Dao of Money

As it turned out, Chen Ren was actually able to get the woman—spirit, or whatever exactly she was—to help them with the location of the index.

A large part of it came down to one simple thing. Now that princess Yanyue had already taken the inheritance, there was not much left for the woman to do.

Long ago, when Chen Ren had first learned about inheritances in the pagoda, Wang Jun had mentioned in one of their shorter conversations that most inheritances were tied to a spirit left behind by the cultivator who created them. It had apparently been a common practice in his era.

Once someone claimed the inheritance, that spirit would only remain for some time before fading away, because in the end it was only a fragment of the original cultivator, not the cultivator themselves.

That was also why Chen Ren had been able to get information from her.

Even before this, he had managed to negotiate with her enough to realise that she was not unreasonable. If anything, she was a little easier to deal with than he had expected, which was surprising for someone who had once been both old and powerful, but Chen Ren was not about to complain about that.

In the end, what he offered her was actually very simple.

He told her that if she helped them one last time, he would make sure her name continued to live on through princess Yanyue. Cultivators wanted immortality more than anything else, and because of that desire, they hated being forgotten.

They wanted their names to survive through the world and across the ages, something most of them could never truly achieve. So when Chen Ren pointed out how many centuries had already passed and how no one knew her name anymore, the woman had actually looked shocked.

Princess Yanyue had supported him at once, telling the woman who she was and how she could make sure that at the very least, her name would not disappear completely.

In the end, it worked.

The woman—who introduced herself as Mistress Xue Lian, the Poison Mistress of the Nine Deadly Poison Valley, a place that apparently did not even exist anymore—finally gave them the location of the index where every book in the grand library was recorded.

After that, a gate appeared.

The next moment, they were out of that place and, somewhat surprisingly, back on the ground floor of the library.

Still, they didn’t move right away to look for the rest of their party.

The moment Princess Yanyue stepped out, she dropped to the ground.

Chen Ren stayed calm. He could tell this had something to do with the inheritance settling inside her. She was probably seeing visions or being flooded with information from it. He did not know exactly how such inheritances worked, but he chose to wait instead of disturbing her.

So he stayed there while she lay on the ground, clutching her head every now and then. Then, after around two minutes, her eyes finally opened.

Almost immediately, she took out a waterskin from her spatial ring and drank from it in one long gulp.

Only after some colour started returning to her face did Chen Ren crouched down beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. It’s just… there was too much information in there. Even pieces of Xue Lian’s life came with it. It was a lot to take in.”

Chen Ren nodded at that. “Take your time with it.”

Then, after a small pause, he asked the question that had already been sitting in his mind. “Can I ask what kind of techniques you got from it? I would assume poison ones, but after seeing your trial, I wouldn’t have expected that sort of trial from a poison master.”

“She certainly isn’t a normal poison-aspected cultivator.”

Chen Ren raised an eyebrow at that, and princess Yanyue explained, “She was known as the poison mistress, yes, but she had another title too. Queen of Fears. She created poisons that could influence a cultivator’s mind, push them into frenzy, or even drive them mad. But most often, she relied on poisons that amplified fear and turned it into hallucinations. Her enemies usually did not die from the poison itself. They killed themselves because of what she made them see.”

The more Chen Ren heard, the more terrifying the spirit sounded compared to the woman he had spoken to. Maybe age had softened her, or maybe being reduced to a spirit had taken away some of that edge, but even so, mental poisons sounded horrifying. It was the kind of path that could let someone challenge cultivators above their realm. At higher stages, cultivators always trained their minds to resist direct mental attacks, but hallucinations felt different. Harder to guard against. A person could defend against a strike they noticed. It was much more difficult to defend against something that made them doubt what was real.

“So did you get the recipes for those poisons?” he asked.

That drew a smile from her face. “Yes. A lot of them. Different kinds, for different effects. I think I could make some of them without too much trouble.” Her smile deepened slightly. “They would work well with my arrows.”

Chen Ren nodded, already picturing how dangerous that would be in battle. Then he reached down, pulled Princess Yanyue to her feet. “Let’s go find the others. After that, we’ll make our way to the index. They should still be on the upper floors looking for you.”

She nodded at once and pulled out a flying sword from her spatial ring. She stepped onto it first. Chen Ren followed right behind her.

They rose to the air at once and moved through the library. Still, his mind kept turning over one thing—the index.

Getting to the index would not be difficult now that they knew where it was hidden, but Chen Ren already knew that once they got their hands on it, they probably would not remain in the library for very long.

Princess Yanyue would take the book she had come here for, and they would gather anything else useful enough to justify carrying out, hopefully including some clue about the medallion. After that, he would still have to deal with Shrey’s request, and that meant time was becoming a real problem.

At least he already had the manual for mind cultivation.

That would carry him for a while, at least through the first two stages. What came after that could be figured out later, once he had actually reached that point. So with that in mind, Chen Ren decided there was no reason to keep hiding anything from princess Yanyue.

He told her the same thing he had already told yalan and Wang Jun, explaining what they wanted, where those books were supposed to be, and the danger tied to trying to steal them.

Honestly, Chen Ren had expected her to scold him a little.

