The Innkeeper - Chapter 1245: Black pillar

The shift was far from subtle. The eleven immortals had been working together to resist Lex’s assault, keeping him from doing any significant damage. Their strategy, while defense oriented, was not bad.

They did not need to harm Lex themselves. After all, they’d already learnt that if they took out overpowered treasures, so could he. So instead of pushing him, they were just holding him at bay, and letting the tribulation do the damage.

The tribulation was already at the level where Lex could no longer simply ignore it. The energy within the lightning bolts could nourish Lex, evolving his body further, but the laws within were purely harmful.

The plan was sound, but it could no longer work. Not only was Lex acclimatizing to his new realm a lot faster than any of them anticipated, he had enough brute power to kill them.

His application of his strength to overwhelm an immortal’s tenets was actually one of the hardest ways to kill another immortal. There were many, much more efficient and effective ways to kill them, but they were not things one would easily stumble upon.

Immortals, in general, did not spread the ways in which other immortals could be killed. It was not enough to be a secret, but it was at the level where a new immortal without sufficient connections or background would have trouble finding out.

That was not a problem for Lex. In fact, he already had a very thick document he’d purchased from the Emporium with this information, but he hadn’t read it yet. If things became critical, he’d peak into it. For now, he was satisfied with slowly building up the pressure.

Lex teleported towards Jeffrey as if intending to take him down with the same power, yet the others acted as well. They couldn’t let Lex take the initiative anymore, and so preemptively attacked him.

But with each passing moment, Lex was becoming stronger. A flash of lightning struck down at him, but with his right eye he created a barrier right above him which blocked only the laws within the bolt. It lasted for a split second, but that was long enough to eliminate the laws from the bolt.

This way, Lex didn’t need to actually put effort into blocking the lightning bolt. It was more convenient to just bear the damage to his body.

Nine of the immortals suddenly surrounded Lex, and instead of attacking him, or blocking his assault, joined hands together.

Lex felt the hair on his body suddenly stand up as he sensed danger. He tried to teleport away, but encountered an obstacle he had never faced before. Instead of space being blocked or affected, the laws governing space all around him suddenly felt out of reach, as if they had suddenly become muted.

Without them, regardless of how powerful his space affinity was, he could not use it at all.

But it was not just space laws that disappeared around Lex. Almost every law he was familiar with changed, replaced instead by this foreign sense of oppression.

Lex immediately felt a strain on his tenet. His tenet, which was Supremacy, was what Lex used to influence laws. That meant that despite his spiritual energy having an affinity for laws itself, the part of him that was the most sensitive to laws with his tenet.

Conversely, if his tenet could influence laws, then laws could then also be used to influence his tenet. That was why when the unusual change happened his body, spirit and soul were fine, but his tenet felt like an immense weight had been dropped on it.

The sudden, unexpected impact caught Lex unaware. As if to take advantage of his weakness, a lightning bolt struck him at that exact moment, breaking the pattern of striking after a set number of seconds.

WIth absolutely no defense in place, the lightning bolt burned through Lex’s suit, which had so far survived with Lex’s help, revealing his chiseled body.

The immortals fighting Lex suddenly felt immensely intimidated when they saw the state of his body! After having gone through a Fire tribulation just a short while ago, being struck by countless lightning strikes and suffering through all their attacks, Lex’s body was in pristine condition. It was as if it had completely healed from all its injuries long ago, and even with the burns from the latest lightning strike, it hardly looked like Lex was weakened at all.

They redoubled their focus, increasing the pressure Lex was feeling. Lex, in turn, tried to attack the immortals. But whether it was his physical strength or his techniques, they seemed immensely weakened.

It was as if whatever laws were involved for each of his actions were suddenly muted, or separated from him by an invisible veil. The feeling of danger increased, and Lex for the first time encountered something Domination could not affect at all. It could bend the laws of the universe to its will, but it could do nothing if those very laws were out of reach.

A part of Lex’s mind found this situation very interesting. This was a very innovative way to attack other immortals’ tenets, and reinforced Lex’s beliefs that attacking tenets was one of the most effective ways to kill an immortal – though he was certain there had to be other ways to do it as well.

Lex coughed again as the pressure on his tenet increased. He wasn’t able to easily discover a way to resolve his predicament. There were a few techniques he had not used yet – but he wanted to keep those secret for as long as possible. After all, the fight had just begun.

Lex activated his left eye, trying to gain deeper insight into what it was that was oppressing him and hiding all the other laws.

He saw a massive, black pillar covering the area all around him, pushing away all the other laws in the region it occupied. The pillar did not actually exist, but was only a manifestation of whatever it was that was keeping him suppressed.

He could not understand what it was, but he could see what it was doing to his tenet.