Dao of Money

Chen Ren tried his best not to lose his cool as he stared at Princess Yanyue.

She looked as if she had just received the shock of her lifetime.

Honestly, he couldn’t blame her. If a severed head suddenly spoke beside him after weeks of silence and misery in a qi-less desert, he might have reacted the same way. Still, that didn’t make the situation any less frustrating.

For the past two weeks in this heaven-forsaken place, Chen Ren had known that he would eventually have to reveal the truth about Wang Jun. There was no avoiding it forever. They had already spent too much time on this floor. At least a month, maybe more, though the days had blurred together so badly that he was no longer certain.

And the head was growing impatient.

Every chance Wang Jun got to whisper, he used it to complain. He hated this place. He hated the heat. He hated being forced to stay quiet. He hated pretending he did not exist while Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue walked through the same endless sand day after day.

Somehow, Chen Ren had managed to pacify him until now.

He also knew that speaking to Wang Jun was important. If anyone had a chance of knowing what this floor was, or how they might leave it, it would be the ancient head he was carrying around. But instead of revealing himself properly, Wang Jun had chosen the worst possible moment and the worst possible way.

Chen Ren felt his headache returning.

After so long on this floor, patience was no longer one of his strongest qualities. He reached to his side and grabbed the head, letting the invisibility around it fade.

Princess Yanyue gasped.

Chen Ren ignored her for the moment and looked straight at Wang Jun. “Why are you always so hasty? I was going to tell her about you. I just needed to prepare her first. You are not a cat that I can suddenly introduce to her.”

Wang Jun’s eyes narrowed. “Do. Not compare me to a pet.”

“That was not the point.”

“Knowing you, you would have dragged this out for two days. Or two months.” Wang Jun’s voice was filled with irritation. “I am tired of acting like I do not exist.”

Chen Ren stared at his eyes. “Well, now she knows you exist,” he said. “You should be glad she did not shoot you down in shock.”

Before Wang Jun could say anything more, Princess Yanyue finally found her voice.

“Sect Leader Chen,” she said carefully, her eyes still fixed on the head in his hands. “What is going on? Who is this severed head?”

Chen Ren looked at her and let out a slow breath.

There was no better moment to explain it now. The truth had already spoken for itself, quite literally, and trying to hide anything further would only make the situation worse. So Chen Ren turned Wang Jun slightly, making sure the head was facing her properly.

“This is Wang Jun,” he said. “An ancient cultivator who, after a series of misfortunes, is now just a head.”

Princess Yanyue stared at him.

Chen Ren continued before she could decide whether that answer made anything clearer. “He was sleeping in a vault my sect found a while back. Since then, he has been part of my sect.”

“I never formally joined your sect,” Wang Jun said.

“Again, that is not important right now,” Chen Ren replied without looking at him. “Why don’t you at least greet Princess Yanyue first?”

Wang Jun looked her up and down. “It is nice to finally talk to you, girl.”

Princess Yanyue looked even more confused after that, which Chen Ren thought was fair. At the very least, she no longer looked like she was about to fire an arrow through Wang Jun out of instinct.

Chen Ren glanced up at her. “Don’t mind him. He is never respectful. But if we want to find a way out of here, then he might be able to help us. At least, he is the only one here who has any chance of doing so.”

That changed her expression.

Her eyes sharpened, and some of the shock gave way to hope as she looked at Wang Jun again. The head, unfortunately, seemed to notice it too, because a smug smile slowly appeared on his face.

“How will the…” Princess Yanyue paused, clearly struggling to decide what to call him. “How will he help us? I mean, Wang Jun.”

“Because he was one of the cultivators who helped create the pagoda,” Chen Ren said. “Yes, he is that old.”

Wang Jun grumbled at once. “Do not say it like it is a bad thing. The older a cultivator is, the more feared he should be.”

“The more you speak,” Chen Ren said, “the sillier you look.”

Wang Jun’s eyes narrowed. “You are just jealous of me.”

As Chen Ren and Wang Jun continued to bicker, he felt some of the tension from the past few weeks loosen in his chest.

It was strange, considering where they were. They were still trapped on an empty floor with no qi, no lift, and no clear way out. Their supplies were limited, their bodies were tired, and every day in this desert pushed them a little closer to despair. Yet somehow, hearing Wang Jun complain and answer back like usual made things feel a little less hopeless.

Princess Yanyue, on the other hand, looked as if she was still trying to comprehend what was happening.

Her face shifted several times in the span of a minute. Confusion, disbelief, suspicion, and something close to curiosity all passed across her face. Chen Ren wasn’t even sure what he was saying to Wang Jun during that time, because most of his attention had moved to her.

