Dao of Money

Chen Ren dropped toward the rocky protrusion with a startled shriek as a bat-like beast latched onto his face. It screeched and clawed wildly, trying to burrow into his shoulder, but Chen Ren refused to give it the chance. He caught the creature by the head mid-fall and slammed it against the stone outcrop the moment he landed.

The impact shook through his arms and legs. The beast tried to slither out from under him, wings beating desperately, but Chen Ren drove his fist straight into its face. Bone cracked under his knuckles. He grabbed the limp body and smashed it into the ground again. Blood splattered over the rock. A few scraps of flesh slid toward the open void.

The beast finally stopped moving.

Chen Ren remained kneeling, chest heaving as he tried to calm his racing heartbeat. His shoulders burned from shallow cuts, but the pain felt distant compared to the rush of relief flooding through him. It struck him just how close he had come to disaster.

If the thing had been larger or stronger, it could have easily knocked him off the ledge. One bad moment, and he would have been tumbling deeper into the sinkhole’s endless darkness—straight into a place no cultivator wanted to see with their own eyes.

He shuddered at the thought.

Forcing his breathing steady, he looked down at the corpse. The creature’s body was covered in bulging veins, and a strange thick liquid leaked from its open mouth. He recognized it now—an entry from the bestiary came to mind.

A scourge bat. Its venom could paralyze a cultivator long enough for something bigger and hungrier to finish the job. If it had sunk its fangs into him, he would be lying here helpless, wasting time and pills just to purge the poison.

Fortunately, it had not. He let out a slow breath.

From the side, paws tapped lightly against stone, and Yalan’s voice broke the silence.

“Chen Ren, are you okay?” she asked.

He wiped the bat blood from his cheek and steadied his breath. “Barely,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she replied. “But you should turn around.”

Chen Ren turned and stared. A swarm of scourge bats circled above them in a tight spiral. The bats beat their wings hard, and venom dripped from their fangs onto the stone, where it hissed.

“That is not good,” he said.

“You should rest,” Yalan answered. “I will take care of it.”

“I should help,” he began.

“There is no need,” she said, cutting him off. “Sit back. You will have your own fight soon.”

Her tail burst into flame. Her eyes narrowed, and she fixed the swarm with a cold, murderous glare. The bats did not retreat. Several darted toward the ledge with their mouths open.

Fire roared from Yalan’s tail like a steady stream. The sinkhole filled with light at once. The first wave of bats burned in the air and fell as blackened pieces. The rest tried to turn and flee, but the flame chased them. One after another, they caught fire and dropped, trailing smoke.

Some of the falling bodies struck the cavern walls and bounced into the dark. Others landed near the rim and melted into foul-smelling puddles. Beasts hiding below lunged upward and snatched the burning corpses out of the air. Their jaws cracked loudly as they chewed.

Chen Ren watched in silence. He felt both horror and relief as the swarms fell. The sinkhole glowed with Yalan’s fire, and the echoes of their screams slowly faded into the deep.

Within seconds, the air in front of them cleared. The last of the scourge bats fell, and Yalan’s flames finally dimmed into soft embers at the tip of her tail.

Chen Ren looked first at her, then down into the sinkhole. Many beasts still lurked below—shadowy forms clinging to walls or crouched on narrow ledges. Their eyes glowed faintly in the dark. None dared to approach. The scent of burnt flesh and the memory of fire kept them at bay.

A shout echoed from above.

“Sect Leader Chen! Are you okay?” Luo Feng called down.

“I’m fine!” Chen Ren shouted back. “We’re going deeper into the tunnels! All of you stay away from the edge. The beasts are hungry at night!”

He did not wait to see if they listened. He turned to Yalan and managed a thin grin. “That was a pretty exciting way to enter the sinkhole.”

“You should be more careful,” Yalan replied. “If not for that mask, you would have scratches all over your face. Bats are known for ripping skin off cultivators. You do not want to frighten children when we return to the surface.”

