The Innkeeper

Chapter 1411  Holy Kingdom

As he stated, Lex quickly left the temple, summoned the Silent Wanderer and flew away, barely taking a minute in total. But just a few hours later, Lex returned.

Spirit stones were extremely valuable, especially for mortals, since they contained pure spiritual energy which was easy to absorb and use. It was a currency, as well as a valuable resource. On any given planet, it was a finite resource. But that was only if seen on the scale of a planet. On a universal scale, spirit stones and spirit stone mines were hardly rare. In fact, they were fairly common.

As a result, Lex had not escaped when he heard about the requirement to pay with a whole mine for his entrance. While he was not prodigal enough to walk around with an entire spirit stone mine in his spatial ring, all he needed to do was search the asteroids with his spirit sense for a while to find one. This was exactly why space mining was such a lucrative business, and probably what Wormwood had been doing in the first place when he discovered the temple.

Lex promptly returned to the temple, and offered the horse the payment.

"Oh my word, no, you do pay me," the horse said amusedly. "You pay the toll when entering the Holy Kingdom. I must admit, I was not expecting your return. Most meatbags either try to enter without the toll, or simply depart and do not return."

"I would appreciate it if you avoided calling me a meatbag, translucent image," said Lex. Calling the horse a translucent image was an attempt to make it understand how being called a meatbag felt like, but the message did not land.

"Oh my word, do not try to flatter me. I am a happily married horse with children of my own. Besides, a relationship between bodied and non-bodied entities would never work," the horse told Lex very seriously.

Lex again was once again reminded of the fact that even projections had relationships, yet he did not even have a girlfriend yet. Probably because it would require him to actually try asking someone out for him to get a girlfriend.

A lightbulb suddenly turned on in Lex's head! That's why he didn't have a girlfriend! He hadn't even tried to ask someone out. But who to ask?

Lex very seriously put that on his list of things to do. Although yes, he did not have the time to distract himself with things as he was incredibly busy, what was the point of it all if he didn't even try to date? Right?

Or was equating, and or linking the fulfilment and purpose of life to dating taking away from the actual experience and journey that was life? What was the purpose of life anyway? Why did it matter…

Lex gave himself a mental slap and woke himself up from his wandering thoughts. In truth, he was just feeling nervous about asking someone out so he was distracting himself by getting unnecessarily philosophical.

"By the way, my name is Lex. What are you called?"

"The names Vanderbilt," the horse said, though Lex could see it increasing the distance between them a little.

They walked deeper into the temple, the spiritual field getting thicker, until Lex suddenly felt a subtle barrier impeding his movement. It felt like the barrier was soft, and just the slightest bit of effort would allow him to go through it, but he did not try that. Instead, he touched the barrier with his spatial ring and directly transferred the spirit stone mine into the barrier.

An arch opened up, allowing him to pass through, accompanied by Vanderbilt.

"Welcome, Lex, to the Holy Kingdom," the horse said with more than a hint of pride in its voice as it looked out at the landscape in front of him. Lex, too, stood still as he took everything in.

If he used his eyes, all he saw was pure, indistinguishable light, which was basically the same as seeing nothing. But his spirit sense saw the true Holy Kingdom - or at least the parts of it his spirit sense could reach.

The entire kingdom seemed to be built on clouds of gold, some rising higher while others lower, but all connected. From within the gold clouds grew countless plants, but all of them were projections. More importantly, millions upon millions of projections filled the clouds, which hid numerous projection buildings, and this was no doubt just a tiny speck compared to the entirety of the kingdom.

This entire place was filled with a thick spiritual field. This spiritual field was not the same as thick spiritual energy. No, this was the spirit of the mind, which explained why speaking with his spirit sense would create a normal voice, and walking would cause an echo within the range of his spirit sense.

This entire kingdom could only be perceived and interacted with the spirit sense, which was innately tied to the mind. It was as if this entire kingdom existed in thought alone. How could someone create a place like this?

Lex failed to see the laws involved in this place even with his left eye, nor could he feel them with his tenet. He could feel the presence of numerous laws, but he could not tell how they joined together to make this kingdom.

"You said this place was created by someone called Mama Pari? Who exactly is that?" Lex asked as he allowed himself to feel the awe that this place evoked. It was genuinely rare for things to surprise him these days, but a kingdom that existed within thought… although he was sure that's not what this place really was, and that it occupied actual physical space somewhere, he could not be entirely sure.

This was because his connection to the Vino star system was cut off. The system was no longer trying to link to that place, since he was no longer there. But the space laws of this place were so unusual that Lex could not identify its spatial coordinates at all.

"Mama Pari? Well, isn't it in the name? She's the mama of all Projections! She was the first, or at least she's the strongest projection in the Origin realm. She has a temple here if you want to see one of her statues. They say that she can see everything that happens in front of her statue, so maybe you can talk to her if she finds you interesting."

"Is the temple open to the public?" Lex asked, curiously.

"Of course it is," Vanderbilt responded. "Here, let me take you there. I can't stay for long though, I have to get back to my own toll. You can explore on your own once I leave." n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Lex began following Vanderbilt as he thoroughly analysed and studied the spiritual field in the Holy Kingdom, trying to understand how it allowed projections to exist without anything… well, without anything actually projecting the projections.

Mama Pari's temple was, to no one's surprise, also an exact replica of the Taj Mahal. In fact, Lex began to suspect that the Taj Mahal back on Earth was also related to the Holy Kingdom somehow. It would not exactly be surprising considering all the secrets Earth had. But the one thing he could confirm was that even if the temple back on Earth was connected to the Holy Kingdom, the connection would have been severed or else Bastet would not have lived on Earth for so long.

The center of the temple there was a large statue made out of white marble, and to Lex' surprise, Mama Pari actually looked… pretty normal. He was used to cultivators and strong beings somehow looking disturbingly beautiful or handsome.

That was not to say that Mama Pari was ugly. Rather, she looked like a meme he saw of a middle aged Russian mom. She was not slim or petite, but had decent meat on her bones and looked like she would chop down a tree and wrestle a bear all in the same day before coming back home to cook lunch, all during the thick of winter.

"In fact, I used to wrestle Hydra's back in the days before they went extinct," the statue suddenly said, turning to look down at Lex. "And mind you, my husband did the cooking in our house."

"My apologies," Lex suddenly said, bowing down deeply as his heart was filled with horror. What was going on? Had he encountered another Dao being? They definitely weren't common enough for him to be meeting them so regularly?

"Actually, in my Kingdom it's very easy for me to read anyones thoughts, since the spiritual field you're in comes from my actual body," Mama Pari's statue explained while she wore a teasing smile. "Although, yes, to answer your question, I am a Dao being. To be more accurate, I'm one of the original Demi-Dao Lords of the Origin realm. My real body does not enter the Holy Kingdom, lest all the other projections be destroyed, and this statue is specially designed to not leak any aura.

"But enough about me. I know about you. You're the brat who unveiled Sekhmet's little prank. Oh man, I wanted to meet you but the Henali banned me from entering the Midnight Inn. But lookie here, you just entered my Holy Kingdom on your own. Please have a seat. I want to have a little chat with you."

Before Lex knew it, he was sitting down with a cup of tea in his hands.