through the cavern, warning that the inevitable eruption was coming ever closer.

Lex had cut out a small tunnel as he kept removing blocks of stone, and he did not seem to have any intention of stopping. yet a change happened nonetheless. The rocks that he had piled together started to turn red. At first the color change was not too prominent, but eventually when the whole pile changed color it could no longer be ignored. Even the new rocks Lex placed on the pile quickly began to change color.

Under the influence of the arrays Lex was continuously using, powered especially by the heated energy, the rocks finally began melting. As if guided by an unseen hand, the liquid rock moved towards the tunnel and began to line the wall, at which point it began to rapidly cool.

The newly formed rock was darker in color compared to the surrounding rock, so lex could not be certain if it was of the same type. Whether it could tolerate the heat of the eruption like the surrounding rock was uncertain, which is why Lex was determined to use as much of it as possible.

In just a few minutes, the tunnel Lex had dug had been resealed, though Lex continued to dig deeper for a while.

Once he was satisfied by the distance, he sat cross legged and began his second round of preparations. The characters he used in arrays were originally found in nature, and had certain effects even when on their own. Back in the Crystal realm, Lex had also seen how a single character had been used in the design for the entire prison.

As such, he began to carve out a massive symbol around him, channeling the ambient spirit energy into it. This was not an array, but the character was the closest thing to meaning 'barrier' in a single character as far as Lex knew. The purpose of this character was not to protect Lex, but to add a sense of harmony and nature in the barriers he was about to erect. After all, nature was the closest thing to perfection, so he hoped to rely on it for help.

Once that was done, Lex began to use his spatial affinity to condense space around him in the shape of a ball. This would not create a space barrier, but would turn what was originally a small distance, such as a few feet, into hundreds of feet. Or at least, it would replicate the effects of that.

One by one, Lex put up his defenses. At the same time, he made a mental note to look up techniques to help him absorb the energy from an eruption.

Suddenly, Lex froze. Actually… that was not such a bad idea!