Chen Ren groaned quietly. “I know. I just didn’t expect to be attacked before even stepping into the tunnel.”

He reached up and removed the mask from his face. He only now realized how long he had worn it—day and night in Red Peak City. He had been so wary of spies from both clans that he never removed it, not even in sleep. Breathing without it felt… different. Easier. Like air finally flowed properly again.

He slid the mask into his spatial ring.

His eyes fell once more on the dead bat, then on the path ahead. The bestiary had included maps with rough directions. The beast he sought—the one whose bones he needed—had a known lair deeper inside.

The clans had never killed this beast because it shed its bones every six months and grew new ones. Those bones made excellent weapons. So the clans let it live and “harvested” it like farmers in a field. The thought made Chen Ren grimace. They fought each other in public and cooperated in secret. He guessed profit always won.

With Yalan beside him, he moved deeper into the tunnel. Pale moss glowed on the walls like smeared starlight. He didn’t attempt to put his qi in the dantian. Stealth mattered less in this place when any random beast could be handled by Yalan, and their target would smell a human long before it noticed a ripple of qi.

At each bend and fork, he unfolded the rough map he had copied from the bestiary. He adjusted their course, then pressed onward. The sinkhole was too large to trust his sense of direction alone, so he left thin threads of qi on the stone—faint marks only he could feel—to guide them back out.

An hour passed before trouble came.

The first was a pack of oversized spiders—glossy black, long-legged, and mean. They spat shards of their own hardened carapace like darts and healed the missing pieces in a blink. The book had listed them as low tier, but their speed made them annoying. Yalan’s answer was simple: a sweep of fire, a crack of claws, and silence.

The second was a giant rat with sparking whiskers. It fired quick bursts of lightning that popped against the rock and made Chen Ren think of a similar creature from Earth. The rat also died fast under Yalan’s flames and a single tackle that broke its spine.

Chen Ren harvested what was useful. He pulled legs, fangs, and hide and stored everything neatly in his spatial ring. He would hand the lot to Hun Tianzhi or Feiyu later—whoever could turn strange scraps into better armor and pills.

Then he checked the map again, felt for his qi trail behind them, and kept walking. The air grew thicker with qi. Somewhere ahead, a beast with bones worth killing it over waited in the dark.

After nearly three hours of careful walking, Yalan suddenly halted. Her ears twitched, and her eyes narrowed into the dark ahead.

“I believe we are close,” she whispered. “The beast is nearby.”

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Chen Ren paused as well and searched the air with his spiritual sense. “I don’t feel anything,” he said quietly.

“It is only giving off a small pulse of qi,” Yalan answered. “It is probably asleep. But I am certain it is the one.”

Without waiting for his response, she quickened her pace, slipping through tight passages and curving tunnels as if she already knew every turn. Chen Ren followed close behind, trusting her instincts more than any map.

Half an hour later, she stopped again.

“We are here,” she said. “Look.”

The tunnel ahead opened into a wide chamber. The ceiling stretched high, and the darkness felt like a cavern swallowing the world. Other tunnels branched from the far walls, forming several exits.

At first, Chen Ren thought the chamber was filled with white boulders. They were stacked high around a heavy mound in the center.

Then he blinked, and realized the truth.

Those white shapes were bones. He sucked in a slow breath, eyes adjusting.

The beast lay at the heart of them, almost camouflaged by its own remains. Its body was a fortress of jagged bone. Spines jutted from its limbs, ribs flared outward like armor plates, and a crown of hooked bones curled around its skull like a war helm. A soft breeze swirled around its bones, stirring dust without lifting a sound.

An ivory slasher. The beast he had chosen.

A creature born of bone itself. The book had called it strong and territorial. Previous attempts to hunt it were recorded in the margins. The marks beside them were mostly deaths.

And now Chen Ren stood here, staring at living danger wrapped in bones and a hulking body.

His fingers tightened into fists.

“There it is,” he murmured.

His heart beat once, heavy.