Finally, she looked back at the head.

“So you were one of the cultivators who made this pagoda?”

“Yes, I was. And I still am. I am not dead yet, despite how I look.”

That didn’t seem to make her any less confused. Chen Ren decided she deserved a proper explanation.

He placed Wang Jun down on the boulder he had been sitting on, then turned to Princess Yanyue. “Let me tell you how I became friends with a severed head.”

“We are not friends,” Wang Jun said immediately. “You are more like an unruly half-disciple to me.”

Chen Ren ignored him.

He started from the vault Anji’s father had left for her. He explained how they had found Wang Jun there, what had happened inside, and how the ancient cultivator had eventually ended up with them. He made it clear that they had taken him in partly because of his knowledge, and partly because none of them had known what else to do with a living head from an ancient era.

He left out several details.

There were things Princess Yanyue did not need to know, and secrets Chen Ren was not willing to hand over, no matter how much he trusted her. So he kept the explanation simple and moved on to why he had brought Wang Jun into the pagoda.

By the time he finished, Princess Yanyue looked more than shocked.

For a while, she seemed to have no words at all.

Chen Ren understood why. It was not every day someone learned that the talking severed head in front of them had once been a domain manifestation realm cultivator.

After everything they had gone through together, Chen Ren hoped Princess Yanyue would keep quiet about Wang Jun.

He did trust her more than he had at the beginning. That much was true. But trust didn’t mean handing someone a secret like this without warning. Wang Jun was not just a strange treasure or an old cultivator with too much knowledge. He was a living remnant from the era of the pagoda’s creation, and if the wrong people learned of him, Chen Ren knew trouble would follow.

So when he finished explaining, Chen Ren looked at her seriously.

“As you can see, Wang Jun is not someone I can show to everyone,” he said. “I hope you stay quiet about him, even after we get out of here.”

Princess Yanyue took a moment to recover from everything she had heard.

Her gaze moved from Chen Ren to Wang Jun, then back again. Finally, she let out a faint breath and said, “It is not like anyone would believe me if I said I met an ancient talking head. Either way, I have no intention of doing that.”

Wang Jun tilted slightly, as if appreciating the answer.

“That is a good choice,” he said. “I would hate to kill you.”

Princess Yanyue went pale.

Chen Ren refused to comment on it. A little fear was not always a bad thing when it came to keeping secrets. Princess Yanyue might be reliable, but she still came from a world far above his own. She was a princess, and he was a commoner who had stumbled into things far larger than himself. Their alliance was real, but so were the differences between them.

Rather than let the tension stretch, Chen Ren turned back to Wang Jun.

“Now that you can talk freely, I need you to find a way out of here,” he said. “Tell me what you know. I don’t want to argue.”

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Wang Jun looked up at him.

“I am also sick of this place,” he said. “But honestly, I only know a few things about it. I was not involved with this floor much. I only took a passing glance at it back then.”

Chen Ren’s lips tightened, but Wang Jun continued before he could speak.

“Since we have been stuck here for so long, I remembered some things.”

Princess Yanyue moved a little closer to the boulder. “Like what? Anything will help us.”

Wang Jun gave her a dry look. “I do not think it will,” he said. “What I know is rather useless.”

“But you do know something,” Chen Ren said.

“Yes. Spending so much time in this place has stirred up a few memories like I said.”

Chen Ren waited for him to continue.

“In a sentence,” Wang Jun said, “I do not think you are getting out of here.”

The words settled heavily between them.

Before Chen Ren could respond, Wang Jun turned his gaze toward Princess Yanyue. “I would actually be grateful if you took me with you when you use your return ticket. I do not wish to die here with this man.”

Chen Ren frowned.

The betrayal itself didn’t even surprise him enough to matter. Not after everything Wang Jun had said and done since they met. What bothered him more was how casually the head had spoken, as if abandoning him in a qi-less desert was the most natural decision in the world.

“Can you explain why we cannot get out of here before you start plotting to leave me alone?” Chen Ren asked.

Wang Jun snorted. “Because we are on the last floor, kid. I was not sure at first, but I am now. This is definitely the last floor.”

Chen Ren blinked.

He had already guessed as much, somewhere in the back of his mind. The lack of qi, the endless desert, the strange silence of the place, all of it had pointed toward something far worse than a normal floor. But hearing Wang Jun confirm it made his stomach feel unsteady.

“The last floor,” Princess Yanyue murmured.

“It was the only floor that was never supposed to be about fighting beasts or solving tricks.”

Chen Ren looked at him. “Then what is it about?”

