“Why do you look so distracted?” Brandon asked Wu Kong, who was looking up in the sky.

“Just appreciating the weather,” Wu Kong responded casually, his eyes fixed on the laws of the realm. He could see how, very subtly, the laws were coming under the influence of another.

It was no wonder that the Innkeeper had allowed the realm to suffer such a strain, and even suffer a little harm. He was preparing to take control of it on a deeper level.

Honestly, Wu Kong tried to not pay attention to the Inn so much anymore. He didn’t think he could tolerate the Innkeepers subtle and silent teasing. From showing things that Wu Kong was too afraid to touch, to teasing him when he tried to date a mortal, the Innkeeper had managed to keep Wu Kong subdued all without actually lifting a hand against him. It was pretty impressive.

“You’re so carefree,” said Brandon, shaking his head as he took a puff from his vape, enjoying that Golden Destiny Watermelon flavor released by Cultivator Co a few days back. “I wish I could be as carefree as you. But no, I have to watch over my family and return us to our prior station in the universe.”

Wu Kong looked at Brandon oddly, and then just looked away. A short distance away, Audrey was in the hospital, getting a checkup with a doctor. It was about time for them to discover that not only was she pregnant, she was carrying twins.

Wu Kong could practically foresee Audrey beating the hell out of Brandon in short order. He was looking forward to it.

Lex, meanwhile, was looking over his system still. He’d been through all the upgrades his services would get, and even scheduled their release to happen during the auction that would be held in a few days.

What he was looking at now was the new and improved teleportation capabilities. Functionally, it did not seem like they had changed at all – at least to most users. In reality, the teleportation ability had been strengthened tremendously. It was now capable of targeting even extremely unstable areas without causing any issue, not to mention that it would now offer protection to the target during the actual teleportation – something it previously did not.

More importantly, Lex now learned that there were certain regions of the universe which could now be accessed by the Inn which were previously off limits. These places weren’t like Abaddon, which was an oddity on its own. No, these were regular realms, big and small, that were in a part of the universe where travel was impossibly difficult.

There was no specific name mentioned of these regions, but as Lex read about how restricted they were, he couldn’t help but think of the Path of Chaos. He always felt like the Path of Chaos must reside in special places to avoid interaction with the Path of Order.

Or maybe they were just in other Major realms, and there was no secret to their survival except strength. Who could say? Not Lex.

Regardless, once Lex gained complete control over the teleportation abilities, he might enable them in these restricted, special regions. It would be interesting to see the kinds of guests such places would have.

That was still far away, because Lex needed to complete a number of guest related quests and jump through a number of proverbial hoops before he could gain full teleportation control.

The thing that interested him a lot, though, was the Midnight Realm Management panel. For a long time, the panel was greyed out while the system evaluated the realm.

Once it was open, though, Lex checked it out and was stunned. For a while now, Lex was already preparing to control how the Midnight realm grew, and he was doing that by studying himself as well as having his workers study realm farming and management.

The characters from the Book of Changes also seemed like they would be a tremendous help in giving him some control over the realm. As such, Lex’s intentions were just to use the panel as a guide to train himself on how to mould the realm. The idea was good, and it was even applicable.

Yet the biggest issue with that plan was that the changes Lex could implement would be restricted by his own ability to affect the realm. The panel, however, could do things far beyond what Lex was capable of.

From the very first moment Lex looked at it, he knew he would be changing his strategy. The finer details, or maybe even the majority of the changes that he wanted to bring to the realm could be managed by himself and his workers. But the system being overpowered as it was, it could do things that Lex was nowhere near strong enough to do.

The best part was, unlike other system features and services that needed full payment, realm management did not require large, one time payments to implement a change. That was because instead of implementing the change directly, he could just put the realm on the path to develop in the direction he wanted.

For example, right on the top of the list of options in the Midnight Realm Management panel was to make the realm Voidwoven. It was nothing too complex, it just altered the boundary of the realm so that it blended perfectly with the Void, making it so that the realm could travel in the Void, and that it was completely undetectable even to Dao Lords.

Now that was one heck of a realm upgrade, and one that Lex would never be able to implement on his own. It was also entirely outside what he could afford. The panel literally said that Lex had not even unlocked the correct currency to view the price of making the realm Voidwoven – meaning that MT was too weak a currency to purchase that upgrade, regardless of how much of it Lex had.

There was, however, an upgrade called Blessed Boundary which only cost 31 billion MT which would make the Midnight realms boundary less susceptible to the pressure of the Void, and increase its efficiency in absorbing Chaos energy from the Void.

According to the description, Blessed Boundary would put the realm on the eventual path to unlock Voidwoven. If Lex managed to induce some of the changes that would put it on the path to Voidwoven as a result of his own efforts, the cost for it would eventually drop. The same was true of Blessed Boundary. If he could change the realm himself to be more in line with the description of Blessed Boundary, the cost for that upgrade would drop.

Initially, Lex thought he would not be too interested in the new panel. He also thought that 1 million MT was enough to set him up for a long time. Wrong again. Some of the perks and benefits he saw in the realm were way too tempting for him, so much so that he had to consider making plans to make more money!

There were two changes, especially, that attracted his attention that would help him out a lot in his short-term needs. The first was Valley of Time. As one could expect from the name, the valley was related to time.

It was pretty straightforward – the flow of time within the valley would be double of the rest of the realm. This was an extremely expensive upgrade, at 1 billion MT. Although Lex wasn’t sure why compared to the other upgrades, such as Blessed Boundary, such an ability cost less, he wanted it.

The uses for altered flows of time were too many, and they would be tremendously helpful. Yet even something like this was outside his budget right now.

The second thing that he had his eye on was Tempered Rains. Despite sounding like it had something to do with the weather, the actual effect of Tempered Rains was to strengthen the realm so that it could support stronger tribulations!

Considering how abnormal Lex’s tribulations were, it was basically guaranteed that he’d never be able to take his tribulations within the Inn. Considering how hidden and secure the Inn was, and how much trouble his tribulations caused, it was actually a huge risk to go outside the Inn every time.

If he could strengthen the realm so that it could support not only his cultivation, but his realm tribulations as well, he would end up eliminating a whole lot of problems for himself. But that too was outside his budget.

Fortunately, not all the options within the panel were permanent changes. Lex could induce temporary phenomena inside the Inn which, while still expensive, would also expose him to things he had no way of otherwise experiencing.

Oh, and he could also use the panel to create the environment to nurture some especially rare treasures that he couldn’t locate. One example of such a treasure was the Karmic Lily – something he had been searching for a very long time, yet found no leads on. Now, though, he might not need to search. He could grow it in his back garden.

Apparently ppl still don’t knw abt it: discord.gg/yqCkHedcUP