The Innkeeper

Under Lex's current circumstances, time was difficult to measure. He personally felt like only seconds were passing, but on the ground below him thousands of years were going by. The great expanse that Lex had seen as one single landform eventually broke into three.

Between the three landforms was a sea, but the liquid that filled the sea was not water. The unknown liquid changed colors according to its movement, from silver when it was calm to dark blue when it rose into waves. In between, those two states a myriad of other colors filled it, always moving and changing like a perpetually evolving canvas.

If Lex would have observed the sea, he would have been amazed at how the changing colors seemed to replicate pictures of galaxies he had seen back on Earth. The movement of the water, the change in the colors, all seemed to coincide with the movement of multiple galaxies as they moved through space.

Countless years passed and the realms began to slowly stabilize, and the perpetual changes seemed to be reducing as well. The three land masses also stopped moving apart from one another, as if they had reached some kind of equilibrium.

Trillions of tiny islands formed around the three landmasses, but never too far from the safety of its shores as the cosmic waters were too perilous, with storms and currents too strong, to allow small islands to exist on their own.

Cassandra, who too was forced to enter a meditative state due to the purity of the energy she absorbed, sensed something. She could not help but open her eyes, and when she looked down at the three land masses her body trembled.

"The three realms! The Heaven, Nether and Mortal realms!"

Suddenly she closed her eyes, not daring to look further. She sensed that she had seen something she absolutely should not have. Perhaps that was why the Innkeeper allowed her to access some of the realm energy. It was a subtle way to inform her she needed to stop observing. She could only hope she was not punished for prying.

But the noble and esteemed 'Innkeeper' was right beside her, and had no idea at all what was happening. As the seasons changed, years passed, and the realm took shape, he was busy cultivating.

After, quite possibly, millions of years had passed underneath him, Lex's entire body had finally been nourished by energy, initiating the change. Initiating the change was the fast part. Now, for his entire being to evolve, it would take a long time. Even if the flow of time were not absolutely absurd, during this breakthrough, Lex would have had his first experience in the long durations of closed door cultivation that higher ranked cultivators experience.

To Lex, nothing else happened. The Nascent soul realm was the realm that prepared the soul of the cultivator to get in touch with laws at higher realms. Although Lex technically skipped that step, strengthening his soul was a very important step. That is exactly why this realm involved nothing else other than strengthening the soul.

Any time Lex would absorb cultivation energy in the future, it would be aimed at strengthening his soul, not his body. After all, his Golden core, which was his energy reserve, had already reached a sufficiently high enough level.

But having a stronger soul had immense benefits, which is why Nascent soul cultivators were so much stronger than the Golden core cultivators, despite theoretically having similar levels of spiritual energy in their bodies.

After a long time, another change finally happened. Cassandra hesitantly opened her eyes, and saw that the three land masses had evolved further. Each of them had a slight hue in their aura, despite the fact that the developments of the lands seemed more or less the same.

The largest land mass, or continent, had a gray colored aura, the middle one had a colorless one and the smallest was golden.

But those colors had no other effect on the development of the continents, at least for now. The first signs of life were beginning to become actually visible. Each of the continents was growing some kind of plant life. Some of it looked the same on all continents, while some was more distinct. But that could be attributed to the unique geography of each continent, as well as their climates.

Massive lakes of lava covered one area of one continent, while massive glaciers that rose into the sky could cover the other side. Mountains of pure spirit crystals rose into the skies, and vitality rich elixirs rained from clouds filled with a platinum glow.

Yet somehow, in this chaos, life was finding a way to survive, but only in the form of extremely resilient plants, for now.

More time passed, and eventually there came a time when Cassandra noticed something. The rate of time flow in the continents below them had, for the very first time, slowed down just a bit. If previously a second was one thousand years, then now it was nine hundred and ninety nine years.

The isolation barrier around everyone thinned once more, and another stream of energy came flooding in. This time, Cassandra did not dare to peek.

As it happened, the moment she closed her eyes, for the first time. A snake was born on the middle continent, its massive size dwarfing the crystal mountains. As if testing itself, the snake slithered the continent for a time, its body sprawling across the entire continent itself, before finding a spot to settle down, and enter hibernation.

Its body formed artificial features across the continent, influencing the climate and altering the development of content itself. Eventually, its body was covered in dust and dirt and earth, forming a series of hills that traveled the entire continent in a meandering path.

Moments later, on the smallest continent, a tree was born. This was the first actual tree in the entire realm, and as the days went by it grew and grew without pause, as if it did not know when to stop. Eventually, its canopy covered nearly half the continent, giving it perpetual shade, and forming a mini-climate underneath it, separated from that of the rest of the continent.

Then, on the third and largest continent, an eight legged horse opened its eyes.