The Innkeeper

Even if he might not be planning on swimming, he walked into the sea right up until his knees were submerged, and began resisting the assimilation. It was not an easy task, and was the only experience he ever encountered that he couldn't build a resistance to by cultivating in this condition.

Maybe he needed to meet some criteria to start building up a resistance to it. But until he figured that out, he would just train manually. Lex managed to resist the sea for several hours before his energy began to run low, so he took a break.

After saying farewell to Nemo, he teleported back to his meditation room and began to recover while sitting atop the dragon's head.

After years of using the dragon's body to strengthen himself, Lex assumed that the body might actually weaken. That was actually the plan for how to get Pel Jr. to take over the body. But the reality of the situation was quite different. The incredibly pure spiritual energy of the realm constantly replenished the body's energy, as well as bathed and purified it.

Over time, it was beginning to become even stronger! The only good thing was that after fifteen years of constant cultivation, Pel Jr. was becoming strong enough to barely control the body for a fraction of a second. For today's purpose, that would be enough.

Once Lex was back in peak condition, he invited Luthor into his Meditation room, wearing Firefighting gloves, the quest reward he got for creating tribulation rooms. Ordinarily, considering his unique physique, he would not need gloves to handle fire, but this was dragon fire from an immortal so…

Lex took out the Dragonburn Locket, something he had received a long time ago. It contained the secrets of fire breathing, and was an excellent tool for newborn dragons to learn about it. In this case, the locket would help Pel Jr. use firebreath to begin with, as it was too much of a strain on it.

Once he put the locket on the dragon's body, he stood in front of the dragon and made some preparations. He used the system to put up some barriers around Luthor, for protection, but for himself he only used his own techniques.

Over the past few years Lex had been experimenting with creating his own techniques, and had made decent progress in the field, and so tried to rely on his own techniques and abilities most of the time.

With sufficient preparations in place, Lex finally signaled Pel Jr. to begin. The dragon did not move. After all their preparation, all they managed to achieve was that the dragon was able to open its mouth a couple of inches, and shot out a thin, weak string of dragon fire.

Objectively speaking, it was quite a disappointing display considering what the dragon should have been capable of. Practically speaking, Lex was immediately faced with a life or death crisis.

It had been years since Lex felt so overwhelmed. All the shields he had put up, all the protective arrays he had used, and all the formations he put in place using the system were instantly incinerated. Luthor was instantly forced to use his Anachronistic Ignition bloodline to keep himself from being burnt to ash, yet for the first time ever, he felt his bloodline failing.

Although technically the bloodline was perfect, and the rulers it operated under could theoretically face any kind of danger, the bloodline was ultimately not suited to deal with situations that incinerated laws themselves.

In fact, were it not for his gloves which he was using to defend himself, Luthor might have already died. Such was an appropriate reaction from a Nascent soul facing dragon fire from a Heavenly immortal. What Lex was doing was, instead, ridiculous.

Faced with death, Lex felt not fear but glee! When all his techniques failed, and everything external proved itself ineffective in the face of overwhelming power, the only thing Lex could rely on was his body, or more specifically, himself.

Lex raised his hand and welcomed the tiny stream of fire into his palm. Coiled together, it was barely larger than an acorn, yet it was burning away everything in its vicinity, and Lex was no exception.

But compared to the laws that governed this realm, and that controlled Luthor's bloodline, compared to the techniques that were as brittle as a sheet of glass facing a meteor, compared to everything else that turned to ash before even touching the flames, Lex's body was taking a lot longer to burn.

As he held the tiny flame in his hand, ignoring the pain of the very meat his body was made of cooking, a gleam of excitement flashed through Lex's eyes.

He had not decided yet, but Lex was experimenting with the idea of having his tenet be about being the best at whatever he did. If he wanted the best defense in the universe, surpassing even Regal Embrace, and the best offense which surpassed even Mo's Blessing, then he might as well continue the trend.

There was a small part of his brain which was logical that told him that he was essentially setting himself up for failure by having such goals. But then there was another part of his brain that was more adventurous that told him not to take everything so seriously. If he was going to live life, he might as well live it trying to do something extraordinary.

Lex hadn't finalized what he was going to do yet, but he was giving himself a taste of what life might be like if he decided to be so extreme. It would be a series of unreasonable, unbelievable, completely insane events and obstacles that he would need to regularly overcome just to have the faintest hope of living up to such a tenet.

As Lex felt the dragonfire burn him, and use his very soul as kindling to keep itself burning, he oddly found that the only thing he could focus on… was the question of whether he could cultivate using this fire. It would surely burn his meridians if he tried.

But then again, he had already reconstructed his meridians after being turned into a meat patty, so what was a little fire damage?

He began to cultivate, and absorbed some of that dragon fire.

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