The Innkeeper
chapter-1223

Stepping into the ship, Lex felt like he had walked into another space entirely. The space inside the ship was strangely artificially solid, so much so that it felt slightly suffocating. Yet perhaps that was exactly the kind of thing needed for a vessel to traverse through the Void safely.

Naturally, with the Jolly Rancher, Jack would have to come up with a better solution.

Lex found a corner for himself to sit in and closed his eyes. Though he was curious about the ship, he had to sell the act at the moment, and he was well aware that he was under supervision even if it didn't seem like it.

"It will take roughly 96 hours to get to the Trials of Eternity, and once there each and everyone of you will be dropped off at a different point. This is for your own safety. Once, every year the ship will make a round to see if there is any progress. If you manage to complete the mission you will still have to wait till the return of the ship to be credited for it, don't forget."

Lex entered a meditative trance, ensuring that he was in his peak state as they approached their destination. This was a long time coming, and even if he was absolutely certain in his preparation, that did not mean that there was no risk.

In fact, most cultivators did not pass their first tribulation. Lex had not forgotten that the first time he encountered a tribulation, which was inside the Midnight Inn, the devil that had been experiencing the tribulation died.

He then added tempering rooms and tribulation rooms to the Inn to help train people in the various obstacles tribulations bring, as well as help them reduce the dangers of it.

In fact, over the past few years, he had trained his body in both the Fire tribulation and Lightning tribulation rooms, until he was totally immune to the kind of tribulation he expected to face. Then he increased the difficulty, and kept on doing so until the point of diminishing returns.

One of the reasons he wanted to increase his defense until he could tolerate the attack of a Heavenly Immortal cultivator was because he felt like his own tribulation would be far from normal.

He had done the best he could. Now all that was left was to finalize his tenet. This was something he had done extensive research on, and unfortunately came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as a 'best practice' when it came to tenets. There was only what best suited the specific immortal.

But what were tenets to begin with? That was one of the first questions Lex asked himself, alongside questions like which ones should he choose, and more importantly, how many should he choose?

The answers to those questions were manifold. The root difference between mortals, who in this context were not non-cultivators, but instead were cultivators up to the Nascent realm, and immortals was that ordinarily, mortals could at most sense that the universe operates based on some kind of code, system, rule, divine providence etc. based on their cultivation path and belief.

The essence was that there was something that controlled the actions and reactions of everything in existence, and which ensured that everything always acted in accordance with those rules. A very overly simplified example of this was that water froze when it was cold and boiled when it was hot, and this rule existed all over the universe. Of course, this example excluded the existence of countless other laws in determining those outcomes, such as pressure, environment etc.

Comparatively, Immortals could not only begin to perceive these 'laws' but also begin to understand them and their influence on seemingly completely unrelated things, as well as control or influence those laws to a certain degree.

For example, an Immortal may be able to bypass the requirement of temperature change to bring about the freezing or boiling effect in water by directly influencing the laws that dictated the behavior of water itself.

That is where tenets came into play. The way an immortal perceived, and then influenced the laws of the universe was totally and completely dependent on their tenets. This meant that two immortals, even if they were twins who had lived an identical life in all their experiences, would see the universe differently from one another as long as there was even the slightest difference in their tenets, which was almost a certainty.

When studying the same laws of water, someone who had tenets of music might perceive the actions and influences on water through patterns and melodies, whereas a swordsman would see it entirely differently. Even if they brought about the same end result, the way they would each do it was completely different, and something they would have to discover for themselves.

This was another reason why growth among immortals was so slow. At most, a person could offer some guidance, but they could not actually teach anything about laws to anyone. That usually depended entirely upon personal comprehension and understanding.

With that said, it was obvious how extremely important tenets were to someone, which is why picking the right ones was an extremely important decision - almost as important as deciding the number of tenets as well!

The reason why it was called tenets, and not tenet, is because almost all immortals had multiple tenets. After all, it was rare to find a person with only a singular interest, and even rarer for them to rise through the cultivation ranks. Life would, inevitably, find ways to add various obstacles or challenges in someone's path, which would end up shaping their personality in various ways. As such, finding a single thing a person could dedicate their entire life to was exceptionally difficult.

Moreover, there was no clear benefit to having more or fewer tenets.

Considering that a tenet could be literally anything, from a way of life, to an abstract concept, to something entirely imaginary that did not actually exist in reality, it was almost expected for an immortal to have at least four or five tenets. After all, usually, what most people did when selecting a tenet was picking something they had a natural affinity for, or something they were dedicating their life to.