The old man looked at the suited, young man beside him. He looked like he had barely begun his life, maybe 24 or 25 years old at most. What ordeals could he have gone through? Then again, judging cultivators based on appearance was just inviting trouble. For all he knew, this dapper young man could actually be an ancient monster.
"Yes, this good place really is good for taking things slow, and reevaluating life and all your decisions," the old man said, and sighed deeply. His body seed to shed a trendous burden with that one breath, as if he had let go of
sothing he had been holding onto for too long.
The Innkeeper did not pry. The man would reveal it if he wanted to. He wasn't here to delve into anyone's secrets after all - he just wanted an opportunity to reconnect with so of his guests.
"If you've been at the Inn for a while, is there any place you can recomnd I try out?" the Innkeeper asked. "Tomorrow, I have to return to reality. But today... today, I want to enjoy myself."
The old man looked at the young man for a mont, feeling the weight he carried on his shoulders through those words, and could not help but pity him. At the sa ti, he could not help but feel a hint of envy.
"Yeah, there is sothing. Co on, let take you," the old man said, and raised his hand as if hailing a cab. A mont later, a worker teleported in front of him, driving a golf cart.
"You called a golf cart, sir?" the worker asked, looking briefly at the Innkeeper but then turning back to the guest. He did not reveal any hints that he knew the Innkeeper at all.
The old man nodded, and spoke to the driver through his spirit sense to maintain the suspense of their destination. Lex could naturally peek and listen to the spirit sense without getting caught, but he didn't do that.
Instead, he got in the cart right alongside the old man.
"These things aren't too bad if you haven't driven one before," the old man said to the Innkeeper. "They even have races for them every week in Party City. It's quite entertaining."
The Innkeeper chuckled. He could not help but recall the first ever Golf Cart race. That had been quite intense, and quite a lot of fun. Maybe he'll try it out again.
"It's been a while since I sat on one of these," said the Innkeeper. "Teleportation makes it too easy to get around, but it also takes away a lot. I can't rember the last ti I actually commuted."
Lex could, of course, actually rember the last ti he commuted. It was in Arch-Heaven. He was just saying it as an expression to express how much he missed a good old road trip. If Jack and the crew weren't stuck in that realm, he would have at least scratched that itch through Jack.
"To be, I think the first ti I ever sat and... enjoyed traveling sowhere was after I got stranded inside the Midnight Inn," the old man confessed. "My life before that was too... it was too stressful. I never had the peace of mind to appreciate the passing scenery.
"After so ti, the anxiety of being stuck here wore off, and was replaced by acceptance. At the ti I was sitting on a train, and I rember looking out at the horizon, looking at an entire crystal mountain range emitting rainbow lights, reflected from the stars above. It was..."
The old man did not complete the sentence, seemingly getting lost in so mories he hadn't pondered over in a long, long ti. The Innkeeper did not disturb him either.
Instead, he felt the wind blowing through his hair, and looked at the Inn passing him by. It was easy to look at the number of guests, look at the billions and trillions. But he also needed to rember that each one of those billions of guests was an actual person - or beast - with an actual life, and experiences.
It took nearly ten minutes before the old man woke up from his daze, and was embarrassed to find that he had tears in his eyes.
"Sorry, I... I got lost in so mories," the old man said. "I just rembered the first ti my daughter saw a rainbow. I... I had forgotten about that."
The Innkeeper nodded, and then looked out at the horizon. He did not need to ask - he could feel it. The man's life was a tragedy. Lex almost did not want to ask about the daughter, because he could foresee how it ended. But this was not about him. Life had its good monts, and its bad.
"She must have loved it," the Innkeeper said softly.
The old man nodded.
"It was a simpler ti," the old man said. "There had been a storm, and all crops I'd nurtured for months were destroyed. When the clouds cleared, and I looked outside, I felt like my life was over right there. I didn't think I'd make it.
"But my daughter, she was three at the ti, looked out at the sa sky and didn't see the destruction. She only saw the colors in the sky between the gaps in the dark clouds. Her reaction was enough to make forget all that. How
small my problems from back then seem now."
Lex nodded. Who knew that this three hundred year old Nascent Soul cultivator started out as a simple farr? While to him it may not seem like much, on most 1 Star planet Nascent Soul cultivators could rule the planet, and even on 2 Star planets they were not people who could be ignored.
"Problems always seem the greatest when we're going through them," the Innkeeper said. "But we still have to go through them anyway. It is the only way
to grow."
The old man nodded.
"Enough about and old tis. Let tell you, the place we're going to is unexpectedly entertaining. It's such a simple idea, and yet I could have never imagined how much I would enjoy it."
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