Dao of Money

Snow-laden branches blurred past the window. Tiny figures leapt between them—creatures with plump bodies wrapped in furs so thick they looked like living snowballs. In their nimble paws, they clutched cracked nut shells, nibbling with the absentminded contentment of those untouched by the world’s troubles.

They looked like squirrels at first glance, but Chen Ren knew better. These were linhui squirrels, one of the few spirit beasts rarely hunted and often kept as pets by cultivators. Not for their claws, which could barely scratch bark, nor for their bite, which could scarcely dent a walnut. No, these little creatures were prized for something far rarer. Their qi, gentle and steady, could seep into the hearts of those nearby, calming turbulent emotions and quieting a restless mind.

Chen Ren wondered if he had one perched on his shoulder, its soft fur brushing against his neck, would he finally feel the stillness he lacked? Or would the chaos inside him drown even that gentle flow of qi?

“Kid.”

Wang Jun’s voice snapped him from the drifting thought, its rough tone dragging his mind back to the cramped warmth of the carriage. “I don’t really understand what you’re thinking. You say you’ve got a golden dragon in your star space. I know about spirit manifestations—rare, yes, but not impossible. For one to appear, a spirit has to take a serious interest in you. And you’re telling me a dragon—a dragon—did that for you.” His brow furrowed. “But you don’t even know how to speak to it?”

From the corner, Yalan spoke. “Didn’t he tell you that already? He’s been trying to learn more about the heavenly beast.”

Wang Jun snorted. “Not like I’m going to believe everything he says. I reached the domain manifestation realm, and I never had something so cool sitting in my soul.”

“But you did have a spirit manifestation.”

“Oh yes,” Wang Jun said with a slow nod, a flicker of nostalgia crossing his features. His thick eyebrows frowned in thought. “A destructive thing called the void wyvern. Very impressive. Sadly, it died long before I was poisoned.” He chuckled once. “I called it Hei Yuan. Still miss the damn thing, even if manifesting it in the real world costs me more qi than I’d like to admit.”

Chen Ren’s gaze lingered on the older man. “And how did you talk to it… in your star space?”

Wang Jun gave him a sideways glance. “Her,” he corrected flatly, before pausing, his gaze drifting toward the passing trees as though the answer lay somewhere in the snow-laden distance. “And… I actually don’t know. She was always there whenever I entered my star space. Just… waiting. As if she’d been expecting me long before I arrived.”

“What if she got injured? Was she still there?” Chen Ren asked again.

Wang Jun’s brows were still pinched together.

“She was. But sometimes, she’d vanish for a while, returning to… wherever she lived in the spirit realm. Do you think this dragon of yours would have done the same?”

“Who knows.” Chen Ren exhaled slowly, his breath fogging the cold air seeping through the carriage seams. “I just need to find a way to call it in. Then I can ask what’s going on with my star space. It should know since it technically lives there.”

Yalan’s voice cut in from the side. “But you don’t know how to call him in.”

Chen Ren exhaled through his nose, feeling the annoyance creep into his mind. “That’s the problem. No matter how much I think about it, I feel like I’m circling back to square one. It’s annoying as f—”

A dry chuckle came from Wang Jun. “If you just wanted to complain all the way to the village, I should’ve stayed with Anji. At least watching her face when I scold her is entertaining.”

“I’m sure she’ll be happier without you breathing down her neck every day,” Chen Ren shot back without looking at him.

When they’d decided to return to the village, Anji had chosen to remain in Broken Ridge City for another month. She needed to appoint a competent manager from those under her—someone who could run things in her absence. After all, she couldn’t remain there forever; her path of soul cultivation demanded she return to safer grounds.

It was too dangerous for Wang Jun to linger in that city—too many enemies and too few allies—and the head himself had felt more at ease in the village. And so, he had come with them.

Chen Ren rested his chin in his palm, watching the linhui squirrels vanish into the snow-brushed trees, hoping—perhaps unreasonably—that everything would run smoothly without them there.

Hun Tianzhi had assured him that everything would be fine, even going so far as to insist on accompanying him to see the sect grounds. But Chen Ren had reminded the man that he was on the verge of a breakthrough in his research. A point where a single distraction might cost him months. After a long, reluctant silence, Hun Tianzhi had agreed to postpone the visit.

Chen Ren didn’t linger on that thought for long. His journey to Meadow was time he had carved out for himself—a rare stretch of quiet to focus on one question: How to call on the golden dragon.

The list of methods he could attempt was depressingly short. The dragon was elusive, appearing only once properly—when his life had been hanging by a thread. That had led to one particularly reckless idea: to place himself in danger again. Do something so reckless that’d get him killed.

