Dao of Money

Chen Ren breathed.

He found himself sitting in the center of his star space, and felt qi fill his surroundings. There was a stillness here, the kind that clung to your skin and hummed in your bones, gentle and all-encompassing like warm water in a bath.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just sat there with his legs crossed, eyes half-closed, and embraced the silence that wrapped around him.

The air shimmered with his qi. It danced around him lazily and every breath he took seemed to draw more of it toward him. He had no idea how such a place could exist—this entire astral world suspended inside his dantian, invisible to all, yet as real and solid to him.

It was absurd. Fascinating. Impossible. And yet, here he was, again.

He exhaled slowly, letting his thoughts drift up like mist, and tilted his head back to gaze at the stars overhead—his stars. There were three now, suspended in that swirling void like miniature suns, each pulsing softly with life. The moment his eyes landed on them, a spark of pride warmed his chest.

Three stars. Three successes.

The first one was gentle, denoting his noodle stall. He inhaled again, although not physically—he could smell the broth and the sizzle of oil. It was deeply etched to his memory. The way kids came to eat with their parents, laughing amongst the crowd, the customers who complimented the dish every now and then, the clatter of bowls. It was all a fond memory when he had first started.

And though he hadn’t pushed it as aggressively as the others, he knew it stood strong.

The second star, though… that one had changed.Chen Ren didn’t need a manual to understand why. His perfume business had shifted, grown, evolved. It was no longer just scented oils and bottles arranged in a tidy little shop. It had become a mall.

A smile crept to his lips. A mall. In a cultivation world.

Perfumes, clothes, accessories. Clothes that refined the sense of fashion in the current world that attracted clients one after another. It had become a space that people could walk into and transform. And at the center of it all, Yuqiu was pushing further every day. The ideas had been his, but she had run with them, made them real.

It was no wonder this star was outshining the others. He could feel it even now—qi trickling from it in steady waves, more than he’d ever refined from it before. If it kept growing at this pace, it would become his strongest income of cultivation for a long while— at least until his pill business bloomed.

The noodle and chips business was still small, but he had started laying foundations in two new cities. Ice cream had been phased out with the seasons, but next year, when summer returned, he’d come back with new flavours, new carts, and a better plan to keep it cold for longer journeys. He wanted it to be more than a street-side treat. He wanted it to be a sensation.

And as for the alcohol business, it was steady—suprisingly so. It was also a slow burn, like the brews they were perfecting in their modest brewery in the village. They hadn’t pushed past Ashen City borders yet—there simply wasn’t enough production capacity to meet the demand a larger region would bring. But within Ashen City, especially among the local cultivators, their product had become something people praised in delight, higher than he’d expected and his stocks in the Zhu Clan had just risen.

His eyes lingered on the stars for a long moment, his mind drifting back to everything that had brought him here. Every challenge, every twist of fate flashed in front of his eyes. All of it had led to this—to the stars overhead, to the qi swirling around him like a lazy river finally beginning to rush.

He exhaled softly, a breath deeper than the rest, and leaned into it. How big of a leap am I going to make this time?

He was at the peak of the fourth star qi refinement realm. The middle of a realm where most would slow. But Chen Ren knew today wasn’t just another step forward—it was a leap. The signs were all around him—the fullness of the stars, the way his meridians tingled in anticipation, the calm focus within his own mind.

He could feel it. Maybe not one star, or two—possibly three. But he was sure of two. That surge would carry him to the seventh star. Maybe even eight.

He wasn’t arrogant enough to believe he’d reach the peak of the realm—not yet. But if he did, if he touched the very edge of it, then everything would change. His ability to protect himself and his ventures. His power to defend those who had begun to rely on him. And he would get the strength to stand against stronger enemies for just a bit longer.

No more running.

No more hiding strength behind half-smiles and cheap robes.

With that thought anchoring him, Chen Ren inhaled deeply, muting his thoughts—and the world turned quiet.

He reached out first to the golden warmth of the first star—his food stall. The qi it released was familiar, gentle, almost comforting. Like the steady rhythm of chopping vegetables or the heat of a pot just beginning to boil. It wrapped around him like a seasoned companion, a friend who had walked with him through the dust and mud of the early days.

He let it wash over him, soaking into his dantian, then coursing outward. In an instant, his limbs hummed. His breath deepened. The qi wasn’t aggressive; it settled. Fortified. Expanded. He could feel the gentle stretching of his meridians as his body accepted more and more of it.

