The Innkeeper

Moon ran to her room and retrieved a pair of bangles and what looked like a VR headset. Alone, none of these items were anything special, but when worn together, they connected the wearer’s consciousness to something called a relay station – a small base hidden in space somewhere within the solar system.

Although Lex’s family on Earth were clones of his original family, that did not mean they were connected to the main consciousness of the original body. If the distance between the clone and the original was small enough, they would be, but in the case of interstellar distances, it was all but impossible. The relay station allowed the clones to connect with the consciousness of the main body, but only for a short time. The time duration was a result of the clone being much, much too weak to sustain such pressure for a long time. In Moon’s case, the relay station also served a secondary function. It allowed her to utilize her main body’s special abilities – abilities that were completely independent of her cultivation.

Arriving in front of Lex’s body, she sat on the ground on her knees and put on the equipment and prepared herself to connect to the relay station. This was not a quick procedure. Connecting to the station was the easy part, but then to wait for the station to locate and then connect to her main body was the difficult part. This was also extremely expensive and consumed resources the cultivators of Earth could not even dream of, but they never paid any mind to it.

ɴ[0)ᴠᴇʟ Nearly three hours later, the connection finally stabilized and Moon gained some of her main body’s powers. Not wasting any time, she immediately brought her hands over Lex’s forehead and started to scan him.

Considering she was checking Lex’s soul, there was a great danger of her discovering the system! This was because, as yet, the system still only existed in the form of the magical treasure that had collided with Lex’s body so long ago, and the magical treasure was taking refuge in Lex’s soul.

Fortunately, as a result of Moon only being a clone, her ability was greatly weakened and she did not discover the system.

“His soul is… weird,” Moon said, in an unsure voice. “It’s like it’s been changed, but I can’t tell how. It’s stronger than it should be, so there’s no chance of it accidentally disappearing.”_.

If one was observing Belle carefully, they would be able to tell her shoulders relaxed just a little.

“I can sense… I think… it’s Purified Wraiths blood. It strengthened Lex’s soul, but since his soul was in an unstable state, the increase in strength only increased the instability. I think Lex knew there was something wrong with his soul, and then tried to strengthen it, but that’s not fixing the problem at all.”

“He may try to do that again unless the issue is fixed. Just use whatever strength you have left to stabilize his soul as much as you can. Whoever taught him how to fix his soul must be an amateur.”

If John knew that he had been called an amateur by a couple of kids, who knew how he would react? But fortunately for everyone, no one was around to see this. Liz, the only remaining sister, had at some point appeared in the room and watched in silence while eating ice cream out of a tub.

A few minutes later, Moon collapsed as well. Belle carefully removed the helmet and carried Moon to her room, leaving Lex lying there on the ground.

After a few minutes, when she did not return, Liz sighed in defeat and carried her brother and threw him onto a sofa. It was a good thing his body had improved due to his cultivation, or God knows what condition he would have been in after being handled so roughly.

Liz walked to the kitchen where Belle was perusing through the fridge, eventually pulled out a cold slice of pizza and started eating it directly. If nothing else, the unusual fondness for cold pizza was something Lex shared with this sister of his.

“Do you really have to treat him like that?”

“Like what? Going through the whole drama of acting like I’m in the dark is pointless, I just saved us a lot of time. And besides, I’ve thought it through. My story is solid, with no plot holes. The reason we know about cultivation is because of the council, and now that I have a job working for the council, our security will be assured. Furthermore, because our bodies are made up of spirit energy, if we try absorbing more, the cloning technique will destabilize and we will die. So now all we need to do is let him know that despite knowing about cultivation, we ourselves cannot cultivate.

“To recap, we know everything about cultivation so he does not need to keep secrets from us, we are safe so he does not need to worry about us, and we cannot cultivate so he does not need to care about resources for us. This will solve all of his problems and he can continue to live his life as he was previously. If he was able to travel from New York and get his hands on something like Purified Wraith’s blood, he must have developed some decent connections. Maybe he’s following one of the political prisoners mom has sent to the planet. He can now focus on his own growth without worrying about us.”

