Dao of Money

Chen Ren had been in a lot of situations that had felt impossible. Problems that had no obvious solution, walls that looked unclimbable, moments where the only sensible answer seemed to be giving up.

And yet somehow, one way or another, he had always found a way through. He’d even started to think he had a knack for it.

But some problems were always going to be beyond him. If someone had told him to defeat Qing He in a straight fight, or even Yalan, Chen Ren wouldn’t be able to do it. No tricks, no cleverness, and no amount of preparation could close the gap between them.

That kind of situation felt like pushing against a heavy mountain. It simply wouldn’t move, not until he was at the nascent soul realm—and that was decades away—maybe centuries.

When he thought about the [Grand Aegis Array], he felt like he was banging his head against the same kind of problem. One that was far beyond his level.

And the more Princess Yanyue told him about it, the worse it got.

The array was built in layers.

Breaking through the first one didn’t mean anything—two more would be waiting behind it, and each layer was harder than the last.

It could absorb attacks, had no known weak point, and could only be brought down by overwhelming force. Even then, the layers had enough space between them to trap a cultivator trying to push through one by one, and if that happened, the array could simply close in and crush them entirely.

And that was just what Princess Yanyue knew.

She didn’t even know what specific variant of the [Grand Aegis Array] surrounded the fourth city. In fact, the design could be altered to serve any number of different functions, which meant there could be aspects to it that neither of them had any knowledge of at all.

She gave him an example to make it concrete.

The array around the capital, she explained, wasn’t just a defensive barrier. It could store every bit of qi it absorbed and release it back out as an attack. She told him about the time a whole flock of wyverns had descended on the city, drawn by a treasure one of her brothers had taken from their territory. The array had activated on its own and finished them off in a matter of hours. The citizens inside had barely paused their daily routines. To them it had been entertainment, nothing more. A show. Because they genuinely believed the array was unbreakable, and they had plenty of reasons to believe it.

Halfway through her explanation, Chen Ren found himself wondering if she was exaggerating. Trying to scare him off the idea entirely.

But she had no reason to do that. And everything she said held together logically. The array around the fourth city and the one around the capital would be different—built in different eras, by different hands—but the fundamentals would carry over. That much he couldn’t argue with, and it put a real dent in his plans.

Both Princess Yanyue and Yalan kept pushing him toward the common lift. Not just suggesting it, almost insisting on it, with a persistence that was hard to ignore. Chen Ren didn’t give them a straight answer either way. He just told them he needed to exhaust every option before abandoning a plan.

Yalan had even floated the possibility of finding another master lift somewhere else on the tower.

Chen Ren doubted that would work either. The other floors would be guarded the same way. If anything, the other floors would be even more guarded.

They weren’t ruined worlds like this one.

In the end, after a lot of back and forth, Chen Ren kept it simple. He asked both of them to go ahead and secure the common lift, and gave himself a week to find a way into the fourth city. If by any means he couldn’t manage it in that time, he would follow them up through the common lift without argument.

His statement left the pair dumbfounded. They stared at him like he’d said something strange.

After a moment of silence, Yalan spoke up and told him not to do anything risky. Princess Yanyue was more direct—she said he was being too stubborn for his own good. She was clearly unhappy about it, and Chen Ren could follow her reasoning well enough. She knew better than most how difficult it was to breach the array, and the last thing she wanted was a delay because he had convinced himself he could do something the entire empire hadn’t managed. He understood why she felt that way.

But seven days wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, and securing the common lift would take at least that long on its own. He used that to bring them around, and eventually it worked.

When they asked what exactly he planned to do in a week, he only told them he was going to spend the time on the lower floors and figure something out.

After that, he picked up Wang Jun and headed for the lift.

An hour later, he was about to get on it when he spotted Han Qingshi stepping onto the eighth floor. Chen Ren moved sideways without thinking, putting himself out of the man’s line of sight. He didn’t seriously believe Han Qingshi posed a real threat to him, but he hadn’t forgotten the man’s eagerness to pick a fight, and he had no interest in indulging that right now.

Wang Jun, naturally, did not let it go without comment.

Chen Ren ignored him.

Wang Jun was always like this when they were alone—too talkative, too loud, as if making up for every moment he had to stay quiet. Half of it was just complaints. Chen Ren had learned to let it wash over him.

It took a while, but Han Qingshi eventually moved down the street, probably looking for his next fight. The moment he was clear, Chen Ren stepped onto the lift before anyone else could and it began to descend.

”Where are you even going?” Wang Jun asked straightaway.

”Second floor. I need to see if Merchant Shrey has anything that could help.”

Wang Jun snorted. ”You really think he’s going to have something that powerful?”

”Probably not,” Chen Ren said. ”But he has both information and items. Though I doubt I can afford anything at the top end even with everything I have.”

He had around seventy eight thousand tokens at the moment. His ranking had slipped too—he was sitting at seventh now. The last few floors hadn’t given him much opportunity to pull in serious numbers. They were too straightforward and too quick to generate the kind of haul that the earlier floors had, but they gave a sizable amount for just passing through them.

