"I thought we evacuated all Demi-Dao Lords," Eclipse said with her chin resting on her hand. "Why is Oaka still there?"

Harriot sighed as he looked at the snake with exhaustion in his eyes.

"He crushed his Dao again," the poodle answered. "He says he would rather not become a Dao Lord than become a Dao Lord with a Dao he does not approve of."

"That's stupid. He's the one coming up with the Daos. How can they be something he doesn't approve of?" Eclipse asked. But there was no real answer to this question. The snake was free to do as he wished as long as he did not harm the garden in some way - it wasn't like they had a desperate need of Dao Lords or anything.

The two resumed watching Lex who was exchanging 18 dragon scales for the compass. In truth, that conversion rate was pretty bad, but this was the Primordial Garden, so the value of Heaven Immortal materials wasn't all that great here.

Lex didn't bother buying anything else, or even inquiring the price of anything. He had entered the shop out of curiosity, not to get a reality check about his poverty. Turns out, even after owning an entire realm, a man could be poor.

"Hey Lex, before you leave, please take this," Oaka said, suddenly slithering from behind the counter and handing him a business card. "Since you're now an official customer of my shop, you can use this card from anywhere in the Primordial Garden to enter my shop and buy something. Trust me, we have everything you need, and even more of things you don't even know you need!"

Lex raised an eyebrow, suddenly reminded of his own system. All guests who bought something could get a key to return to the Inn. Was Oaka a system user?

The question seemed genuine, but Lex had a feeling that this wasn't the case. Instead, he felt like Oaka was strong enough to achieve this on his own.

Mary had once told him that he would associate anything and everything magical to systems, but when he grew stronger, he'd realize that stronger cultivators could do the same things on their own. It seemed like he was finally strong enough to get in touch with such people.

"Thanks," Lex said, and took the card.

He stepped out of the shop and took a look at the compass which was pointing him deeper into the canyon. He had less than three hours to leave the canyon, but he had no intentions of taking that long anyway.

Teleporting or slipping through any shortcuts was more dangerous than directly traveling by land, so all he needed to do was run faster. Lex exerted his full strength and launched himself forward at his full speed. Anywhere else, such a display of brute strength would have left a crater in the ground and would have caused multiple sonic booms. Here, he barely caused a gust of wind.

The deeper into the canyon he went, the darker it got, as if light wasn't shining through the crystal ceiling. Or rather, as if the walls of the canyon were not just sucking up spirit senses, but the effectiveness of all senses.

The range of his eyesight began to decrease, the potency of his hearing, and even the accuracy of his instincts. The world around Lex started to become darker until all he could see and feel were his immediate surroundings, finally allowing him to understand why the compass was necessary.

But that was not all. Because of his connection to the Inn and Jack, Lex also noticed that his grasp of the flow of time around him began to slip. It felt, for him, that he had been running for mere minutes, yet if his estimates were right, an entire hour had already elapsed.

Fortunately, even as he ran, he did not encounter any dead ends, or he would have ended up wasting even more time. In fact, this deep in the canyon, and this suppressed by its walls, Lex almost felt like he would have gotten lost entirely, even unable to determine where he was and which direction he wanted to go.

He faced no enemies, and no traps, perhaps he was going on the right path, but that did not encourage Lex. Instead, he became even more solemn as he realized this was a true obstacle, one that would have been very difficult for him to overcome on his own. Eventually, despite his best attempts to get through the canyon quickly, three hours passed by.

The entire canyon trembled, as if to let him know that his newbie protection period was over. A thin mist began to rise from the ground, filling the canyon air with an energy Lex was all too familiar with.

"Ghosts," Lex groaned as he pulled out Naraka. Ghosts weren't actually the souls of those who died, despite many cultures and faiths stating so. They were a distorted lifeform born from the energy of a soul when it collapsed, which is why sometimes ghosts looked similar to people who had died.

Ghosts, much like the creatures of Abaddon, craved souls and the energy from which souls were made, for that is what allowed them to grow. The reason why Lex didn't like them was simple: they were all cheapskates!

The Midnight Inn had accepted guests from all kinds of races, even ones who Lex would have honestly preferred to avoid such as the Gilati, a race of slug like creatures who were annoying as heck. But ghosts were the cheapest of them all, who did anything and everything to get free things without having to pay anything even if the service was genuinely worth it.

A very important point to note was that Ghosts and Spirits were not the same. For example, if a guest paid all their net worth to the Inn to avail their Beyond the Grave service, they would be transformed into Spirits. That allowed them to continue to exist, but in a different form, and tied to the limits of the Inn. A Ghost, instead, was always a new entity, even if it inherited some of the memories of the soul they had been born from.

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