This was the beast that would decide whether he took his next step on the path of cultivation… or died deep beneath the earth, forgotten.

The ivory slasher lay curled in the center of the chamber, its massive body surrounded by towering heaps of bones—its own discarded armor from past shedding cycles. The bony mounds looked like pale boulders piled protectively around a sleeping giant.

Its two eyes were shut tight. Each exhale pushed dust from the ground with a soft huff, and a low snore echoed faintly from its throat.

Even from where Chen Ren stood, partially hidden in the tunnel’s mouth, he could tell the beast was enormous. The bestiary had estimated its length, but this one was definitely larger—lean muscle wrapped in plates of jagged bone, like a fortress that could move.

He could have chosen something easier. A predator with less speed. A creature that wouldn’t tear him apart with a single charge. But if he wanted to break into the second step of body cultivation with more than just the bare minimum, the ivory slasher was the best path. He simply had to protect his eye and other vitals.

Body cultivation was not equal. Two cultivators at the same step could be worlds apart depending on the beast they slew. And compared to other options, he had one advantage towards it.

The beast was simple. Brutal, yes. Dangerous, absolutely. But its attack patterns were well-documented. Its weaknesses were known. Chen Ren had studied every detail he could find and crafted a plan that avoided using much of his qi—just his body, tricks, and determination.

He stared at the beast, running through each step again in his mind.

Yalan watched him quietly, then finally spoke. “Are you ready? Go wake it.”

Chen Ren nodded, though his heart tightened. “Can you break those bones first? They are too thick for me to get through without alerting it. I need a direct path.”

Yalan sighed, rolling her eyes. “Fine. Just don’t have me killing it too. It’s yours.”

Her tail rose, flames gathering at its tip in four dense spheres. Then, with a flick, she launched them across the ground.

The fireballs struck the bone barriers one after another in an explosion.

Cracks spiderwebbed through the structures. Shards of bone burst outward like white shrapnel, clattering across the chamber floor.

Dust lifted. The air hummed. Silence lingered for a heartbeat.

The slasher’s snores rumbled on unaware. The bestiary had mentioned it was hard to wake it up from its sleep. That’s how the clans were able to harvest all the bones around. Chen Ren exhaled slowly.

It was time. Chen Ren moved.

He slipped through the dust, cut behind the slasher’s flank, and leapt. His boots hit a ridge of bone on its spine. He rode the lurch, knees bent, one hand gripping a jut of rib. With the other he hammered down—once, twice, three times—driving his knuckles into the narrow gaps between plates.

The ivory slasher finally woke up and went wild. It got up, letting out a cry and shook it head to drive away the remaining sleep.

Then it, bucked, slammed its body against the floor, and crashed side-to-side to scrape him off. Chen Ren flowed with each lurch, shifting his weight, punching again at a seam where armor met flesh. A hard tremor buzzed beneath his palm.

His eyes widened, realising what was going to happen next, and didn’t wait. He sprang away an instant before white spikes burst out where he had stood, stabbing the empty air. He twisted, rolled in the dust, and landed light in front of the beast.

The slasher lowered its head and glared. Its eyes were cold lamps in a skull of bone.

Its horns lengthened with a dry crack and lunged like twin spears.

Chen Ren slid sideways. The thrust grazed his sleeve and slammed into stone, showering chips. The beast swung, sweeping the horn like a sword. The blow clipped him on the shoulder and threw him into the wall. Pain burst through his ribs. He hit, rolled, and snapped back to his feet, breath sharp, vision steady.

The beast huffed, steam curling from its nostrils.

Chen Ren’s hand slipped under his robe to start his next plan, but just then, something happened that threw each one of his plans into disarray.

Shattered bone all around him trembled, lifted, and turned. Hundreds of shards floated up like pale leaves in a dead wind. Their tips rotated toward his chest.

Chen Ren’s eyes widened. The bestiary had said nothing about this.

He didn’t even get a chance to curse Yu Murong as the bones spun and headed straight towards him to stab through his flesh.

***

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