River and Pearl rested underneath the tree, recovering from both emotional and physical exhaustion. Lex did not mind because he needed to get his bearing before doing anything.
First, he thought back to his fight against that unexpected Sovereign. There were still quite a few things he could have done in that fight, but Lex had held back on purpose. His Butter Knife and Tyrant's Mask both were Divine tools and filled with divine energy. He could have used them to create so kind of miracle.
However, the reason Lex did not opt for that was because it was obvious that his enemy was prepared for him. By using them, or any of his other techniques, he'd just waste their potential and put himself in a weaker position, exhausting all his ans. To fight against him, Lex could only make use of his techniques or tools that he'd always hidden from everyone - such as his Dao Body or Back of Atlas.
Unfortunately, even using those two hadn't given him a decisive advantage, which forced Lex to make a desperate decision.
Back when the Midnight Inn started interacting with Dao level organisations, Lex got his first taste of how they operated. They could set a trap thousands or tens of thousands in the years making, establishing a critical life or death situation. These traps were difficult to detect and harder to avoid if one wasn't a Dao Lord.
Although Lex had the Midnight Inn, not to ntion the Rebirth Chamber, his plan to establish the Midnight castle and put the Rebirth chamber in there would take years. Even if he managed to complete it successfully, having only one contingency plan did not sound smart to him.
Thus, years ago, Lex already started to prepare for an eventuality where one day he might be faced with an unsolvable problem. The more options he created for himself, the better he'd be able to tackle unexpected situations.
Early on, when he started his cultivation journey, if Lex made a mistake it was mostly due to his inexperience. But if he gained that experience and continued to make mistakes then that was wilful ignorance! Thus, he began to slowly develop so ergency backup options for himself. To avoid these backups from being detected, he had to minimise all contact or relationship between himself and them, to the point where it would be difficult to connect them to him, or trace him through them.
One of the ideas he was developing was in the form of the countless inheritances he left behind wherever he went. Originally, leaving behind inheritances was rely an impulse, and then later it beca a way for him to balance his karma.
But then as he learned more about karma, he realized that there were other things that could be done. Since his enemies planned for thousands of years in the future, why couldn't he? Thus, whenever he left behind an inheritance, he left behind a condition as well. The inheritance could only be gained by soone who had a certain degree of karmic affinity with him. Over the years, if the inheritances were discovered and they helped soone grow strong, the karmic affinity that person had with Lex would grow, aning that they would likely beco future allies.
Even if this was an uncertain and slow process, Lex was leaving those inheritances behind anyway so it didn't really harm him to add the extra condition. Besides, a thousand small rivers all feed a great ocean, aning small efforts can accumulate into massive results over ti.
Establishing Obsidian, and the two Rhinocentaurs were also ways in which Lex was expanding his reach and ans. Jack was, naturally, another one. This necklace, obviously, was one more contingency he had planned.
The Divine ore discovered in the Artica realm was truly magical. No, it was miraculous. It used the connection between Jack and Lex to travel from one body to the other, even though they were realms apart!
Over the years, he had tried with nurous other treasures, items, tools, and even spiritual energy, but he was never able to transmit anything else between his two bodies. The more difficult it was to accomplish, the greater the value of the Divine ore.
Thus, Lex had an idea he had suppressed deep in his heart, to the point of going and eliminating even the mory of it within the Chamber of Secrets. He used that Divine ore to fashion himself a necklace back when he was working alongside Orin inside the Crystal Volcano furnace, and had used the necklace with a piece of his heart and blood essence.
Lex's body, spirit and soul were all one. Though he often referred to them individually, it was mainly because that way of thinking was simpler, and allowed him to refer to whatever aspect of himself he was talking about.
In truth, by fusing a piece of his heart and his blood essence with the necklace, Lex had effectively turned the necklace into a sort of additional body for himself. The necklace was still, ultimately, a treasure and not a true body, so it could not act as a full clone. In tis of ergencies, though, it was sufficiently useful.
More importantly, this necklace of his had one ability that neither Lex nor Jack could accomplish on their own - it could transmit things to any of his bodies. Sure, he hadn't figured out how to do that yet, but he was certain it could.
After ticulously preparing the necklace and making sure it could work as intended, Lex sent it out into the universe so that it would end up sowhere unknown even to him - all so that no one would be able to connect it to him. He had done so using a tool he'd gotten from Powell, thus leaving one more contingency for himself.
When he'd done as much, he had hoped that he would never need to use it. After all, this was sothing he'd made in case his main body was destroyed, or he lost the Inn. In his mind, it would be thousands of years before he might need to use such a thing. After all, it was really difficult for Lex to face enemies who could actually threaten him these days.
Who knew that it was at his new peak that he faced his most disastrous loss. He'd barely been able to put up a fight at all.
Lex wished that he could say he had created the necklace because he'd long sensed that he would face a formidable enemy and was playing a very complex ga of chess. In truth, he was just lucky that he'd had the foresight to prepare for such situations.
It was, in fact, because Lex had this necklace that he carried out a truly risky plan - one that would pay off trendously if it worked. But Lex dared not think too much about his plan lest his enemy sohow sense it. Against enemies of this calibre, he could not take any risks at all.
Within the necklace, Lex sighed. This was the first ti in a long ti he'd truly been alone. He didn't have Mary, he didn't have the Inn, and no one could sense him. For the first ti in a long ti, Lex just allowed himself to just… exist. He allowed himself to feel the extent of the trendous pressure he was always under, and allowed himself to show how overwheld he truly felt.
These were emotions Lex never allowed himself to show, because with the amount of responsibility he had to shoulder, weakness was not sothing he could afford. Only now, in the darkness, within the confines of his necklace, he barely let those emotions lose. Only now did he barely act like a human.
But the mont didn't last. Lex was not one to wallow in self pity, nor did he resent the responsibilities he shouldered. In fact, he took them up on his own, no longer forced by his system.
Even in this situation, despite how desperate it seed, Lex did not feel despair. Instead, he treated it as if his enemy - whom Lex had henceforth decided to call Stalker since he didn't actually know his na - was the one who was caught in Lex's trap. It was a risky trap. But then again, he could not expect to just run the universe's best Inn and have it easy at the sa ti.
Lex sensed how much of his strength he had at his disposal. The amount of spiritual energy he had was miniscule - mainly because the ambient spiritual energy was very thin. The amount of energy he could control depended on how much energy he had.
If he had sufficient energy, then the necklace could theoretically display a similar level of power compared to his main body. Lex calculated how long it would take for this necklace to absorb enough energy for him to properly manipulate laws, and realized it would take centuries unless the amount of energy provided to him increased.
Suddenly, he could sympathise with how Bastet felt when she was trapped on Earth. It was absurd to be so trendously powerful, and yet be unable to use that power at all.
Still, his situation wasn't as bad as hers back then. He could still do quite a few things.
After reviewing his own state, Lex began to observe the situation wherever he was. Why was the spiritual energy here so low? It was even less than it used to be back on Earth when it was in a Dead zone.
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