Wang Jun’s brows drew together. “How would I know? Endurance, maybe. Seeing how long it takes before you die. Some sick experiment. Or maybe it is a floor that was never meant to be conquered at all. I only know it is not the kind of place you can simply move on from.”

“But there should be a lift here, right? A common lift?” Princess Yanyue asked with a tight frown on her face. She looked like she clearly didn’t like what she was hearing.

“Of course,” Wang Jun said.

Some hope returned to her eyes. Wang Jun ruined it immediately. “But why would I know where it is? It is not as if you arrived on top of it.”

Chen Ren closed his eyes for a moment.

He forced himself to take in everything Wang Jun had said without reacting too quickly. They were on the last floor. It was not meant for combat. It might not even be meant to be conquered in the usual sense. There was a lift, somewhere, but the floor was massive, empty, and designed to grind them down before they found anything useful.

If this floor was not meant to be conquered, then there was only one thing left.

It was meant to be endured.

That didn’t give them much to work with.

Were they supposed to endure a desert that had nothing to offer them? There were no qi, no beasts or clear paths. Basically no sign that the floor cared whether they lived or died. Or was there something more to it? Something that they hadn’t noticed because of exhaustion and fear that had made their thoughts too narrow?

And how long were they supposed to endure?

A part of Chen Ren hoped it would not be more than a few months. Another part of him knew how foolish that hope was. To cultivators, a few months were nothing. If the floor had truly been created to test endurance, then even a few years might not be considered long.

Chen Ren doubted they would survive that long with their current supplies.

His thoughts began slipping in a darker direction, but he caught them before they could go too far. Panic wouldn’t help. Despair would not help either. He needed to think of something positive, even if there was not much to choose from right now.

There had to be something.

As he searched for it, Princess Yanyue let out a long sigh. “What is even the point of enduring like this? It is not as if there are beasts around. We need something to do here too.”

Wang Jun answered immediately. “I think it has something to do with testing a cultivator’s mental strength.”

Princess Yanyue looked at him.

“But I could be wrong,” Wang Jun continued. “I have never been subjected to any trials myself. I was always given what I wanted because of my talent. And if there was something I did not get, I simply fought people over it.”

Chen Ren looked at the head. “That is a nice way to say you bullied items out of people.”

Wang Jun scoffed. “And they bullied those items out of cultivators weaker than them. Do not look at me like that. Whatever you think of the current cultivation world, in my age, it was far worse.”

Chen Ren didn’t argue.

He believed that easily enough.

But when he glanced at Princess Yanyue, he saw that she looked interested. Not hopeful exactly, but focused. After weeks of silence and sand, even Wang Jun’s brutal view of the ancient cultivation world seemed to give her something else to think about.

Chen Ren could understand why Princess Yanyue was interested.

Wang Jun was old. Ancient, really. There were not many records left from his era, and most of what remained was probably incomplete, exaggerated, or locked away in places ordinary people would never see. From the small things Chen Ren had pieced together about Princess Yanyue, he knew she loved reading. Knowledge mattered to her, and Wang Jun, despite his memory loss and terrible personality, was a treasure chest of stories that had been buried by time.

So when she began asking him more questions about how cultivators had been in his day, Chen Ren let her.

She wasn’t prepared for the bragging, but that was her problem now.

While Wang Jun spoke, Chen Ren returned to his own thoughts. If they couldn’t find the common lift, then there was no point walking aimlessly every day. That would only waste their strength and break their will faster. But doing nothing was just as dangerous. They needed something to ground them here, something to hold their minds in place before the silence and emptiness of the floor swallowed them from the inside.

He thought about it for a long while.

The desert gave them nothing. If the floor was meant to test endurance, then the worst thing they could do was wait for it to break them.

They needed a routine—a purpose. Something that made time feel like it was moving toward something, even if that something was only improvement.

The thought finally clicked into place while Wang Jun was explaining something called the Battle of Seven Swords to Princess Yanyue.

Chen Ren looked at him and interrupted. “You said we might be here for more than a few years, right?”

Wang Jun grumbled, clearly annoyed at being stopped just when he seemed to be reaching the good part of his story. Still, he looked up at Chen Ren and answered.

“Yes. I do not know how long exactly, but it could certainly be that long.”

Chen Ren turned to Princess Yanyue.

A smile slowly appeared on his face.

He reached into his spatial ring and took out the books he had gotten from the floor lord, along with several others he had gathered during the climb. One by one, he placed them on the sand between them, forming a small stack of manuals, notes, and records.

Princess Yanyue looked at the books, then at him.

Chen Ren’s smile widened slightly. “Why don’t we train, then?”

The wind moved across the sand around them.

“We have all the time in the world.”

***

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