"Professor, Dolores, nice to see you here." inside the lounge of Xianshi Inn, Jianmen on a wheelchair welcomed two new visitors in, Professor Atkinson and Dolores.
"Mr. Yu, nice to have finally met you in person." Professor Atkinson extended his hand to Jianmen and the two shared a firm handshake: "What happened? And I haven't seen your avatar - I meant Mr. Lun Wang."
"Oh, he had to go back into hibernation. He spent the last drop of his power dealing with some trash." Jianmen chuckled and pointed to the diner and said: "What do you want for drinks? Tea? Coffee? I recommend coffee, they're a special kind cultivated by the one and only Josephine Wong and roasted with my best roaster, it'll give you just the right kind of kicks without making you all jittery."
"Thank you, that sounds lovely." Professor Atkinson sat down by one of the tables in the diner.
"What about matcha cake? Can I have some?" Dolores asked with her hand raised while she was looking around at the interior of the inn: "Unbelievable, I can't believe I've never come here before - how many planes of space have you stacked inside this small space?"
"Around a hundred of them, enough for around a thousand guests and the highest floor will still be the third floor - most of them were actually never used." Jianmen smiled and snapped his fingers, a coffee pot started brewing, then he rolled to the fridge and took out a fresh and uncut matcha cake: "Actually technically you've been here before Dolores, your mother stayed here for a few days while she was pregnant with you."
"Hmm, really? I've never heard her mentioning that." Dolores took the plate handed over to her by Jianmen with a small piece of matcha cake on.
"It's probably no big deal. " Jianmen picked up the coffee pot and poured three mugs of coffee for the guests and himself: "So what brings you here? Did that mutual acquaintance of ours give you any more riddles to solve?"
"Christina! What the hell happened to your teeth?!" just this moment, they heard an angry female voice coming from outside the diner: "Did you eat some random garbage again?"
"Get off! Get off!" another female voice similar to the one before protested: "It's none of your business! "
"Hey, ladies?" Jianmen rolled to the entrance of the diner and talked to the two black cats fighting on the ground: "We're trying to have a conversation here - and there are civilian guests in the inn, so could you …"
"Yes! You heard that Katherine?!" the black cat who was pinned down with her mouth forced open jumped into the garden at the back: "Don't disturb the guests! And I am not leaving! You can just take my vote if you have to!"
"Christina, it's not that simple!" the other black cat jumped into the garden and started chasing her younger sister around in the garden.
"Sorry about that." Jianmen closed the door to the diner and came back to the table.
"Are those Nekomatas?" Professor Atkinson asked.
"Yes, and I offered one of them free indefinite stay because she helped Jason with a major tribulation." Jianmen chuckled: "If you can catch up to them, I believe they're quite friendly and are willing to chat. So - where were we?"
Professor Atkinson and Dolores proceeded to tell Jianmen about their experience at the edgelands, and they also tried their best to detail everything they saw from the Spring of Knowledge, as well as the information they collected from Xyn's temple. The fact that Xyn was the one responsible for his own fall, as well as the rupture of the void and indirectly the creation of what were known as the Elemental Realm and the realms of Fog Dwellers and Depth Dwellers, was quite a surprise to Jianmen as well - for when he first met Xyn, he could tell that Xyn was no ordinary God, but he had never thought that he would be responsible for the complete breakdown of a whole realm. But in the end it did make sense - Xyn was the first one to have ascended to Godhood from the void, and he undoubtedly had a deep connection to the void. What was more - Xyn was the first God level being Jianmen knew that had survived the fall in this good a condition - before Xyn, all the other fallen gods he encountered were all weakened to a point where there was practically no way to return to their former glory. Hoztang, another fallen god he was quite familiar with, had gone to the deep end and started using various unsavory means in attempts to recover its power, but even with those, it was nowhere near the level of Xyn. Jianmen even suspected, if Hoztang had shown itself to individuals like Josephine Wong, Nameless, Pei, Blue or even mostly physical fighters like Alexander or Vivian from Josephine Wong's team, it would be well within the realms of possibility that it end up slayed by these individuals.
Because neither Professor Atkinson and Dolores nor was able to see or sense anything useful for their mission of locating Xyn's descendant from the Spring of Repentance at the bottom of the temple, Xyn gave them blessings and tokens for their passage into the edgelands again - two almost invisible tattoos on their left forearms. They were hesitant to go back, because of what happened with the Spring of Knowledge when they were there, which made the elementals stationed in the edgelands become not as friendly to them.
"Thank you for sharing this knowledge with me. I really appreciate it." Jianmen let out a long exhale: "These are some groundbreaking findings - just find the friggin' descendant, and you'll never have to worry about funding ever again."
Professor Atkinson and Dolores exchanged looks, then laughed resignedly at the same time.
"Wait, I have a question." Jianmen refilled the coffee mugs for the two guests: "Did Xyn tell you what he was before his ascension to Godhood?"