The Innkeeper

Although Lex had been preoccupied by his own cultivation at the time, he had long since learned of the phenomena that had taken place during his breakthrough to the Golden core realm. He was informed of the Golden hue within the Inn by Mary, and later on he had heard various guests talk about the hue in their respective planets as well. It was also the subject of many conspiracy theories on the Henali portal, which is why Lex found it hard to forget the golden hue caused by his breakthrough.

He could not fathom why his breakthrough had caused the hue, nor why its effects were so grand and widespread. The hue had even caused countless new religions to sprout across the entire realm, as races with limited scope of knowledge or understanding took it to be a sign from a deity.

That had somehow sped up the collection of divine energy for his 'Wish' by the system, but it was still below 10% filled to grant him his wish, so Lex never thought of it.

Now, once again, he was brought face to face with yet another repercussion of the phenomena of his breakthrough.

"Studying the strange light allowed the dragon to have a few breakthroughs, so it went into closed door cultivation. For immortals, the chance for a breakthrough may come only once a million years, so once it comes they can forsake everything to pursue it.

"But what it didn't know was that the golden hue allowed him to see hope for a breakthrough, but it also… it also woke up a primordial being who had been asleep."

The creature trembled as it recalled the being it had seen. As it was able to read some of the thoughts of any being close to it, the creature had glimpsed into the mind of that… of that thing.

"I'm not too clear on the specifics, but I was able to read some of the beings thoughts while it was waking up. It had been trapped inside a crystal that the dragon had in its treasure. Outwardly, the crystal looked no different from any other spirit crystal, but contained within was an entity perhaps as old as this realm itself.

"It took a few months for the entity to wake up, but once it did…" the creature trembled once again. "I don't know what happened exactly, but the creature did something to the dragon, and I felt its thoughts completely die, yet for some reason the body is still alive. Then the creature disappeared, and I haven't felt its thoughts since. It probably left a long time ago. With the dragon dead, I could finally try to escape. I… I have no other intentions. I just want to recover enough energy to escape this planet!"

The creature was clearly lying about its purpose, but as far as Lex could tell using his sixth sense, it seemed to be telling the truth about the dragon and the thing that killed it. Of course, there was no way of knowing for sure.

While Lex was still lucid, he looked around and saw the various corpses on the ground. The creature had not eaten their bodies. It had merely bit into their flesh before eating something else. Lex had a strong feeling that the creature had fed on their spirituality.

Just as Lex was evaluating what the creature had told it, he felt something strange and the creature disappeared, even from within his grip! Lex was genuinely surprised, for this was the first time something had managed to escape the grip of his Impervious hands, but it did not seem to have gone away.

This was because a feeling of extreme danger surrounded Lex, even causing the hair on his body to stand on end.

He immediately extended his spirit and soul sense, but to no avail.

"Ahhh!" Lex could not help but scream as he fell to the ground on his knees as a mind rending pain filled his head. He felt like something had attacked his very consciousness, as if it was a physical entity to be touched.

Normally, that would just be a metaphor, but in Lex's case, due to his strange physique, that was an actual fact!

Gritting his teeth, Lex entered the Berserk state and pushed this unusual ability to the limit of what he could endure. In essence, the Berserk state was a state that drove his emotions to extremes beyond normal while simultaneously strengthening Lex's physical strength. It did this by feeding on the extreme emotions.

Normally, this was an excellent ability to wreak havoc when a lot of brute force was required and little brainpower, for the extreme emotions made it difficult to think too deeply. At the moment, however, Lex was using it to strengthen his body, and thereby his spirituality, while at the same time making his mind chaotic with extreme emotions.

A shrill scream filled the hall they were in, and the creature fell to the ground appearing in front of Lex, as if it had emerged from his body.

"I knew you were a pervert!" Lex roared, and lost all notion of holding back and gathering any information. This creature was too strange, not to mention dangerous.

Swinging his fist like a divine hammer, Lex smashed the creature with all his strength, giving it little time to respond. At the same time, Lex launched Evisceration, tearing into the creature's soul.

The creature screamed, and disappeared again. The reason Lex had not held onto this time was because he had clearly learned that the creature had entered his mind somehow because he was in contact with it. If they weren't touching maybe it would be harder for it to enter his mind, but that did not seem to be the case.

Lex suffered another rip in his thoughts, although the pain seemed to only elevate his extreme emotions. Since this creature was sensitive to his thoughts, he wondered if it would be affected by them too?

Immediately he thought of the deep aura he had felt when he tried to sit in on a meeting of Dao Lords. As the memory flashed through his mind, Lex suddenly became dizzy and weak. The creature, however, screamed much louder than before.