Dao of Money

Chen Ren had no idea why he had not thought of using the floor to train sooner.

It was not as if they were getting out of here anytime soon. If Wang Jun was right, and unfortunately he had the terrible habit of being right about the worst things, then they might be trapped on this floor for months or even years. Walking endlessly through the desert had not helped them. Searching had not helped them either. All it had done was drain their strength and make the silence feel heavier with every passing day.

He supposed he had been too focused on finding a way out.

That was all he had thought about since arriving here—the common lift, the broken master lift and the return ticket that had failed. Every time the sun lowered and night took over the desert, his anxiety grew worse.

Another day was gone, without progress where the people outside might be thinking he was dead.

That thought bothered him more than he liked to admit.

His sect was waiting for him.

Yalan’s connection to him should have told them that he was still alive, at least in some way. But even if they knew that, it did not change the fact that he was gone. He had no way to tell them where he was, no way to tell them when he would return, and if Wang Jun’s words were to be believed, that return might not happen for a long time.

Those thoughts had crowded his mind so much that he had forgotten to look at the floor from another angle.

Once he and Princess Yanyue agreed that training was better than walking themselves into despair, they finally began going through what they had taken from the pagoda. Only then did Chen Ren realise how much they had actually gathered.

He knew his spatial ring was almost full, but knowing that and seeing everything laid out were two different things.

There were weapons he had bought or taken from different floors, some useful, some strange, and some he had only kept because he did not know what else to do with them. There were pills, materials, beast parts, talismans, formation pieces, and tools he had barely examined. More importantly, there were manuals he had wanted to study for weeks but never had the time to properly read.

Now, time was the only thing they had too much of.

But what surprised him most was Princess Yanyue.

As it turned out, she had not been holding back inside the pagoda at all. Every time they had travelled separately, she had gathered things of her own. Treasures, manuals, weapons, and records she had either found or bought. According to her, she had even sent her royal guards to buy a large number of manuals from Goldspire City.

When she started bringing them out, Chen Ren could only stare.

There were manuals of all kinds. Weapon techniques, aspect arts, movement skills, body refinement methods, mental tempering texts, and stranger things that did not fit cleanly into any category. Some were clearly common, while others had names on them that made even Wang Jun stop complaining long enough to look over.

For the first time in a long while, the desert didn’t feel completely empty. They had no qi in the air, no beasts to hunt, and no lift in sight. But they had knowledge.

And if there was one thing Chen Ren had learned since becoming a sect leader, it was that knowledge could become a weapon if someone was desperate enough to use it.

Chen Ren felt a little disappointed that the Sky-Grade manuals the twins and Yalan might have copied were not with him.

Still, there was more than enough to keep them busy.

The first thing that caught his attention was the mind cultivation manual he had read through before. For a long time, Chen Ren had wanted to properly study mind cultivation. It was not only because he was interested in it, though that was part of the reason. He also needed it if he wanted to reach the peak of the foundation establishment realm.

His body needed balance.

Without strengthening his mind, he doubted he would be able to take that next step properly. And now, more than ever, he felt the need to grow stronger pressing against his chest.

After seeing Jun and fighting against him, Chen Ren had been forced to face the fact that he was weak.

He didn’t like it.

He knew he wasn’t weak compared to ordinary cultivators, or to most people his age or realm. But against someone like Jun, who is truly old and dangerous, Chen Ren could’ve been killed in a minute if Jun had truly committed to it.

That thought stayed with him.

For a while, Chen Ren had started to feel better about his strength. He had managed to stand against Guardian sects, survive impossible situations, and build a sect that others could no longer ignore. But when he looked back honestly, much of that had come from tricks, schemes, preparation, and items.

They were useful, and even kept him alive. But they weren’t enough.

A normal cultivator might focus on a set of techniques and sharpen them until they become deadly. Chen Ren had taken a different path. He had spread himself across different cultivation disciplines, using them to create advantages others would not expect. It had worked well so far, but his core fighting style was still too simple.

That needed to change.

