Dao of Money

There were only a few experiences in life that Chen Ren felt could be worse than being chased by a bloodthirsty, mindless horde of zombies. He knew that for a fact, because he was living through it right now.

Lightning wrapped around his legs as he ran, each step cracking with energy. Behind him, thousands of zombies charged forward, their roars blending into a single, ugly noise; a cry he won’t forget anytime sooner. The desert sand was thrown into the air by their numbers, forming a thick cloud that swallowed everything behind them.

After settling on an array, it had not taken long for Chen Ren to find a horde moving through the desert. The problem was the bait. Yalan had refused without hesitation. As a result, Chen Ren now found himself running at the front of the horde.

It was not that he could not keep up. In fact, he was much faster than the zombies. The real challenge was staying just close enough so they would not lose sight of him. At this distance, he could feel their foul breath and even the wet spray of spit flying through the air around him. From time to time, some of the zombies grabbed their own brethren and hurled them forward.

Each time that happened, Chen Ren snapped lightning outward, burning the flying bodies to ash before they could reach him.

Running just ahead of thousands of zombies was a strange psychological experience. It felt unreal, like something straight out of a zombie movie. Chen Ren knew that if even one of them managed to grab him, the rest would swarm him in seconds. There would be no escape without injuries.

He could not allow that to happen.

So he focused only on running.

The sand pressed hard against his feet as he pushed forward, the familiar outline of the ruins slowly coming into view. As he got closer, he saw shapes above. Yalan and Wang Jun were on one of the rooftops, watching.

Yalan lifted a paw and waved at him.

Chen Ren only let out a frustrated grunt and forced himself to move faster. Lightning surged harder around his legs, pushing him forward in long, powerful strides. The distance between him and the zombies widened in seconds.

The ruins got closer and closer.

With one final burst, Chen Ren leapt into the air and shot straight toward the rooftop where the pair waited. He landed heavily, boots scraping against stone, and finally let out a long breath.

“That was far more terrifying than I expected,” he muttered.

Wang Jun snorted. “That was just a low tier zombie horde. You should be able to handle things far worse than that.”

Chen Ren glanced at him. “Then why didn’t you come with me?”

“With all that running?” Wang Jun shot back. “If you had dropped me, those zombies would have crushed me in seconds. Don’t compare yourself to me. You have a whole body.”

Chen Ren clicked his tongue. “Then don’t comment until you know how hard it is to bait thousands of zombies. Having them breathing down your neck is not a good feeling.”

Before Wang Jun could fire back, Yalan lashed her tail once, sharply. “You two should focus. Activate the array. They’re almost here.”

Chen Ren immediately turned to look at the approaching horde. The zombies had reached the ruins. They shrieked as they poured inside, crashing into one another and forcing their way through broken walls and narrow paths in their search for him.

For a brief moment, Chen Ren wondered if zombies even knew to look up. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.

But it did not matter.

Only when the last of them had flooded into the ruins, clawing at the walls and structure, did he move. He grabbed Wang Jun, leapt off the rooftop with Yalan and dropped down toward the ground below.

As soon as they landed, Chen Ren put the head on the ground and placed his palm against the sand and pushed his qi forward.

He had already drawn the [Coffin-Seal Array] around the ruins earlier, following Wang Jun’s instructions carefully. Now, as his qi flowed into it, the markings hidden beneath the sand came alive. A purple light flared up and rose from the ground, spreading around the ruins and sealing them from all sides.

The effect was instant.

Those standing too close to the edge let out sharp screeches as the array activated. The barrier sliced through several of them where they stood, cutting bodies in half before they could even react and rose into the air. Inside, the rest of the horde went wild. Zombies clawed at the barrier, screaming and piling on top of each other in a desperate attempt to escape. Some threw themselves at the array wall, slamming into it again and again, but none of them managed to break through.

Chen Ren watched closely in case the barrier didn’t hold. But no cracks appeared.

“The array doesn’t look like it’s going to break.”

Wang Jun snorted, his nose flaring. “Did you really doubt me?”

“Actually yes.” Chen Ren turned to him with a blank look. “You couldn’t even decide on the right runes for an hour. With how your memory is, you could’ve easily messed it up.”

Wang Jun grumbled under his breath, but Chen Ren had already lost interest. He reached into his spatial ring and began taking out thundercrack orbs, letting them drop into his hands.