He’d discarded it almost as soon as it had formed. He wasn’t foolish enough to gamble his life so carelessly. The only reason the thought tempted him at all was because deep down, he suspected the dragon had a reason for residing in his star space. No one—man, beast, or heavenly creature—would intervene to save another without cause.

If the golden dragon truly governed the Dao of Money, and if Chen Ren was the only one walking that path, then perhaps he was more than just a passing cultivator in its eyes. Perhaps he was an investment.

And investments were not meant to be squandered.

Without him, the dragon might never find a way to manifest in the mortal realm. That bond, however one-sided it seemed now, meant the creature had a stake in his survival.

As the conversation in the carriage dwindled into the muted creak of wheels and the faint jingle of harness bells, Chen Ren let his eyelids lower. His hands settled loosely on his knees, his spine straightening into a meditative posture. The constant jostle of the carriage rattled his bones, but he let his breath smooth itself, his thoughts growing quiet.

The world outside and all the noise faded into the background.

The longer he breathed, the lighter his body felt, as though the rolling of the carriage no longer touched him. A ripple of stillness spread through his mind, until at last, when his eyes opened again, the worn wooden walls of the carriage were gone.

He was sitting within the boundless expanse of his star space.

Like before, his star space still bore the scars of whatever strange fracture it was enduring. The cracks hung suspended in the void, broken seams that bled faint wisps of light into the surrounding darkness. But at least the damage hadn’t worsened since the last time he had come here. That, he supposed, was a small mercy.

Chen Ren stared at the wounds for a few breaths, his chest tightening at the thought of what would happen if they spread. Then he turned upward, to the drifting constellations—great, molten globs of qi simmering in the endless sky above, pulsing with a faint rhythm, as though calling to him.

They wanted him to take them in. He could feel it, like the warmth of a hearth brushing against his skin. Yet he didn’t move. Instead, his eyes fixed on two particular stars—ones that, when taken together, formed the image of a pair of slitted golden eyes staring back at him.

“Hello,” he said into the vast emptiness, the sound of his voice swallowed instantly by the space. “Are you there? I want to talk to you about something. You already know… but my star space is breaking apart. Can you help me?”

Silence.

The void around him stayed still, the only motion being the slow rotation of the stars. He waited, counting the breaths, until a full minute stretched into several. Nothing stirred. No golden scales shimmering into view, no oppressive draconic presence curling through the air.

Chen Ren exhaled, the sound almost a laugh, almost a sigh. If it were so simple, the dragon would have appeared long ago. He would’ve gotten his answer a long time ago. But no, it wasn’t that easy.

So he moved to his second plan. Lowering himself to sit cross-legged on the shimmering floor of his star space, he closed his eyes and began pushing his qi outward. It poured from him in slow, steady waves, spreading through the astral realm like a tide seeking every hidden shore.

If the dragon was here but refusing to answer, then he would drag it out.

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His qi swept across the void, brushing against every fragment of his space. It ran along the edges of the cracks, dipped into the floating shards of broken space, then climbed higher, probing the glimmering orbs above, reaching toward the distant constellations as if to tap them awake.

But there was nothing, again. He couldn’t feel even a faintest echo of the dragon’s presence. It was as though it had never been here at all.

A faint chill stirred in Chen Ren’s chest. Had it abandoned his star space entirely? The thought itched at him like an unwelcome splinter, but he shook his head. No, if the dragon had wanted to leave, it would have done so from the beginning. More likely…

He opened his eyes, his gaze falling once again on the slow-turning constellations.

More likely, the dragon had simply chosen to withdraw. To sleep. To return to whatever corner of the spirit realm it called home, waiting until it had gathered enough strength to stir again.

If that was the case, then the problem was even bigger than he had thought. Wang Jun had mentioned something similar happening with his own spirit manifestation—how it had retreated to the spirit realm for a time—but knowing that didn’t solve the question pressing against Chen Ren’s mind.

How was he supposed to call the dragon back?

He sat there in the stillness, thoughts circling over the same line until he came into a conclusion.

If the dragon truly lived in his star space—truly had bound itself to him—then there had to be a link. Some thread tying them together. Without it, the dragon’s very existence here would have been impossible. It was logical, reasonable and doable.

If he could find that link, perhaps he could tug on it, call the dragon back.

But he had never seen any trace of such a thing. So where was it hiding?

His jaw tightened as he pushed his qi outward again, this time with sharper intent, combing through every inch of the star space with painstaking care.

The cracks in the void, the fragments of broken reality, the unseen currents between drifting shards. He swept through them all, wrecking his brain for the answer.

Yet the more he searched, the more his concern began to gnaw at him. The link was nowhere. And then—

He stopped, his breath catching.

I am an idiot.

The answer had been in front of him the entire time.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze toward the heavens above. The dragon had once woven its form from those very stars, golden light spilling down from the constellations like seething fire.

