Chapter 1649 — Months

Deviating from their original plan of immediately trying to progress their realm, Jack and his crew began to gather the as of yet unnamed ore across the Artica realm, being mysteriously guided by shooting stars ever towards the depths of space.

But the time difference made it so that time moved much slower in the Artica realm than realms that hadn’t completely matured. Within the Midnight Realm, the Cultural Circus officially began, but unlike the previous events, there was no rush. This was an event that had been scheduled to last for five years - an idea Lex got from the New Age Expo, which was supposed to last five years in Artica realm time.

Such things were actually far more common in the universe at large than Lex had originally thought. On Earth, back when he was a mortal, the world worked very quickly. In pursuit of efficiency and productivity, everyone was always in a rush - a far cry from life in the older ages, and even in the countryside.

But in the universe, things had gone beyond that, and the rate of everything appeared to have slowed down, though in actuality that was not the truth. High cultivation levels meant that everyone could maintain high productivity even while taking things slow.

The extremely long lifespan of cultivators meant that for things that didn’t include emergencies such as war or fighting, everything was slowed down.

In that regard, an event that lasted five years wasn’t even that long. Lex had even heard that in some places there are entire plays that span several decades, as every moment, big and small, of a character’s life are portrayed in an attempt to capture the depth of his or her emotions.

While Lex surveyed the Inn remotely, he noticed an odd trend, though one he very much appreciated. Fewer and fewer higher level cultivators came to the Inn, for they had something much more relevant to their level to occupy their time. The Champions tourney, which was very much still going on, was picking up in momentum and starting to really heat up.

As a result, there was a gradual trend of lower level cultivators making up the larger number of guests in the Inn. Alongside the targeted services towards mortals, and the five year long event, the Inn was about as safe as it had ever been.

When he wasn’t focusing on that, Lex went around exploring the jungle, finding ways to strengthen his seal time and time again. As a result, his knowledge and understanding of seals enhanced, and Lex was forced to use laws in more complex and creative ways.

Many ideas were actually given to him by the Celestial insects, who had a very different progression path than humans.

They viewed and controlled laws in different ways, so their insight sometimes was incredibly helpful and insightful, and at other times completely a waste of time.

Regardless, he managed to strengthen his seal time and time again, but the number of remaining days never grew too large. It seemed he was always a couple of months away from the seal breaking.

This was because the longer the seal existed, the more those mysterious laws that remained invisible to him called out to him - nourishing him and improving his control over laws, guiding him deeper into becoming a Heaven Immortal.

Lex genuinely figured that for some people, resisting the urge to become a Heaven immortal was a genuine cultivation method used to improve their foundations.

He simultaneously studied Karma, and Abaddon, gaining a few insights now and again.

He also kept his attention trained onto Obsidian. Ever since the beginning, the Obsidian Sage had not appeared again, nor had he given out any quests. The number of members had increased, but confined to their own islands, all they could do was watch each other from afar, or try to get along with the few on their own islands.

Some of them really did try to reveal the existence of Obsidian, and they were promptly expelled, unable to return.

Such events made the others even more careful about divulging the secrets of Obsidian, the knowledge of the secret clubs existence was ultimately revealed.

Of course, no one mentioned anything about systems. Revealing Obsidian was one thing, but revealing the secret about systems was another thing entirely. Systems were a secret that had been kept in the universe for a very long time, which clearly meant the repercussions were far more serious than the repercussions of revealing Obsidian’s existence.

For now, Lex did not intend to do anything else with that club. After all, he’d already given them a mission, which was to find a way to send things to Abaddon. As long as any of their systems allowed such a thing, they’d help Lex tremendously.

But progress was slow.

Days turned to weeks, and then months. There was no sign of Fenrir and Little Blue, and so the armies remained within the jungle.

Kaemon hadn’t wasted that time either. Not only did he allow his army to heal as much as possible, he tapped into the knowledge of the insects, learning secrets of Abaddon he had yet to encounter.

Even though they had never left the jungle, the sheer amount of time they had spent there meant they knew things. They even revealed a way to find some ruins, something Lex had been looking forward to for his own research. Unfortunately, there were no ruins in the jungle.

As more time passed, Lex managed to find many valuable treasures, including the flowers that increased comprehension. He gave the first one to Z, who had been struggling to fight the Dark Knight. Then he took one himself, and found it had little to no effect on him.

Then he sent one to the Gift shop, and had someone give it to the Galactic turtle.

He even found other treasures to help him improve his system functionality, bringing its functionality up to 43%. Unfortunately, each time a resource was used, it couldn’t be used again. Lex collected them anyway, for they might be useful later on.

Like this, training, studying, researching, thirteen months passed by within the jungle.