Dao of Money

Princess Yanyue felt as if she had fallen into the worst nightmare of her life.

She had no idea how she had ended up here, and no matter how much she wanted to tear herself out of it, it felt impossible. Everything around her dragged her back to the ugliest days of her childhood, to the time when she had first spoken too boldly at one of her father’s banquets and said that she wanted to become empress one day. Some had laughed and treated it as the nonsense of a child. Others had dismissed it just as easily, but her brothers had not.

They had taken it seriously. To them, it was not childish dreaming. It was a threat.

After that, politics had entered her life before she was old enough to understand it. A child could never be prepared for something like that. The people around her, the ones who might have wanted to help, had all been weaker than her brothers in the games that actually mattered. One after another, they were pushed aside, and in the end Yanyue was left alone.

Now it felt as though she had been thrown back into that time… only worse. This time, her brothers were not content with sidelining her. This time, they were killing her.

She died like a doll being smashed apart, only to be put back together and broken once more. She felt every death. Every blade. Every word thrown at her. Even when Yanyue spoke back, even when she tried to defend herself, the fear and uncertainty of what was happening still crept into her mind and wrapped around it. She wanted to break free—wanted to run, or wake up. But fear held her in place.

Her fear wasn’t of dying—rather that she would never be able to outrun them; her brother or her family.

No matter where she went, they would keep plotting against her. They’d keep trying to grind her down until there was nothing left of her but ash.

She believed that because her brother had once said exactly that. She could do nothing but endure as she died again and again.

At some point, a small part of her tried to tell herself that maybe this was useful. Maybe this was training for the death that would one day truly come for her. But even she knew that thought was nothing more than a way to cope with the fear and anxiety that rose in her chest every single time her brothers stepped toward her with weapons in hand. It was just a lie she was telling herself so she wouldn’t completely break.

The truth was much simpler. She felt like she was going to keep dying forever.

Again and again.

And that this was her punishment for dreaming beyond the place everyone thought she should accept. But then, out of nowhere, everything changed.

One moment, she had been bracing herself for another death. The next, it simply didn’t come. Her brother’s weapon stopped before it reached her, and even he looked confused, as if he didn’t understand what had blocked him. Then another brother moved, trying to kill her instead, and his attack was also stopped by something she could not see, but it was there.

Something was protecting her.

Yanyue had no idea how or why, but she wasn’t about to complain. Instead, she felt something warm rise in her chest, something she had not felt in a very long time.

When was the last time anyone had tried to protect her?

Am I truly not alone here?

As those thoughts entered her mind, her brothers kept attacking again and again. They tried to kill her, and again and again, something stopped them. For the first time in what felt like forever, Yanyue felt safe. Even if not fully enough to erase the fear inside her, she felt safe enough that she could finally breathe without feeling like every breath might be her last.

Her brothers still kept talking; telling her that she wasn’t worthy, that she was trying to rise beyond her place, that she was reaching for something she had no right to hold.

But now, with something protecting her—what she believed could only be the heavens themselves—she slowly started to find her confidence again, even with fear still wrapped tightly around her heart.

Even if that was all it was, she knew one thing for certain now. She was not alone.

And because of that, she talked back. She tried to tear apart the fear her brothers had planted inside her for years. She told them that she would not back down, that if it came to it, she would return each of her deaths to them one by one so they could understand even a fraction of what they had made her feel.

Then she heard it the voice of the heavens itself.

It whispered to her. It told her to face her fear, to move forward, to kill each of her brothers with her own hands. The voice even told her that it believed in her—that she had the strength to do it.

For the first time since this nightmare had begun, Yanyue felt something inside her that was not only pain or fear. Strength rose in her chest alongside the terror, and she finally took a step forward to do what she had wanted to do all this time.

But it still wasn’t easy. She hated her brothers, yes, but could she really kill them?

Every one of them filled her with fear. Talking back to them was one thing. Actually stepping forward and ending their lives was something else entirely. Still, the voice kept urging her onward.

So, even with the chains of fear wrapped tightly around her heart, she forced herself forward.

She rushed at the first of her brothers, but the moment she got close, he swung his sword at her and shouted, “I’m going to kill you with my own sword, sister!”

Yet this time, she did not freeze. Her legs moved on their own.

She twisted aside and somehow avoided the blade.

That alone shocked her more than anything else. She had fully expected to die again. Instead, she had moved, and for the first time, her brother was the one left still.

It was then that the voice of the heavens spoke again and told her to move forward and finish the fight.

And without thinking, she did. She had no sword in her hand, no great weapon, nothing at all, but the moment Yanyue reached out and placed a hand on her brother, he simply vanished. One second, he had been there, filled with anger and hate, and the next, the rewas only empty space in front of her.

She stood there for a moment, staring at the ground, not having expected it to be so easy to erase him, not having expected that a part of her fear could disappear just like that.

Then the voice of the heavens encouraged her again.

But seeing one of them vanish only made the others louder. Her brothers shouted at her from all directions, again and again, calling her a failure, calling her someone who had only ever been meant to die. This time, though, instead of shouting back, Yanyue simply looked at them as they started moving toward her one by one.

The sight of it still made fear tighten around her heart.

But the voice of the heavens spoke inside her mind once more, and she moved.

