The Innkeeper

Generally, Lex was able to maintain his composure regardless of the situation. In fact, more often than not, the more serious a situation was, the better he would be at controlling himself. He had to be like this, considering the fact that he regularly faced extremely powerful beings that could easily eradicate him.

In fact, Lex could say for certain that if the saintess had any other identity at all, whether it be some ancient deity or a secret Dao Lord or some unimaginable entity with a power scale he could not comprehend, he would still not have been shocked.

But brought face to face with little Moon, his youngest sister, thoroughly stumped him. How many years had it been since he had last seen her? Considering that he had spent 15 years in the Midnight realm, and hadn't seen her for years even before that, it was close to two decades.

Had it… had it really been so long?

He could not help but take in her entire appearance, and compare it to his memories. His youngest sister had, naturally, been the naughtiest and most spoiled of the siblings. She got everything she wanted and their parents were always more lenient with her. Even among the siblings, they tended to spoil her more.

If Lex had to describe her in a few simple words, he would go with youthful, vibrant, energetic and mischievous.

But the grown woman before Lex's eyes seemed too different, despite having the same face and voice.

Even for her, it had been many years already since she last saw him.

"Moon what are you doing over here?" Lex asked, shocked. Even as he asked the question he realized it was a stupid one, but his ordinarily very quickly brain was currently experiencing lag.

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Last I heard, you had disappeared from earth. No one could find you. Belle was worried sick, even if she didn't show it."

Lex's emotions fluctuated as he recalled the various things his family had kept from him. Had Moon been in on it as well? He scanned her with his spirit sense and realized she was in the Golden core, confirming that she must have been cultivating from a young age. But instead of being upset, Lex instead felt alarmed.

He stepped closer and grabbed her thin, frail arms. He used his various senses to probe her body and discovered something that alarmed him!

"Why are you so weak? You're even weaker than a mortal!" he said, feeling genuine concern take hold.

But in response Moon only smiled weakly, her expression filled with endless hidden regrets.

Before she could explain, a strange pulse of energy distracted Lex.

The assassins he defeated lay unconscious still, but clearly some failsafe had been triggered. A strange crystal emerged from within their bodies and began to pulse together.

Lex detected a spatial disturbance.

Without hesitating he attacked the crystals, but his attack was easily rebuffed. Whatever was happening had been arranged by at least an Earthen immortal.

Lex took out a golden key and threw it towards Moon.

"Someone is opening a portal to you, and it's probably more assassins - at the Earth immortal level at the very least. Use the key, it'll take you to a place called the Midnight Inn, you'll be safe there. I'll try to see if I can find out who is behind all this."

Moon gave Lex an amused look.

"Even if an Earth immortal attacks, I'm completely safe on this planet," Moon assured him. "There is a very large protective formation around this planet that is being powered by the star in the center of this star system. The sole purpose of that formation is to protect me. I can't be hurt even if I want to. See."

As if to demonstrate what she meant, Moon bit the skin on her hand. Lex was waiting to see the supposed formation work, but instead Moon's frail hand began to bleed.

Lex only raised an eyebrow, but Moon's pupils contracted in shock! The formation was actually not working!

"Something is wrong with the formation!" she said, a panic finally bleeding into her voice.

"Alright, it's not a big deal even if the formation fails. Just go to the Midnight Inn and I'll take care of things over here. Don't take your big brother lightly."

Lex paused upon saying that. Between the two of them, he was the one who looked like he was younger. But that was just in appearance. He was still older where it counted!

"No, you don't understand, I can't leave this planet. We need to immediately contact someone," she said as she pulled out a device from a spatial equipment, but it also seemed to not be working.

She was panicking more and more, and Lex could see that just the strain of panicking was affecting her physically. For that matter, he realized that she hadn't moved much this entire time.

Deep anger flashed in Lex's heart, but he quickly suppressed it. He didn't know much about his family, or what secrets they had been keeping from him, but since they were linked to the powerful Williams family, how could Moon have been ignored to such an extent? How could his parents leave her in such a condition?

But he would get to that later. For now he had to deal with the current situation.

"Moon this is not a joke. Dealing with the immortal is not an issue but I can't do that without hurting you. You need to go to the Inn. Trust me, it's absolutely safe. You can come back once this is over."

She had to hurry, because the spatial anomaly was increasing and Lex could tell someone was about to teleport over. Even with his amazing spatial affinity, he could not prevent this teleportation from occurring. Whoever had set this up was using much more brute force than Lex could easily counter.

"Lex, it's not that I don't want to go," Moon desperately explained, "but that I really can't leave this planet. My soul has been chained to this planet. If I move away from this planet, if I so much as even fly too high in the sky, my soul will be extinguished. The formation around this planet was not put in place just to protect me from attacks. It was put there to make sure I don't try anything that'll hurt myself."

It… it was a painful admission, but there had been days where she really had been very desperate. She had never reached the point of wanting to commit suicide, but her grandfather wanted to take no risks, and so her safe haven also became her prison.

Lex's head snapped from the spatial anomaly to Moon, and suddenly he saw things in a new light. He used his soul sense and discovered that the size of Moon's soul in her body was actually no larger than a coin.

But from within that coin emerged a long, thin rope that exited from within her body and went down towards the center of the planet.

"Lex you should run. They won't kill me, but they will kill you," Moon began to say desperately, tears beginning to fill the corner of her eyes. Her weak body began to tremble under the emotional strain, but the more it was like this, the more effort Lex had to put in to keep his anger from bubbling up.

In the end, instead of saying anything, Lex smiled at her.

"Hey little sis, have I… have I ever met your real body before? Or was everything back on earth just… just made up?"

Moon was stunned by the question. This was not the time to dwell on such things. Even she could feel the enormous aura rising behind her. She wanted more than anything to spend time with Lex. It had been so long since she met someone in person. But the situation…

Before Moon could answer, Lex reached forward and wiped the tears that were about to fall from her eyes.

"Relax, little Moon. I'm here. It's going to be okay."

Oh Lex was really looking forward to beating the living hell out of someone right now. Fortunately, there was a volunteer coming towards him just in time.

Lex tore his shirt and revealed three seals on his chest that kept his cultivation under control. The middle one looked like a piece of jewelry that was embedded right into his chest. It was something he made on his own, and it was responsible for containing most of his power sealed.

The other two, however, consisted of a Glyph that was embedded into his skin, and a tattoo that looked like a tiny lotus.

Lex did not want to undo too many of his seals because it would cause hiccups in his plans, but when circumstances did not allow it, there was no point in dwelling on these things.

The Glyph disappeared from his skin, and the lotus began to fade.

Lex's aura did not explode, because as long as the third seal wasn't undone he could still decently control his power. But to face an immortal, two seals should be more than enough. Probably. He'd never tried before, so he could only find out now.