A soft sigh escaped his lips as the last of that qi was drawn in. It wasn’t enough to push him through—but it laid the path.

He opened his senses to the third star next. The alcohol business. The brews. The cultivators.

From the moment the qi touched him, he knew something was different.

It was potent. Not merely denser—but alive. Energetic. Almost unruly. It didn’t slide into his dantian like the first—it charged in, forcing his body to adapt to it on the spot. His skin prickled. His core tightened.

His breath caught—then released in a quiet laugh.

“Cultivators,” he muttered.

That had to be it. The qi wasn’t just from mortals drinking to forget their worries. It came from fellow cultivators, those with their own spiritual essence. Their own refinement. And somehow, some part of that qi had found its way back to him—refined once, now refined again.

And it was perfect for stabilization.

He let it ground him, focusing on firming his foundation. His inner sea of qi no longer sloshed around like water in a jar—it gained shape, weight. Density. And it all happened slowly. Painfully so.

The very air around him shifted, as if the star space itself was acknowledging the change. He didn’t rush. Didn’t force the next step.

Only when the third star’s qi had fully settled—leaving a radiant, molten feeling in his limbs—did he finally turn his attention to the second star.

The largest. The brightest.

He smiled again, almost unable to help it.

The moment Chen Ren opened himself to the final star—the brightest, most bloated with power—it surged through him like a flood that had been waiting for too long behind a brittle dam.

Qi slammed into his body with the weight of a falling mountain.

His back arched involuntarily, every muscle seizing for a heartbeat before relaxing again in slow shudders. His bones creaked—actually creaked—as the energy rushed into marrow and muscle, trying to make space where there was none. His dantian expanded like a bloated waterskin, qi swirling with enough intensity to leave him breathless.

Too much.Too fast.

But Chen Ren didn’t stop. He couldn’t afford to.

He could feel his strength rising in real time—flesh, bone, dantian—every part of him stretched taut under the weight of transformation. His veins burned, his breath came in ragged pulls, but he gritted his teeth and leaned into it, feeling his heart pound in his ears.

No, he would not stop here.

His limbs trembled, sweat beading along his brow—even in the quiet of his star space, the illusion of pain could not be muted.

“Arghhh!” He screamed but kept his eyes tight shut.

What his Dao demanded was never easy. It was progress. And sometimes, to move forward meant bearing the unbearable. This was one of those times.

He slowed his pace. Instead of gulping down entire mouthfuls of qi at once, he began to sip—bit by bit, thread by thread. He let the smaller strands coil into his dantian, where they could unfold and settle more cleanly. The pressure didn’t go away—but it lessened. And the flow became manageable, even if barely.

He felt his body scream and spirit ache, but somewhere beneath it all—he decided he’d adapt.

After all, that was what cultivators did. They were thrown into oceans, they learned to breathe underwater, dropped into flames and they learned how to walk through them.

And as the qi poured into him—filling, flooding, fortifying—he learned.

Soon, as he expected, the foreignness dulled. The pain became a pattern. His breathing steadied again, and even as tremors rolled through his limbs, they no longer rattled his control.

Then it came—the shift.

His qi flared at the suddenness, catching him off guard. Like a mountain rising from the sea, his qi began to change. It changed even in depth. With that, he felt the threshold crumble.

One star. Two. Three.

His cultivation surged, each leap like thunder behind his ribs. The fifth. The sixth. The seventh star flared to life, and for a brief moment, he thought that was the end.

He grunted in pain but he knew it wasn’t the end. The pressure didn’t recede. If anything, it pulled taut again—qi still pouring in—and Chen Ren held himself steady as he crossed into the eight.

A place most people never reached in their entire lives. But he had. In hours.

Fuck… it hurts!

The last trickle of qi faded, and his breathing calmed. For a moment, he let go.

He didn’t rush to test his new strength. He didn’t smile. Didn’t even stand up. Instead, he sat still, eyes closed, feeling the echo of everything that had happened. The minor fractures in his meridians. The stretching of his dantian astral walls. The subtle misalignments that, left unchecked, could cause instability later.

So he corrected them.

Bit by bit, pulse by pulse, he moved qi—repairing, smoothing, reinforcing. For a moment, he knew he was someone who had bent a realm to his will. And with that power came responsibility—especially to himself.

Only when every vein, every channel, every whisper of his qi sang in perfect harmony did he finally open his eyes.