A blade came for her first and she dodged it. Then a hammer followed, and somehow she avoided that too, relying on movements she didn’t even know she had learned until this very moment. She stepped through their attacks, reached out, and touched them. Just like the first brother, they vanished the instant her hand met them.

But the more of them she destroyed, the worse their words became.

They no longer only called her an imbecile. They started naming every failure they knew of, every mistake she had made, every weakness she had ever shown. They threw all of it back at her at once, and with every word, fear tried to claw its way up her chest again.

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Then the voice of the heavens came once more. And Yanyue moved again.

She touched one brother, then another, making them disappear even as they swung at her. She didn’t know how she was doing it, but she kept dodging most of their attacks, and for the ones she couldn’t avoid, the heavens themselves seemed to shield her from harm.

With the heavens on her side, there was no way she was going to lose.

And when it was finally over, when all of her brothers were gone, Yanyue dropped to her knees, only then realising how much strain she had been under the entire time. Her fear was not gone completely. She had stood in front of her brothers, fought them, even erased them for all the cruelty they had put her through, but deep down she still did not feel like she had fully conquered her fear. She had simply refused to give up. She had endured and kept moving, and somehow that had stopped her from dying until the end of it.

But was that enough?

Was that enough for her to escape this place?

Was it enough for her to—

The voice of the heavens suddenly interrupted her. “Wake up! You need to wake up now! The trial is over!”

Yanyue stilled immediately. “Wake up?” she said in confusion. “How?”

Was she truly asleep?

But the moment that thought entered her mind, the world around her began to spin. She had no idea what was happening, and panic hit her as the whole place started to crack apart around her. Wanting not to get caught in whatever was happening, she pushed herself up and tried to run, but her legs did not move fast enough.

Then the ground beneath her vanished.

And she—

She woke up.

Yanyue blinked and looked around the room she was in. Almost immediately, one face crouched down in front of her. “Are you okay?”

For a second, she could not tell whether she was still hearing the voice of the heavens or whether it was truly Chen Ren standing there in front of her. But then every memory that had blurred and faded inside the trial came rushing back to her, and she finally understood what had happened.

She remembered it all.

She remembered saying yes to the inheritance trial because the woman inside it had told her that if she rejected it now, she would not find the chance again so easily.

After that, everything had become a blur.

She had been dragged into her worst memories and forced to face her brothers again and again, brothers who wanted nothing more than to kill her. Yanyue was certain that she would have never gotten out of that place on her own if she hadn’t heard the voice of the heavens. And now, as she stared at Chen Ren, she couldn’t help but wonder whether that voice had truly been him.

“Was that you?” she asked.

The smile on his face was enough of an answer.

“Yes,” he said. “You were gone for too long, and the twins came to get me. Fortunately, I was able to be of some use inside the trial.”

Yanyue wanted to ask how he had even managed something like that. Another part of her, however, felt both relieved and irritated by it. She was glad Chen Ren had come to help her, but at the same time, once again she had relied on him. It was starting to become a habit, and she did not know what to do with that feeling.

Before she could say anything else, another voice spoke from behind them. “So, you passed the trial in the end?”

Both she and Chen Ren turned at once.

The woman who had given her the trial was standing there again.

Chen Ren looked visibly surprised to see her, but Yanyue simply pushed herself up from the ground and walked toward the woman. “You never told me the trial was going to be like that.”

The woman replied calmly, “I told you it was a trial about conquering fear. It would not have been much of a trial if I had told you any more than that.” Then her eyes shifted toward Chen Ren, and she added, “Either way, you cannot complain too much when you had such good help.”

She looked at him with a faint scowl but said nothing more.

Yanyue once again found herself wondering just how Chen Ren had entered her trial in the first place, but that was a question for later.

For now, she had something else on her mind.

“So I won your inheritance by passing the trial?” she asked.

The woman didn’t answer immediately. She stayed quiet for a few seconds before finally nodding. “Yes. You had help, but in the end you still overcame your fears and passed the trial. My inheritance is yours. The moment you leave this room, it will become part of you. You will feel it in your mind.”

Yanyue wanted to ask what exactly that meant, but another question was already stronger in her thoughts. It was the very reason she had come looking around the top of the library in the first place.

“Will your inheritance also contain an index to this library?” she asked.

The woman frowned slightly. “An index? No. Why would it? My inheritance has nothing to do with that.”

Yanyue immediately frowned as well, finally realising what she had overlooked. She had never actually asked about the index. She had only agreed to the trial because the chance to obtain an inheritance had pulled at her curiosity, and in doing so she had lost sight of what she had originally been trying to find.

As she stood there wondering what to do next, Chen Ren stepped up beside her.

“You were looking for an index?”

“Yeah, I thought we would need it if we wanted to find the books we came here for.”

Chen Ren nodded, clearly thinking the same thing. But Yanyue still didn’t know what to do with that. If the woman standing before them did not have the index, then where exactly was she supposed to find it now—

Her thoughts were cut off when Chen Ren spoke again.

“You said you don’t have the index,” he said to the woman, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t know where it is, right?”

Yanyue blinked at that and turned to the woman, who immediately narrowed her eyes at Chen Ren. “And even if I do know where it is, why would I tell you?”

At once, Chen Ren and Yanyue met each other’s eyes.

She could already tell what he was thinking before he even said it.

“Then why don’t we negotiate?” Chen Ren said. “I’m sure we can come to a price that makes you happy enough to give us that information.”

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