Thirteen months. Lex sat still, in one spot, without causing any problems for thirteen months. It was a miracle. Oh, and also his increase in strength over this period was miraculous as well, to the point where he was, once again, ready for a Minor tribulation. But mainly the not causing problems for thirteen months is what was amazing.

Honestly, as Lex slowly opened his eyes and sighed, feeling like he had been working nonstop, he too admitted that he had not expected how smooth this retreat would go. He was not disturbed even once, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.

Of course, that was only because in the Midnight realm itself even one month hadn't passed, and almost all guests were cultivating, doing their best to make most of the nourishment of the Sun Crow. Thus, there was no trouble to be caused. Externally, most of the places that could access the Inn faced a ban from many Dao Lords preventing new guests from entering. The few places that didn't have bans still couldn't send in new guests because the Inn was in lockdown. Thus, somehow, there were no obstacles in Lex's plans.

"What in the world even is this technique?" Lex whispered, feeling the effects of the Back of Atlas. In truth, he was not capable of utilizing the actual technique. Based on what he had understood from the technique, to use the full technique would require him to be a Dao Lord.

With a Dao Body, he could use the technique at approximately 30% of its ability, though that too was an unlikely exaggeration. As he was right now, he could maybe use 0.01% of the technique, and yet...

Lex's eyes flashed. He had imagined, based on the description, that he would be able to carry realms on or in his back, almost like he had a space within his back itself. While that was one interpretation of it, and that interpretation seemed to be correct, that was not the limit of the technique. Another interpretation that he only discovered upon cultivating it was that he could literally target certain things and then absorb them into his back, eliminating their effects entirely - at least up until he brought them back out.

For example, he focused on the weight bearing down upon his soul from all the knowledge he attained back in Abaddon. That weight never disappeared - he just became stronger and better at ignoring it. Yet when he activated the technique targeting that weight, it vanished.

The absurd thing was that Lex did not need to keep the technique running. He could stop, and that weight would stay hidden within his back until such a time that he took it out.

For now, he could only store one thing at a time, but eventually that limit would increase. To do that, he needed to continue cultivating the Back of Atlas to strengthen his back's bearing capacity. At the same time, he also needed to grow stronger physically and spiritually so that his body could also bear the weight of whatever he absorbed. That was because whenever he absorbed something into his back, whether it was a real thing or even a concept, it would put an actual, physical weight on his back that he needed to carry.

For the moment, Lex had discovered no limits to this technique at all! That meant that if a Dao Lord flashed his aura at Lex, he could absorb that aura and put it inside his back to keep himself from suffering from actual exposure to it. Of course, chances were that the weight of that aura would be so great that Lex would be crushed, but this was more about what was theoretically possible, not what was plausible.

Lex could literally think of countless new ways in which he could use this technique to cause all sorts of mayhem. In fact, this technique alone increased his survivability drastically, far more than all his other recent gains - which were not few, by the way.

As his Primordial aura increased, so too did the pressure on the space of the Midnight realm. If the space literally hadn't been undergoing strengthening at that very moment, it was likely that Lex could have accidentally shattered space and fallen into the Void.

Speaking of Primordial aura, Lex checked his systems Primordial Energy Scale. He had a quest to raise it to 100, while everything he had learned told him to not do that. Still, while he avoided actively submitting Primordial aura into the system, it could passively absorb it anyway. The scale was currently at 9, which did not seem like a lot, but it was way more than he wanted it to be.

That was fine, because he learned that as his authority grew, he could even begin to command the system about how it operated. His plan was to get the system to use up that little Primordial energy in improving the realm because he felt having even the slightest bit of Primordial energy inside the system was too dangerous.

Speaking of Primordial energy, Lex disappeared from the Midnight Inn, teleporting over to the Primordial Garden. Being a level 9 Heaven Immortal had such a nice ring to it that he didn't want to wait any longer. It was best to get it over with before the wedding began.

At that point, Lex would have maximised all his strength that he could attain over a short period of time, and then he could finally start focusing on other

things.

While Lex had spent this recent period cultivating, just like all the guests, the workers hardly took a moment's break. The Innkeepers demand from Ash was to have a wedding that would satisfy Piere and Brenda, and that he would cover the expenses.

Well, the Innkeeper might soon come to regret that decision, because while Piere had nothing extravagant in mind, Brenda wanted to invite all the guests inside the Inn to her wedding. Since the Innkeeper did not comment on the matter, everyone treated it as if her demands had his tacit approval, and so began a month-long race to prepare a wedding with a guest list that crossed hundreds of billions.

That was because besides the original 32 billion guests, and the many new ones that joined, the wedding invitations were sent out to the rest of the entire Midnight Realm via the Shadow Talon delivery service.

The most difficult part was that only the RSVPs were in the hundreds of billions, but Ash fully expected that many guests who had received the invitations would come without specifically RSVPing. Thus, it was entirely possible that the number of guests would cross into the trillions.