His star space greeted him in silence.

The three stars still shone overhead—but fainter now, their brilliant bodies dimmed by the offering they had given. Chen Ren looked at them quietly, and acknowledged.

They had grown. And so had he.

A smile formed in his lips, it was tired, soft, barely more than a twitch of the lips—-but genuine all the same.

Even the stars above him were dimmer now, as if resting. He knew they would recover.

Yet, even as that warmth lingered in his chest, it didn’t erase the other feeling curling in the back of his mind.

The golden dragon still hadn’t returned.

It had been so long since he last saw it—since the tournament, since that moment when it had shattered the skies to defend him, burning its own essence to do so. Since then… silence. And now, with the Gate of Immortals revealed and more questions clawing at his thoughts than ever before, the absence stung sharper than he expected.

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He had hoped that his breakthroughs would stir it awake. That the echo of progress would draw it forth.

But it came out to be nothing.

He let out a slow breath, attempting to ground himself further—only for the air to catch in his throat halfway.

The star space began to shift.

The once-still sky began to ripple, the stars themselves stirring as if pulled by some ancient tide. One by one, they drifted from their positions, glowing with new light—golden, silver, deep crimson—until they formed a vast, twisting shape in the void above him.

His eyes widened. He knew this shape.

The serpentine body. The long, tapering horns. The aura that spread like curtains of light. The dragon. The same one he had seen when it first saved him.

But it was different now.

Weaker.

Its form shimmered, translucent, and every line of its body looked less defined than before—as if struggling to hold itself together. And still—it appeared.

And Chen Ren… forgot how to speak.

His mouth parted slightly, eyes locked on the great beast floating above him. His knees, even in the endless calm of his star space, felt weak beneath him. Something tightened in his chest—not fear, not reverence, but something deeper.

A connection when he looked at him.

Eyes the color of gold met his. Tired. Wise. Proud.

“I—” Chen Ren stuttered.

The golden dragon groaned, sending vibrations through his body.

“I have questions,” he muttered. The words felt brittle on his tongue. He hated how small his voice sounded—but they were the only words he could muster.

Heavens, why do I feel weak?

The dragon’s head tilted slightly, as if it was smiling without moving its mouth.

“You have time to ask them,” it said finally, the voice frail and echoing like wind through crumbling stone. “For now… stay alive.”

“Wait—what do you mean?” Chen Ren asked, the sharpness in his tone surprising even him. “Why are you—?”

But before he could finish, he saw it. The golden shimmer began to fade.

The body of the dragon started unraveling, piece by piece, light unweaving like threads from silk. The tail scattered first, dissolving into particles. Then the limbs. The horns. Even the eyes began to dim.

“No, wait—!” he reached upward instinctively, even though there was no ground, no sky, no way to hold onto light.

But it was already gone.

And with it, the stars broke apart.

“No!”

His entire star space cracked like glass under pressure, reality folding inward as qi scattered like dust. He couldn’t hold it together. Couldn’t do anything. It crumbled.

And with it, he succumbed to darkness.

***

Chen Ren gasped awake, the cold air of his room hitting his skin like a slap. He was sprawled on the floorboards, drenched in sweat, his robes clinging to his skin. His heart thundered in his chest, every beat loud and frantic, as if his body was still caught in the moment of collapse.

The world was still. The stars were gone.

His cultivation had risen—he could feel it. His qi was sharper, heavier, stronger. But his mind wasn’t on that. Not even close.

There was only one thing echoing through his thoughts, wrapping around his lungs like a vice.

Stay alive?

Why had the dragon said that? Why now?

And what was coming that made even a celestial being speak such words?

He stared at the ceiling, his breath slowly evening out—but his eyes did not blink.

Because now, more than ever, he needed answers.

And the questions only increased when he remembered the fading form. He knew the Golden Dragon was a being of immense power and even greater mystery, and yet… it looked weak. Like something only barely holding on.

He let himself lay in the bitterness of it all.

After a few long minutes, he finally exhaled and moved to sit upright.

His limbs still trembled faintly, his back slick with cold sweat. He reached into his robe pocket and withdrew the one thing that always seemed to anchor him these days when his thoughts began to spiral.

The medallion.

He held it carefully in his palm, and felt the cold metal. It looked the same as always—an old, slightly tarnished disc no larger than his palm, carved with overlapping symbols and inscriptions that even now he hadn’t fully deciphered.

But now… now he could feel it.