Liz was silent for a few moments, and then eventually said, “You really don’t want him to be around, huh?”

Belle looked at her sister and understood what she was actually trying to say.

“He’s my little brother, and I’m looking out for him the way I look out for you two. I do not hate him, if that is what you mean. My situation is not his fault… it is simply the result of something as simple as being born a girl instead of a boy. But it is better this way. I do not need someone to hand power to me on a platter, I can take it for myself.”

“What you need is a boyfriend,” Liz said under her breath as she rolled her eyes at her overly dramatic sister. It was such a burden being the only normal person in a family. No longer paying attention to Belle, Liz went and got some pink nail polish and pulled out a chair in front of Lex. As his beloved younger sister, she had to, of course, make his life miserable in the cutest way possible. When she lifted his hand, she noticed Lex’s phone halfway outside his pocket. She picked it up, naturally, to snoop, only to find it dead. She shrugged and put it on charge, before turning back to her beloved brother. He would not wake up till his body adapted to his soul, so she had plenty of time to work.

She recalled once, when they were children, Lex cut her hair while she was sleeping. The result was so bad that she had to get a bob cut. To this day, many years later, she had not forgiven him. Today, for the third time, she would get her revenge.

The hours went by quickly, and the day passed calmly for the Williams family. This was mostly because Moon and Lex were passed out. Moon woke up early the next day, but Lex was still asleep. By now Mary had checked up on Lex, but only thought he was asleep on the couch, so she returned to her duties. The games were progressing with much excitement, and refugees had stopped coming in from Earth. In fact, many of them had even returned now, as things seemed to have calmed down.

The fourth match finally started, this time in a rainforest. The beasts had taken the lead in points during the last match, so this time Alexander felt extremely motivated to regain his place in the front.

At the same time, on Earth, a small diplomatic team was approaching Japan by boat. Most of the team were mortals, with only a single Foundation realm cultivator who had hidden his identity. Unbelievably, they had used a pigeon to deliver a message to the small nation to inform them of their arrival, since there was no other way to communicate at the moment.

The members of the team looked onwards nervously, knowing full well what had happened with all the previous attempts at communication. But this time they came without any hostility, in hopes to simply negotiate, so hopefully things would end differently.

When they arrived at the designated pier, they were surprised to see it completely devoid of other people. There was no movement, no noise, as if they were arriving at a ghost town.

With no other option but to go on, the team disembarked and had only begun discussing how to proceed when they heard a voice.

“Speak, what is it you came here to say.”

Startled, the envoys turned to see a handsome Japanese youth, leaning against a nearby building. He was dressed in a gray hakama and stood so perfectly still that up until this moment, he had melded into the background. Even the cultivator had not noticed him, which raised his wariness.

“We are diplomatic envoys from the council, here to meet with the Prime minister and discuss relations between Japan and the rest of the world. We have been unable to communicate with anyone from the country.”

“Japan’s diplomatic stance is that gaijin are no longer welcome here. You may return with this message.”

The envoys looked at one another, then secretly turned to the cultivator. They did not know how to proceed. They did not want to antagonize the locals, but their own bosses weren’t people who could be messed with either.

Finally, the cultivator stepped forward and tried to talk to the youth.

“Young man, we are here for an important matter. We cannot…” before the cultivator could continue his words, the youth took a single step forward. His movement was strange, and the diplomats were unable to clearly see what he had done, but the effect was only taking a step forward. Or so it seemed, until the cultivator’s head fell clean off his neck.

“I will not repeat myself again after this. You may return with this message.”

The envoys were so scared they practically tripped over themselves as they ran back to their boat, hoping this monster would not change his mind. They had not even seen what he had done to cut the cultivators head off, but it was not something they wanted to know either.

As he watched the gaijin leave, the man revealed his right hand that he had been hiding behind his body to reveal a katana. Slowly, as if he was savoring the action, he returned the weapon to its sheath.

A voice spoke in his head, “quest to kill an enemy with a higher cultivation of one major realm, completed. Hosts authorization of the Samurai System is being raised.”

The young man did not respond to the notification, and only watched the water. He was lost in his thoughts.

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