“Let’s see how these work,” he said.

Then he looked at Yalan. “Can you make sure Wang Jun is safe in case the explosion damages the array?”

Yalan nodded. “Sure.”

The next second, lightning surged through Chen Ren’s legs. He launched himself high into the air, rising until he was level with the top of the glowing array. While still moving upward, he threw the thundercrack orbs over the array wall, sending them straight into the center of the trapped zombie horde.

As he began to fall, the orbs let out sharp hissing sounds. Qi flared, and they activated.

The explosions came one after another.

The array shook violently as fire and lightning tore through the trapped zombies. Screams filled the air, loud and chaotic. Chen Ren landed on the ground just as another wave of explosions went off, followed by another, and another. Blood splattered against the inner walls of the array, along with crushed limbs and broken bodies.

The barrier held, but it trembled under the repeated blasts.

Smoke rose into the sky as the screams continued without pause.

Wang Jun stared at the gruesome scene and muttered, “You’re pretty brutal.”

Chen Ren frowned and looked at him. “You agreed to the plan.”

“Not like I get any tokens from this.” Wang Jun clicked his tongue.

Chen Ren opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say a word, a sharp cracking sound echoed through the air. His expression changed at once, and he took a step back.

A thin crack ran across the array.

He held his breath, ready for the barrier to fail, but no more cracks appeared. The array trembled once, then slowly settled. Inside, the screams of the zombies weakened, one after another, until they finally faded into silence.

Smoke filled the trapped space, thick enough that Chen Ren could not see what remained inside. Still, he was not worried. Even if any zombies had survived the blasts, their injuries would finish them soon enough.

Without wasting time, Chen Ren checked his tokens.

His eyes widened.

Yalan noticed it at once. “How much did you get?”

“Eleven thousand, one hundred and twenty tokens,” Chen Ren said quietly. “Far more than I expected.”

Wang Jun let out a low laugh. “Looks like you’re going to be rich, kid.”

Chen Ren nodded slowly, already calculating in his mind. The entire sixth floor was filled with hordes like this. If he hunted even a few more, he would earn a small fortune without spending anything at all.

But that also meant he needed to act fast.

He could not let anyone see what he was doing. If others learned his method, it would be copied in no time. Even if most of them would easily fail.

Looking at Yalan and Wang Jun, Chen Ren broke into a grin. “We need to kill as many hordes as possible before the other sects arrive.” His eyes gleamed. “Once I have enough, I’m going shopping in the arena.”

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***

While Chen Ren moved through the sixth floor, trapping and destroying zombie hordes one after another, someone else arrived with a single, clear intention—to find and kill him.

Yun Zhaotian of the Thunder Blade Sect stepped out onto the black desert of the sixth floor. The moment his feet touched the sand, memories surged up from the depths of his mind, and his anger flared.

It had only been five days since he had been released from prison.

The underground cells had been a nightmare. He had slept on hard ground, with no comfort and no dignity. At first, they had forced him to cook and clean like a servant. When he complained, they sent him to mine rocks instead. Endless hours of breaking stone followed.

What made it worse were the cuffs.

Those damned restraints never left his wrists. They blocked his qi completely. Every time he tried to circulate it, nothing happened. When he tried to rely on pure strength and escape, the guards were on him before he could even take a few steps.

Mining was already unbearable. Being powerless made it humiliating.

His junior disciples had been separated from him early on. He only learned much later that they had been released before him. While they were free, Yun Zhaotian remained underground, swinging a pickaxe and enduring the stares of other imprisoned cultivators.

None of them believed who he was.

Whenever he revealed his sect, they laughed. They said no disciple from a Guardian sect would ever end up in prison. Anyone important would simply bribe the guards and walk free. To them, he was just another liar trying to sound impressive.

Some of them were worse.

Frustrated by the lack of woman in the cells, a few cultivators tried to lay their hands on him. Disgusting acts, driven by filth and desperation. Vermin, all of them.

Yun Zhaotian had beaten them until they could not stand. And for that, the guards punished him.

They did not care why the fight started. To them, he was just another troublemaker. Another prisoner who needed to be put in his place.

