Dao of Money

The moment Chen Ren hit the ground, he caught movement at the edge of his vision.

More tendrils were already closing in.

Before he could react, hurried footsteps cut in. Princess Yanyue was suddenly there beside him.

The lance in her hands swept in a wide arc, and a blast of qi tore through the tendrils reaching for him. For a breath, they split apart, but the broken ends immediately started pulling themselves back together.

Chen Ren pushed himself up.

“I don’t think we can stay here,” he said. “We need to move.”

Princess Yanyue gave a quick nod and swung the lance again.

Chen Ren glanced around and saw that the twins had slowed down too, waiting for them instead of flying ahead. Before he could even look for his sword, Jun’s voice carried over the field.

“You can’t run anymore. Just give up.”

Chen Ren turned and saw that Jun’s ship had come far too close. More tendrils were spilling toward them now, enough that the sky around them looked crowded.

Yalan shouted from the side as flames whipped from her tail and struck another wave of them.

“Chen Ren, what do we do now?”

For the first time in a long while, Chen Ren felt his heart drop hard.

Fear came with it.

Not the quick kind that passed in a breath, but the cold, sinking kind that made everything feel heavier. Even if they moved right now, he knew they would not get far enough. Jun was too close. The tendrils were too fast. The gap was already gone.

There was only one path left in his mind, but he didn’t even know if it would work.

Still, he looked at the others and said, “We can’t run now. We fight.”

At once, Li Qingfeng gasped. “How are we supposed to fight him?”

Chen Ren kept his eyes on Jun.

“There’s no other choice. He’ll chase us down no matter what. Just remember this—you do not have to die here.”

The meaning landed immediately.

Both twins understood that he was hinting at the return ticket and stepped off their sword at once. Beside him, Princess Yanyue agreed.

“Yes. This is the only way now. We face him head-on, no matter how strong he is.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, the lance in her hand shifted back into her usual bow. She drew and released in one motion, sending qi arrows into the cluster of tendrils closing around them.

At the same time, Chen Ren burned a few more talismans. This time they didn’t send out attacks.

Only a wave of qi rolled outward.

The effect showed a second later. When one of Princess Yanyue’s arrows struck another tendril, it did not just split the thing apart. It burst through it, spraying blood and gore into the air. Her eyes widened for a moment, but she didn’t stop shooting.

Chen Ren moved too, catching a tendril with one hand, then flooding lightning through it until the whole length of it spasmed.

By then, Jun’s ship was almost upon them.

Chen Ren reached into his spatial ring and pulled out a red pendant. The moment he fed qi into it, a dragon-shaped conjuration made of dense crimson flame surged out and shot toward the ship, opening its jaws and pouring fire down over the demonic cultivators.

Jun answered with one raised hand.

A huge barrier of dark flames rose in front of him.

The two attacks crashed together. Heat rolled over the whole battlefield, harsh enough that even in a place like this it felt suffocating, but after only a few seconds the attack from the pendant broke apart and faded. When the light cleared, Jun was still standing there as if blocking it had cost him nothing at all.

The man looked straight at Chen Ren.

“I would really like to know what else you have hidden in that ring. You remind me of an annoying merchant I once fought. Just like you, his spatial ring was full of useless little things that kept forcing me to block one after another. Unfortunately for you, I have much less patience now. And even a field meant to suppress demonic qi won’t work on me.”

Chen Ren was not surprised that Jun had figured out what those talismans were doing.

He only pulled out more.

Jun gave a short scoff, and before Chen Ren could even burn one of them, tendrils burst out of the ground right in front of him. He cursed and jumped back, but they still caught his arms and yanked hard enough to make the talismans slip from his hands.

He forced qi through his body at once, burning through the talismans on the ground.

At once, a chilly, cold air rose around him, freezing the tendrils.

Chen Ren shook free and stumbled back another few steps, but the moment he did, even more tendrils tore up from the ground.

He immediately pushed lightning into his fingers, shaping it into long nails, and slashed through them. They broke apart, but more rose in their place. And more after that.

They just kept coming.

Jun stayed on the ship and watched, but both of his disciples jumped down.

A blade formed in Shuyi's hand and a spear appeared in Wenji’s. The girl rushed straight at Princess Yanyue, moving fast enough that her arrows kept exploding behind her instead of hitting her.

Wenji also charged at the twins, his every step breaking the ground in front of him.

Off to the side, Yalan kept lashing out at the tendrils spreading everywhere, trying to keep them from swallowing the whole fight.

Chaos spread across the whole battlefield.

Jun still hadn’t even stepped down from his ship, and Chen Ren had no delusions that keeping those tendrils active for this long was draining him much.

They had been chasing and attacking them for well over ten minutes, and there was still no sign of them slowing. On top of that, he had no idea when the floor lord might catch up to them too.

There was nothing about this situation he wanted any part of.

But there was no way out of it now.

So he fought.