There were trickles of qi running through its surface. He’d felt it before when he had bonded with it, but it had been faint. Easy to dismiss. Lately, though, in the quiet moments when he clutched it during meditation or thought, the sensation had grown stronger.

He had grown used to holding it. It had become something of a habit—something he reached for not studying, but when he felt unsettled, as he did now. A totem of calm. A weight in the hand that said, you’re still here.

Chen Ren closed his eyes briefly and focused.

And the medallion responded.

It vibrated lightly—just once—and then light spilled from the carvings, growing outward in lines. Right in front of him, he felt the air move.

A holographic map unfolded, made from pale gold and thin threads of qi, forming a three-dimensional display. Mountains rose in ghostly peaks. A long, winding river shimmered its way through the middle, flanked by scattered cities and marked routes.

Chen Ren leaned forward, attempting to scan every detail.

He had seen this map before—but every time, it left him with the same quiet awe.

It was the medallion’s doing. A function he had only discovered after that first strange vision of the Gate of Immortals—a vision that had not returned since.

According to Wang Jun, this holographic display was not the final destination where the gate was, but a guide—a clue left behind by the creator of the medallion. It pointed to the location of the next piece.

A piece he would need, if he hoped to uncover the truth behind it all.

Chen Ren reached out with a finger and slowly traced the river, eyes narrowing on a valley nestled between two mountains. There were no names written here, no clear markers—just the terrain itself.

He had studied this map enough times to memorize its flow.

And he finally understood something.

This is how Gu Tian found the first piece in Cloud Mist City.

The realization settled like stone in his gut. Gu Tian must have held a similar medallion—must have stood in a similar room, watching a similar hologram flicker to life. And then, like Chen Ren, he had followed the trail. Piece by piece. Until fate had led him right into Chen Ren’s path.

Their meeting hadn’t been an accident. He clenched the medallion tighter, feeling the faint buzz of qi still humming from within.

Though he hadn’t found anything else on Gu Tian’s person, not even a trace of the medallion piece, the implications gnawed at him.

Had Gu Tian hidden it before they fought? Or worse—had someone else given him the information? That thought unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. Because if someone had guided Gu Tian, that meant there were others—people with knowledge of the medallion’s secrets.

His eyes drifted back to the glowing map, the projection still hovering silently in front of him like a suspended memory. Despite the unease coiling in his gut, the sight soothed him.

There was a pull to it.

A sensation that tugged lightly at his spirit, not painful, not overwhelming—but persistent. Like something beneath those mountains, hidden along the river’s path, was waiting for him. Whispering his name. Telling him to come.

He knew it was the medallion. Ever since he had bound it to his qi, the connection had only deepened.

But right now, he welcomed the feeling. Because it was easier to focus on this pull—on the mystery in the distance—than the dragon’s brittle voice and the ominous words it had left behind.

Chen Ren took a slow breath and let his thoughts settle. Slowly, he gathered the scattered pieces of his mind and focused. He wasn’t one to lose himself in fear.

He had come too far for that.

Just as he was beginning to trace a path along the edge of the holographic river, a knock rang against the door.

He blew out a breath, then snapped his fingers lightly, cutting off the qi flow to the medallion. The projection rippled once before dissolving into the air, leaving only silence in its place. He tucked the medallion back into his robe and moved to the door, brushing sweat from his brow.

When he opened it, a young man stood outside. One of the mortals. Dressed in plain brown robes, the man bowed deeply the moment the door opened.

“Sect Leader Chen,” he said breathlessly, eyes wide with worry. “Forgive the disturbance, but we need your assistance on the wall. Cultivator Zi Wen sent me personally.”

“What happened?”

The man swallowed. “A Tier 2 pair of bloodback wolves have appeared outside the city. We—we had no idea such beasts were living nearby. They’re... coordinated. And the spiritual artifacts aren’t doing enough. Our cultivators are holding them back for now, but—”

“You need strength. Understood.”

The man nodded, clearly relieved. Chen Ren didn’t waste another breath.

Even as fatigue coiled in his limbs from the earlier breakthrough, he pushed it down. There was a tightness in his arms, a thrum of overdrawn qi in his core, but it didn’t matter. His mind was clear now. The weight of the dragon’s warning, the medallion’s mysteries, all of it folded neatly behind the reality in front of him.

“Let’s go,” he said, voice sharp as steel. “I’ll see for myself what this monster is.”

***

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