Biscus returned to his booth, but Lex remained seated in his chair, pondering over what had just happened. He’d had no warning or indication that something like this was going to come up, which made sense because life didn’t come with warnings.

Even so, he felt that this interaction of his was highly unusual. To start with, based on his understanding, the Temple of Fasting was supposed to be a huge secret. They had made a big deal about it being a secret.

So then, if the Alliance knew about it, how could it be a secret? Or maybe once the temple was revealed, it was no longer a secret. But even then, it seemed like the alliance had no knowledge of the temple’s location, or any means of accessing it.

The claim that Cassandra had reached out to them was plausible, if they had the same background, but then why would she leave them no way of getting to her if she asked for their help? Much more importantly, Cassandra herself was very particular about maintaining her existence as a secret, for she was on a mission of the utmost importance. In truth, the temple wasn’t even supposed to be giving his workers the training that they were getting since the temple wasn’t supposed to attract attention.

Even though Lex was certain none of his workers had shared details about the temple willingly, there were too many ways for the powerful to discover what was happening. The temple had attracted attention. But what was the reason behind all of this?

Lex’s mind went to the letter. It was written by a Dao Lord from the Humanoid Alliance called Gale Sylyore, succinctly explaining the alliance’s wish to assist Cassandra in her tribulation, and a request to help get to her.

It was about as straightforward as a letter could be without being rude, and bordered on sounding like an order rather than a request. If there was some hidden message or meaning left in the letter, then Lex didn’t catch it for he did his best to read it and put it away as quickly as possible.

This is the kind of stuff Lex was most concerned about. He could not afford to cross a Dao Lord of any kind, and while Wu Kong’s presence kept them at bay, he also had to ensure to limit his interaction with them as much as possible.

The thing that kept bothering Lex was the timing of it. It had been so long since Cassandra went into retreat, so why care about it now? Of course, considering the time scale for immortals, not much time had passed, so it could just be a coincidence. Yet Lex didn’t think so. There had to be some reason for this, he just didn’t know it.

A part of him wondered if he should go to the temple to check things out, but there was also a part of him that dared not go there anymore. Who knew what kind of powers Dao Lords had? What if by going there now, he somehow led the alliance straight to the temple?

The best thing to do was bury the letter under all his business cards and never think about it again. Hopefully, he could upgrade the Inn enough to get a way to remove any lingering Dao contamination from his body. Until then, he would take precaution. It wasn’t like he needed to go to the temple any time soon anyway.

Sure, he was thinking about taking his tribulation in the Temple to try to isolate the consequences of his tribulation and not attract so much attention. Announcing his location to the whole universe any time he leveled up was not a safe thing to do. But he most certainly wasn’t going to go there anymore.

But that was a problem for another time.

Another item had been sold at the auction, and Lex used the MT to continue to try and put his realm on the path for the kind of place he wanted it to be down the line. The good thing was, this could also help in developing a Heaven and a Hell down the line.

Lex continued to sit back in his office, waiting for the auction to subside, slowly using the Midnight Realm Management panel as the money kept trickling in. At the same time, the upgrades to the services started kicking in.

For about a quarter of a second, no one noticed. But then the guests who were using the services felt the change, and the surprise and excitement surged all at once. This was a change nobody was expecting.

In most places, an improved service meant more cost, yet in the Inn, the improvement came almost unannounced.

The number of people surging to Meditation rooms began to increase almost instantly, because the one thing all cultivators valued above everything else was the ability or opportunity to improve their cultivation in some fashion.

The most valued service after that was the Recovery rooms and Recovery pods. The rooms healed normal wounds, and fixed simple and straightforward injuries or diseases, but that left a wide array of issues that the rooms couldn’t fix. Or at least, that was the case before the upgrade.

Swarms of people rushed to the Recovery rooms in hope that they now somehow fixed what they couldn’t fix before.

All other services saw similar increase in usage, prompting a sudden surge in income for Lex.

All of this was more or less expected. Even so, Lex kept observing all of his guests until he encountered one particular group of guests who, well, took advantage of the one core service of the Inn Lex honestly thought people cared the least about.

Lex could not help but chuckle as he paid closer attention to them.

In one of the new cities that had been built in the Inn, three siblings were sitting in a cart, taking a ride through the park and looking at everyone around them.

"People in the park are saying that there’s been some kind of an upgrade to all the Inn services," one of the three siblings said. "With our latest income from the Guild room, I’m pretty sure we could all rent out a meditation room for a couple of days each."

"Nah, I’m thinking of going to the patisserie and grabbing a pie," said the second.

The third looked at his two siblings as if he were looking at a pair of degenerates.

"Don’t even talk to me for the next week. I’m going to go rock the best service that the Inn provides. I’m going to sleep in their comfy-as-hell beds till my bank balance hits 0."