Of course the link would be there.

Gathering himself, Chen Ren sent a simmering pulse of qi toward the great, glowing spheres. At once, the stars responded, their surface qi roiling in a way that made his meridians itch, almost begging to be absorbed into his body. He resisted the pull, locking his will in place, and instead pushed against it, forcing his qi deeper, toward the very heart of those burning cores.

It was like pressing into the eye of a storm. And then, he felt it.

A pressure that didn’t belong to the space itself.

It was the same weight that had crushed the air from his lungs the day the dragon had manifested to save him from Gu Tian. The same ancient, suffocating majesty that made the soul tremble without knowing why.

The dragon.

It was the same in every brightened star.

Chen Ren set his jaw and tried to seize hold of it. The pressure bore down on him at once, an invisible weight pressing against his shoulders until his upper body threatened to buckle. But he didn’t yield. He pushed his qi forward, thread by thread, forcing it into the link as if hammering on the dragon’s door.

Whether the creature would sense it, he couldn’t say. But it was the only plan he had.

Unfortunately, the link revealed itself to be a glutton. No matter how much qi he poured into it, it swallowed everything without the faintest change. Not even a ripple in the oppressive aura.

His frown deepened. His own qi wouldn’t last at this rate, and with his star space already in a fragile state, exhausting himself entirely would be courting disaster.

Then his gaze swept across the realm, and a thought came to him. He didn’t need to burn his own reserves. This space was filled with qi—qi he already had a right to use.

He shifted his focus to one of the closer stars, the star tied to his noodle stall. Its qi, rich and savory in its own strange way, drifted toward him like the scent of a boiling broth. It, too, tried to flow into him, but he turned it aside, guiding the strands toward the link hidden in the dragon’s constellation.

The result was the same. The link devoured it all in moments, leaving nothing behind.

Still, there was no dragon at sight.

Then he moved to the next. It was the star bound to his perfume business. The qi was dainty and fragrant which prickled against his senses. He sent it toward the link. Slowly and slowly, it vanished. It was swallowed without a trace.

Gritting his teeth, he turned toward the star representing his alcohol trade. Its qi was heavy and intoxicating, a slow-burning warmth that seemed to curl in the air like smoke. He sent that too, emptying the star entirely.

By now, doubt had begun to creep in like cold water seeping through a crack.

The qi he had used could have propelled him all the way to foundation establishment realms—months of accumulation gone in mere breaths. And for what? To feed a bottomless link, praying it might stir something that might not even be here?

But as the links devoured more and more qi, the pressure bleeding through them shifted. It swelled, dense and crushing, pressing down on his chest until his heartbeat seemed to slow.

Chen Ren’s eyes widened—this was different.

Without hesitation, he poured more qi in, weaving every available strand toward the constellation. The oppressive weight thickened, and then—suddenly—the stars flared.

A golden glow rippled outward from the link, and he instinctively stood and took a step back, breath catching in his throat. Still, he fed more into it, and more, until the other stars across his star space began to shimmer as well.

One by one, they brightened, and the glow bled into thin golden lines that arced between them. The lines curved, connected, and twisted, each stroke sketching the outline of something vast.

A massive, serpentine body coiled through the sky of his star space, born of pure starlight. Golden scales rippled into existence along its form, and as the qi lines solidified, the head emerged—majestic, fierce, and crowned with two sharp horns.

When at last Chen Ren cut the flow of qi, the dragon’s eyes flared open. Twin suns of molten gold locked onto him.

Then they shifted, scanning his entire star space. The dragon’s gaze swept over the cracks, the broken fragments, the dimmed stars. And for a brief moment, so fleeting that Chen Ren almost doubted he’d seen it, the great beast’s brow furrowed.

“You’re finally here,” Chen Ren said, his voice carrying both relief and urgency. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you for so long.”

The dragon’s maw didn’t move, yet its voice coiled into his mind like smoke—deep, resonant, and edged with something that almost sounded like amusement.

“Do not be impatient. Fate would have brought you to me eventually. Forcing it sooner only makes you meet the trials ahead before you’re ready.”

Chen Ren’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t trying to call you right away. I was willing to wait. But as you can see…” He gestured at the fractured void around them. “…my star space is breaking apart. I nearly passed out earlier after using qi. I need to know how to fix it.”

The dragon exhaled, a sound like distant thunder rolling through the space, and his entire body vibrated.

“Fix it? Foolish boy. You truly think a star space can simply be ‘repaired’? You are in this predicament because you rushed through realms your vessel was not prepared to endure. And now, when you’re about to die, you come crawling to me.”

The weight of its words sank in slowly, but one phrase stuck like a barb.

Chen Ren swallowed.

“Dying? What do you mean… I’m dying?”

***

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