It had taken weeks before Yun Zhaotian finally got out. In the end, it was his junior brothers who managed to bribe a few guards. But the price they paid was heavy. Every one of them lost ranks. Their tokens were drained dry. What little standing they once had was gone.

Yun Zhaotian felt it deeply.

To him, it was his failure.

When he looked at the state of the Thunder Blade Sect, his chest burned with shame. Other Guardian sects had surged far ahead. Even that damned Emerald Sun Sect now stood above them. The gap was humiliating.

Like any righteous cultivator drowning in anger, Yun Zhaotian focused all of it on a single source.

Chen Ren.

If it had not been for him, Yun Zhaotian would never have been arrested. He would never have lost face so publicly. His sect would not have fallen so far behind.

But Yun Zhaotian did not rush to Chen Ren’s shop to kill him.

He knew better.

If he acted there, the consequences would be unavoidable. So instead, he left the city. He poured his rage into slaughter. Beasts fell one after another in his path. When cultivators crossed him and annoyed him, some of them fell as well.

He fought until his qi ran dry. Then he kept fighting with his fists.

Anger carried him forward. Every day, dozens of large beasts died at his hands. His junior disciples watched from a distance, fear slowly replacing admiration. Before long, whispers spread among them.

They started calling him a mad god.

The name suited him.

He hadgone mad in his pursuit of vengeance. He fought endlessly, driven only by hatred, until he did not even realize when he had gathered enough tokens to leave the floor.

When he finally noticed, he did not hesitate.

He moved on at once.

He had heard that Chen Ren had already advanced. His junior disciples had seen it with their own eyes—Chen Ren walking toward the lift, accompanied by a group of cultivators. Among them was the princess. He had never liked the royal family. The princess was no exception.

Knowing that Chen Ren was one of her supporters only fueled his anger further. The thought of killing someone tied to her made his blood boil with satisfaction.

This time, he would not let Chen Ren escape.

Normally, Yun Zhaotian would have taken his junior disciples with him as he climbed the pagoda. They were meant to conquer it together. But this time, he could not afford to slow down. Rumors said that Han Qingshi was already on the sixth floor, and Yun Zhaotian refused to fall behind again. So he stepped onto the lift alone.

It was only after the lift began moving that an important thought finally struck him.

How was he supposed to find Chen Ren?

When the lift stopped and Yun Zhaotian stepped out, a massive black desert stretched out before him. The sand was dark and lifeless, reaching endlessly in every direction. Two thoughts formed in his mind at once. First, it looked like a perfect place to bury Chen Ren. Second, in a place this large, Chen Ren could be anywhere.

And knowing the man, he would definitely try to hide.

Yun Zhaotian frowned.

He had no tracking techniques. No way to sense Chen Ren’s presence across such a vast floor. He stood there, thinking, for more than ten minutes. Eventually, boredom replaced patience.

In the end, he realized there was only one thing he could do. Rampage through the entire floor until he found him.

The plan pleased him. If he did that, he was bound to stumble upon the lift to the seventh floor as well. With his decision made, Yun Zhaotian moved.

A storm gathered around his legs as he charged forward.

The first thing to meet him was a zombie horde rushing straight toward him. Seeing it, Yun Zhaotian smiled. Lightning surged through his entire body, and he released a powerful wave of lightning. It struck the horde in the center, tearing it apart and clearing a path through their ranks.

A few zombies leapt at him, but the storm around his body shredded them instantly. Yun Zhaotian blasted straight through the horde without slowing down, continuing in a single direction.

For the rest of the day, he continued like that.

Again and again, he ran into large groups of zombies. Every time, hundreds fell beneath his lightning before he moved on. Part of him enjoyed watching his tokens increase with every kill. Another part of him grew more irritated by the lack of stronger opponents.

And there was still no sign of Chen Ren.

Eventually, Yun Zhaotian slowed to a stop.

In the distance, something rose from the black sand. What looked like a city stood ahead, its outline uneven. Towers leaned at odd angles with sturdy walls protecting what looked like old buildings. In the distance, he could also see a large castle rise.

Yun Zhaotian narrowed his eyes.

Chen Ren seemed like the type to hide in a place like that, somewhere that has a cover and somewhere he could avoid the hordes.

With that thought in mind, Yun Zhaotian charged toward the city. But what he did not realize was that he was running straight toward the Zombie Queen’s domain.

***

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