He could still get back to the first rank once he collected whatever his shop had sold on the fifth floor, but even adding all of that together, he doubted that it would be enough to reach the top ten items Merchant Shrey carried.

Those all cost millions.

But he needed something from there if he was going to have any real chance against the array. The alternative was advancing his cultivation before attempting the ninth floor, and he didn’t want to do that.

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Since coming to the pagoda he had accumulated qi at a pace he hadn’t expected—the business in the pagoda he’d built had turned out to be the most profitable operation ever, and every sale sent a small stream of qi his way. It had become a constant background presence, something he barely noticed anymore. If he poured all of it into his cultivation, it might even push him close to the peak of foundation establishment realm.

But he hadn’t done it yet, and he had a reason for that.

Balance.

He had made real progress with his body and soul cultivation, but his mind cultivation had been left behind, and he could feel the gap.

If he pushed his cultivation forward without addressing that, the imbalance would cause problems. He was certain of it. So he had kept putting it off, waiting until he could bring everything up together.

Now, descending toward the second floor, he found himself wondering if that had been the right call.

The lift crawled to a stop before he could reach any conclusion, and he stepped out into the arena.

The noise hit him the moment he stepped off the lift—shouts and the sharp clash of battle bleeding through the walls of the arena corridors. He followed the sound out of habit, glancing through one of the openings as he passed.

Climbers were fighting each other. He slowed for a moment, watching.

New climber presence meant the gates were still open then and letting people in. The ones fighting also didn’t look too strong, just decent, but that wasn’t going to carry anyone far here.

He watched for a few seconds longer, then looked away.

The genuine talent was already on the higher floors. Had been for a while now. The people coming through the gates at this stage were average cultivators chasing a dragon, trying their luck against something they didn’t fully understand yet.

But he didn’t have time to think about it. He simply turned away from the noise and followed the familiar path toward Merchant Shrey’s shop.

***

Merchant Shrey was exactly where he always was, sitting at the edge of the corridor, drinking, with what looked like eel skewered on a stick in his hand. He took a bite and turned as Chen Ren approached.

There was a clear splash of questions in his eyes when he got closer.

”You’re back again.” He chewed slowly. ”You know, in all my years here, you’re my most returning customer. The others die before they get the chance.”

Chen Ren grimaced. ”I’m hard to kill. And I’m here for more information. Maybe items too.”

Merchant Shrey tilted his head. ”Depends on what you want.” He took another bite, clearly unbothered by his words. ”I heard what you did on the sixth floor. The Zombie Queen was furious. If not for certain complications, she would have risked moving between floors just to deal with you personally.”

Chen Ren raised an eyebrow. ”What complications?”

Shrey grinned. ”You don’t need to know. Just know that the sixth floor is a great deal easier to move through now.”

Chen Ren filed that away without much interest. For a brief moment he wondered if that was why there had been so many Thunder Blade Sect cultivators on the eighth floor, but it didn’t matter. He had other things to focus on.

He looked at Merchant Shrey, thinking how to bring up the topic before deciding to be direct.

”I want information on the [Grand Aegis Array] around the fourth city on the eighth floor. And how to break through it,” he said at once.

Merchant Shrey froze instantly. The eel slipped off his chopsticks and hit the ground.

He stared at Chen Ren for a long moment, then looked down at the eel, picked it back up, and ate it in two quick bites as if it wasn’t dirty by falling on the floor.

Then he swallowed, and fixed Chen Ren with a flat look.

”You know about the master lift, I presume.”

Chen Ren smiled. ”I do. And I want to reach it.”

Shrey shook his head slowly. ”No chance in heaven. Do you actually think your strength is enough to breach that array?”

”No,” Chen Ren said simply. ”I know it isn’t. I’m not even at the domain manifestation realm. But there should be another way through it.”

”There isn’t.” Shrey set the stick of eels down. ”Master lifts are the most prized things in the entire pagoda. No climber has ever reached one. If anyone ever did, the lords themselves would seek him out for an audience. His name would be known everywhere.” He paused. ”But it’s never happened. It’s an impossible task.”

Chen Ren pulled over a chair and sat down.

”I don’t think anything in this pagoda is truly impossible. The whole place shouldn’t exist and yet here it is. You exist. Others like you exist. There’s always a way.”

Shrey looked at him for a moment, then picked up his bottle and drank deeply, letting out a long breath after.

”Maybe you’re right, kid.” He said finally. ”But neither of us knows what that way is. I really doubt there’s something in the first ten floors to help you out.”

”I can’t give up,” Chen Ren said. ”I have seven days.”

Shrey scoffed. ”Take a year. You still won’t find anything.”

But then, he paused. A flicker of amusement crossed his face, and he chuckled.

”Well. There is one way.” He leaned back. ”If you could gather enough treasures hidden across the pagoda and convince several city lords to lend you their strength, then maybe—just maybe—you could breach the array. But that sounds even more impossible than the first option, doesn’t it?”

***

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