He used everything he had just to keep up with the tendrils pressing at him from every direction. Another lightning blade formed in his hand, something he could only do now because his control over qi and his aspect had sharpened so much during his time in the pagoda, and he swung it hard through the mass coming at him. This time he pushed more qi into the edge of it, and whenever the blade struck, thunder cracked outward in bursts and scorched through the tendrils.

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He stayed light on his feet too.

Whenever a tendril erupted behind him, Chen Ren twisted at once, jumped aside, or stamped down hard enough to crush it before it could wrap around his legs. The others fought just as hard, but even then the pressure kept rising. Every time Chen Ren thought he had finally adjusted to the pace of the tendrils, another wave of them came from the ground and threw everything off again.

Still, even in the middle of that, he kept one thing in mind. They had to get to Jun.

That was the only real way out of this. If Jun fell, then they might still have a chance to break free and make it to the master lift. Chen Ren had seen Yalan try to force her way toward him once already, but the two disciples had intercepted her and pushed her back, leaving her stuck dealing with them instead.

So he made the choice to go for Jun himself.

More tendrils tore up from the ground, but Chen Ren released another burst of lightning through his body and rushed straight at Jun anyway, ignoring the tendrils as they twisted and changed direction to chase after him.

But before he could get closer, Jun vanished. One moment he was standing on the ship. The next, he was gone.

Chen Ren slowed sharply, his eyes widening, and then a chill ran across his back. He turned just in time. His lightning blade came up and caught a dark blade before it could cut into him.

Sparks burst between them.

Jun looked down at him. “Your instincts are as sharp as I expected.”

Chen Ren did not answer.

He dropped his blade low, shifted to the side, and struck at Jun’s knee, but even though the hit landed, the man didn’t move at all. He only smiled.

“Do you really think anything you do can even scratch me? If not for me, that lord would have torn through you already. Your illusion barrier was never that impressive.”

Chen Ren didn’t react to the words. Whether Jun was lying or not did not matter right then. All that mattered was creating distance and finding another opening.

But before he could pull back, Jun raised one hand.

Chains spilled out from it like dark serpents.

He jumped away as they shot toward him, twisting his body to let them pass, but in that same instant tendrils wrapped around his legs. Before he could tear free, more coiled around his arms too. He forced lightning through them immediately, expecting them to burn apart like before.

They didn’t. This time, they held.

“Do you really think I was even trying before? If I did not need to keep you alive, you would not have lasted a minute running from me.”

Chen Ren only gritted his teeth.

He said nothing. Part of him was already ready to use the return ticket at any moment, but another part knew this might be his best chance to get something out of Jun. So instead, he asked, “What do you even want from me?”

Jun’s answer came without pause. “The medallion you have. Or maybe more than one. However many you have, I want them.”

“I don’t have any.”

The tendrils around him immediately tightened.

They pressed into his skin hard enough that he felt them tear through his robes, and then small spikes pushed out from them, drawing blood and Chen Ren was sure they had not been there before.

“You should know better than to lie to me. I can pick these things out. Now tell me, what did you steal from the lord? Was it another medallion, or the location of one?”

Chen Ren’s eyes widened at that. So that was it.

That was why Jun had kept chasing them beyond simply wanting them dead. He had been in the library for the same reason as Chen Ren all along. Of course, there was no chance he would believe Chen Ren had found nothing there about the medallion.

But before he could answer, Chen Ren caught sight of something behind Jun.

At once, he realised he needed to buy time.

So he looked straight at him and said, “Even if I had found something, you would never get your hands on it.”

Jun’s eyes dropped briefly toward Chen Ren’s spatial ring before he gave a low scoff. “Do you really think I can’t break a mere ring?”

“You can try. But the moment you push even a little qi into it, the ring will explode. After that, you won’t be getting anything.”

Jun went still for the first time.

Chen Ren saw his eyes settle on the ring, sharp and focused, as if he were trying to make out the tiny runes engraved into it. That brief pause was all Yalan needed.

She came in from the side without any warning or sound.

One moment Jun was staring at the ring, and the next Yalan was on him with burning claws. Jun twisted just in time. Her claws still raked across his arm, but he caught her around the waist. “Pesky little cat. Did you really think that would work, no matter how quick you are?”

Yalan only let out a scoff. Her tail snapped longer—a huge blast of flame burst out straight into Jun’s face. The force of it made him step back, and in that moment, she tore herself free, landed beside Chen Ren, and slashed the tendrils holding him apart.

“We need to burn the tickets!” she said loud enough for all of them to hear.

The words hit hard.

Chen Ren saw the same thought flash across the twins’ faces at once. They knew it too. With Jun still standing there, victory was starting to feel more like a foolish dream than anything real. Chen Ren himself knew she was right.

And still, part of him did not want to leave.

Not yet.

There was too much left inside the pagoda. Too much unfinished. He still had no real clue about the medallion, and walking away now felt like losing everything at once. But then he saw Jun straighten up again. More chains spilled from his hands, and his eyes darkened further with demonic qi.

That was enough.

Chen Ren made the choice to leave.

But before he could even reach for the return ticket, a loud, beastly cry split through the air.

***

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