The Innkeeper

"What a pathetic copy. The Jolly Rancher uses Pebbles as the ship's ram, not some fake attachment," Lex cursed internally as he looked at the ship. There was no way he was going to reveal any connection to that particular crew on his own, or even reveal knowledge of their existence. In that respect, the poor copy of his ship actually worked out in his favor.

Even so, Lex felt a little peeved at the universe. What kind of injustice was it to use his own ship to ram him?

But even while he cursed the universe for poor quality plagiarism, he treated the incoming attack seriously. The ship was double the strength of the star, but back then Lex also hadn't entered his third form properly.

While the ship was a dangerous attack, Lex was more than capable of dealing with it. If he had to guess, then things would truly start getting dangerous after the eighth or ninth attack. By that he did not mean that he could take the attack while enduring slight damage. He meant that every single attack after that had the potential to actually, genuinely kill him!

All of this was merely his speculation, but since he had guessed as much, he would act as if it was true. So what was he supposed to do if he had nine or ten impending attacks that might oneshot him? Simple, he had to grow stronger with each opportunity.

Everything…. everything he had been hoarding up until this moment needed to be used. With life and death on the line, what was the point of holding things back.

Once the ship made of cosmic dust was halfway to Lex, he unleashed his strongest attack - the one he could only use in the Jorlam form. Were Jorlam mere big brutes who could eat planets? Impossible.

They had unique abilities too. Of them, the strongest ability that Lex was able to learn, he named Severlight - mainly because it sounded a lot cooler than Fission beam. It was literally what it sounded like: a beam he could shoot out which could instantly induce fission, breaking down anything and everything it touched. As if that was not all, any energy released as a result of something breaking down would be absorbed by Lex, while the matter produced as a result could be eaten by Lex.

In short, despite how powerful the attack actually was, Lex suspected it was an innate ability the Jorlam race developed to eat. He almost named it Breakfast beam but that would just be making fun of himself, so he didn't.

When Severlight reached the cosmic cloud ship, there was no large explosion. How could there be? The beam absorbed any and all excess energy released from the clash, resulting in a simple, silent confrontation that ended straightforwardly.

The entire process merely took 17 minutes while Severlight kept pushing and disintegrating the ship, and the ship also kept pushing down. Compared to the first strike from the tribulation, the result this time was a lot more straightforward because this time Lex wasn't playing around and trying to bite the attack.

But things were far from over. After resisting the attack came the nourishment, for which Lex was already prepared.

During the first strike, the attack lasted hours, and the second strike didn't fall down immediately after as well. So if Lex was right, he had double the amount of time left to absorb the nourishment from this strike.

Lex sat crosslegged and closed his eyes, focusing only on his cultivation just as the nourishment reached him. Just like last time, he could not absorb it - nor did he actively try to. Instead, he used his cultivation and body to resist the energy as much as possible while running his cultivation technique. The excess energy absorbed from Severlight helped him resist and even recover from any damage.

Thus… in an odd turn of event, Lex, in his Jorlam form, sat on the ground in the Primordial Garden and cultivated. He cultivated out in the open, not even caring if anyone got involved or tried to mess with him.

What suicidal maniac would attack or disturb him during a tribulation? Not only would that increase the difficulty of Lex's tribulation, but they would also get punished as well.

Hence, he cultivated out in the open without care, and the benefits he got were substantial as well. Although he was not adapting to Primordial energy as quickly as he had hoped, he was steadily increasing his strength.

His only regret was the absence of a suitable cultivation mat. With one of those to help him, his cultivation would be even more beneficial.

It took around an hour for Lex to finish dealing with the nourishment of the tribulation, after which he promptly looked towards the clouds to judge how long before the next attack, as well as to gauge the strength of the next attack as well.

Everything was exactly as he expected. The duration between attacks had increased, and the next attack was set to be three times as strong as the first one.

That gave him just enough time to strengthen his cultivation some more. This first thing he pulled out was actually the Defilers core.

Ever since he became a Heaven Immortal, so from a few hours ago basically, his instincts had been telling him to absorb and fuse with this thing through his cultivation. But not just that, his instincts told him to fuse with the Divine energy in his mask and knife simultaneously.

He didn't know why such a thing mattered, but he was sure that it would serve to benefit him somehow.

While Lex himself had no idea what benefits he would get, the moment he prepared to absorb and fuse with Profane energy and Divine energy simultaneously, the owner of the Primordial Garden had a change in her expression. She went from looking at Lex with curiosity to looking at him like an exotic specimen.

"A nephilim candidate? In this day and age, and right in my garden too. Never thought I'd see the day…"