Instead, princess Yanyue simply kept guiding the flying sword upward, listening without interrupting him, and only once he was done did she finally speak.

“I understand,” she said. “Then we get those books at the very end and leave immediately after. I’m sure we’ll have a small window to get out before the lord of this floor notices what happened.”

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Chen Ren blinked at that.

“I thought you were going to tell me I was stupid for agreeing to something like this.”

Princess Yanyue smiled faintly and turned her head just enough to look at him.

“Maybe you were,” she said. “But you did it for the master lift. I understand that. And after you helped me in the trial, which I rushed into without thinking properly, stealing books with you sounds like a fair enough way to repay that debt.” she paused for a second and added, “At least the start of paying it back for everything you have done for me in the pagoda.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

He hadn’t realised that princess Yanyue was taking all of it as a debt between them, but thinking of it now, he guessed it was simply part of who she was. A princess did not grow up in the same way other cultivators did, and if what he had seen in the illusion was even close to the truth, then hers had not been a gentle upbringing. It had been the sort where every favour came with weight, where every kindness had to be returned somehow, and where nothing could simply be accepted without thought. On top of that, she was probably still embarrassed by how quickly she had rushed into the trial for reasons he still did not fully understand.

Before Chen Ren could say anything back, princess Yanyue suddenly slowed the sword and straightened it.

Up ahead, the rest of their party had come into view.

They were standing in one of the corridors between two bookshelves, and Chen Ren immediately opened his mouth to call out to them. But before he could, something else caught his eye and made him stop.

The three of them were not alone.

Right in front of them stood three people Chen Ren had never seen before, and that alone was enough to make his thoughts sharpen. He had not expected to run into anyone else in the grand library, especially not people he was seeing for the first time.

Out of the three, his attention was fixed first on the man in the centre.

It was hard to guess his age. He did not look old, but neither did he seem young. More than that, there was something in his eyes that made Chen Ren immediately feel that this was not someone casual or harmless. The two beside him were younger and stood a half-step back, which made it obvious enough that they were following him.

Disciples, perhaps. Or something close to that. Or maybe they were connected in some other way.

They didn’t look alike, so Chen Ren doubted they were family, but there was clearly some sort of link between them. For a brief moment, he even wondered whether they might be illusions made by the library. That would not have been the strangest thing the pagoda had thrown at him. But they were not attacking, and that alone made the idea weaker.

Instead, they were simply standing there and talking with yalan and the twins. After turning over every likely answer in his head, Chen Ren could only come to one conclusion.

They were climbers; climbers who had made it through the eighth and ninth floors while Chen Ren and the others had been occupied with the array.

As the flying sword drifted closer, the conversation below fell quiet and the unfamiliar group looked up at them. His own people turned as well, and Chen Ren immediately noticed the relief on the twins’ faces the moment they saw princess Yanyue with him.

Once the sword stopped, Chen Ren jumped down first. Yalan spoke immediately. “So you managed to find her.”

Chen Ren hummed, then shifted his gaze toward the three unfamiliar cultivators. “I see you found some people as well.”

The older man smiled at that and stepped forward. His eyes moved over Chen Ren and princess Yanyue. “I was just introducing myself to the spirit beast here. I didn’t expect to find the top ranker and princess Yanyue herself on the tenth floor too.”

Then he paused and added, “I’m Jun. These two are my disciples, Wenji and Shuyi.”

Both of the younger cultivators smiled and gave a small bow toward princess Yanyue. Jun himself stayed standing where he was.

Princess Yanyue stepped forward a little and studied him before saying, “I have never seen you before, yet you are here on the tenth floor. You must be a very strong cultivator.”

Jun smiled at that. “I do my best. But yes, we have been moving through the floors at a steady pace and have had some success with it. It seems like you have been inside this library for a while now.”

Chen Ren couldn’t return the smile. His eyes glazed over the disciples and back at Jun. “Only a few hours.”

“Then have you found anything interesting?”

“There’s some useful stuff,” Chen Ren said, “but the library is huge. Unless someone gets lucky, there isn’t really a way to find what they want without looking through everything.”

At that, the smile on Jun’s face curved a little more. “I’ve been told more than once that I’m lucky.”

Chen Ren didn’t know what to say to that, and by the way the fur along Yalan’s body was rising beside him, he could already tell the man was dangerous. The fact that princess Yanyue didn’t recognise him only made the warning bells in Chen Ren’s mind ring louder.

Knowing her, she should have had information on the most powerful cultivators in the empire, and it was obvious from the way she looked at Jun that this was her first time seeing him.

He also clearly did not belong to any guardian sect that Chen Ren knew of.

A hidden expert, maybe—or something else.

But for now, Chen Ren only wanted one thing.

To get away from this man and his disciples and put his hands on the index before anything changed.

“I hope your luck stays with you in the library then. My party will be moving down to check some books there. The library is large enough that we don’t need to get in each other’s way.”

Jun nodded. “I was hoping for the same thing.”

For a second, it looked like he was finally going to turn away, but then he paused and looked straight at Chen Ren.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m looking for information on something. A medallion of sorts that I know is hidden somewhere across the pagoda. Have you come across anything about it?”

***

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