The Innkeeper

?Lex suddenly started to cough as he completed his most recent cycle of cultivation, and felt something big stuck in his throat. When plain coughing didn't work, he started smashing his chest with a fist to try and get the blocked bulge to move up.

It worked surprisingly well, and a moment later he coughed out a large misshapen chunk of meat. He would have thought he had just thrown up a part of his lung if he hadn't continued to breath just fine as soon as he coughed it out.

Unlike previous times, when the extracting impurities from his body were black and in the form of sludge, this time his body had discarded a lot of damaged tissue, muscle and other internal organs and grew new ones in their stead. free(w)ebnov(e)l

It was something he instinctively knew, but it still felt eerie to look at a ball of red meat that came out of his own body. With a wave of his hand, he caused the meat to disappear so that he would not have to look at it anymore.

"I guess that's my cue to stop," he murmured as he wiped the blood off his face. Cultivation was too addictive, so although he had only meant to do it for a short while, he ended up cultivating for a day straight.

On the bright side, the condition had improved drastically, and most of the aches filling his body had been fixed. Only his meridians were still damaged, and he had a feeling he would need to cultivate a lot more before that was fixed.

He got up and stretched his body a bit, before getting ready to go fishing. He was not particularly in the mood to explain why he, as a baby, could walk and talk so he put on his Clark Kent glasses and donned his Leo persona.

Despite his actual body's miniature size, Leo still appeared as he had always been. It was quite refreshing.

He teleported away and when he reappeared, he was already at the Wishing well. But, unsurprisingly, it was not as secluded as many of the other parts of the Inn.

There was a family having a picnic nearby, with many kids playing around. Near the well, there were two old men sitting and chatting, while taking turns fishing in the well. They would laugh and joke with one another, while betting on the value of the thing they would fish out.

"Hey guys, do you mind if I join in?" Leo said as he walked up to them.

The old men were wearing half sleeve button up shirts and shorts, alongside fishing hats. They looked like they were retired and just enjoying their vacation. If it weren't for the fact that Lex could sense that they were incredibly powerful, even much more than himself, he might really have believed it.

"Not at all, young man. But you've got to wait your turn," one of the men, with long gray hair coming out of his hat said.

"Would you like something to eat? We had food made by this elven cook and his wife. They're not so good, if I'm being honest, but their ingredients are good at least. I heard they want to open up a restaurant, so they keep trying different recipes to see what's good. It's tough for new couples."

Leo's lip twitched as he recalled Kenta and Sohee. He had been paying for top tier groceries for Kenta, but now he was being told his cooking wasn't actually any good. This sounded like he was about to go into a loss for the first time in one of his endeavors at the Inn.

"I… I wouldn't want to intrude," Leo said awkwardly. He was about to admit that he was their boss, but then didn't want to associate himself with bad cooks. He had to change his sentence at the last minute.

"I have a catch!" the other man roared, and suddenly began to pull his rod as hard as he could. Even Leo was startled, considering the amount of strength the man was using. Did he get something really incredible?

A few moments later, a large, black, burnt rock was pulled out of the well. Leo was dumbfounded. That looked useless. Then, his fancy contact lenses which he had finally put on after a long time, started going crazy.

"Baizin charcoal!" three voices said together. The difference was that the two old men sounded excited, while Leo was confused. But the confusion didn't last long, as his lenses quickly provided him with the information.

Bloody hell, this was immortal level material!

"Young man, it seems like you have good eyesight," said the man who fished out the charcoal as he lifted it with his spirit sense and brought it close to himself to admire.

"Does the well always give things this valuable?" Leo asked. He recalled that it had fished out a system before, and now it had fished out a very rare material that could be used to create ink for Immortal level talismans. Maybe he had made the well wait too long before trying it himself.

"No, most of the time the items are worthless. But if you fish enough, you're bound to get something good. It's a nice passtime."

"Next is my turn," said the man with gray hair as he grabbed the rod and flung the hook into the well. "To be honest, the most valuable thing I found myself is not too useful for me. It was a pill that could help a Nascent cultivator in their cultivation. Most items are far below even that in value. But the novelty of the well just never wears off. It's great value."

"Plus, no matter how we try, we can't use divination to predict what we'll get. It's quite interesting."

"Oh, you two are diviners?" Leo asked, as he summoned a lawn chair and sat beside the two old men.

"Yes, some time ago, we accompanied some brats here for a big event. The timing was pretty great, for our realms went to war while we were gone. It was crazy how suddenly it happened. Even we hadn't predicted it, but now back home everyone thinks we saw it coming and ran away. Whatever, we were long overdue for a vacation anyway."

Leo raised an eyebrow. So far… all he had heard was about the things these two couldn't predict. Were they really diviners?

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