If one day he lost access to his items, if his storage ring was sealed or taken, if he found himself in a place where tricks could not save him, then he might not even be able to run.

Chen Ren needed to prepare for that day.

Mind cultivation would be the start. After that, he would move on to the techniques he had with him and rebuild the parts of his foundation that had been neglected for too long.

As it turned out, Princess Yanyue was thinking along similar lines.

She didn’t begin with a grand technique or some powerful art from the imperial family. Instead, she picked up a manual she had bought from the city. It was simple, almost plain compared to some of the other books around them, but the topic immediately caught Chen Ren’s attention.

Poison in battle.

A basic manual, according to her.

Chen Ren guessed Princess Yanyue had chosen the poison manual to build a proper foundation for the Poison Mistress’s inheritance.

That made sense to him. In fact, it was probably the best path for her right now. Poison users were rarely seen as righteous cultivators, mostly because of reputation, and that worked in her favour. No one who looked at Princess Yanyue would expect her to use poison in battle.

If she mastered it properly, it would become a dangerous surprise for anyone who thought they understood her abilities.

But for now, Chen Ren focused on himself.

He had no idea how long mind cultivation would take to learn. Hopefully, it would be less complicated than soul cultivation and body cultivation, but there was still one problem.

He didn’t actually have the manual.

He had read through it back in the Grand Library, but he had never gotten the time to copy it. Anything they hadn’t copied hadn’t stayed with them after they escaped. Chen Ren didn’t know exactly when it had happened, but the books they had not properly taken must have disappeared back to the library.

It was a major mistake on his part.

Still, at the time, there had been too much happening. With Jun hunting them and every moment feeling like it could turn into a disaster, Chen Ren had only wanted to move quickly. Copying the manual had slipped from his mind, and now he was paying for it.

Fortunately, he still remembered the sections he had read. Not all of it, but enough.

At least, enough to take the first step.

Chen Ren settled into a meditative position and closed his eyes. The first instruction in the manual had been simple. Before strengthening the mind, one had to learn to quiet it. He shouldn’t let his mind wander through memories, or create thoughts, or go through emotions—just stillness.

It sounded easy but it was not.

The moment Chen Ren tried to empty his mind, everything rushed in at once. Jun’s face, Yalan falling from the lift, the broken orb, his sect and the endless desert. The last fear was the possibility that everyone outside thought he was dead. The thought that he might actually die here before he ever saw any of them again.

His mind was far too crowded. So he breathed slowly and tried again.

And again, and again.

It took far longer than he expected before he even came close to a blank state.

Once Chen Ren finally reached a blank state, he felt as if he had stepped into a sea of calm.

The desert around him slowly faded from his awareness. The dust moving through the air, the sand beneath his feet, even Wang Jun sitting not far from his side, all of it became distant. His body was still there, and he knew the others were still around him, but they no longer pressed against his mind the way they had before.

There was only silence.

Calm spread through him, slow and steady, until even his breathing seemed to blend into it. Only then did he begin the next step described in the manual.

He guided qi toward his brain.

Honestly, it wasn’t something any normal cultivator would recommend doing.

The body had organs and meridians that could soak in qi, strengthen through qi, and recover from damage caused by qi. The brain was different. It was delicate. One mistake or a careless push would be enough to damage something that couldn’t be repaired easily.

Or worse, he might end up making himself brain dead.

So he moved carefully.

He sent only a thin strand of qi upward, letting it curl around his mind rather than forcing it in all at once. The sensation that followed was strange, almost impossible to describe. It felt as if something cold and sharp was brushing against the inside of his skull, not painful yet, but wrong enough that his instincts told him to stop.

He didn’t as this was only the beginning.

According to the manual, the first step of mind cultivation was about endurance. A cultivator had to see how much they could bear while keeping their thoughts stable. Pain was part of the process.

Chen Ren kept the qi wrapped around his brain. Slowly, he shaped it into tiny needles.

His breathing remained steady as he guided them into position. Each needle formed at a specific point, placed according to the sections he remembered from the manual. He didn’t understand the full theory behind it, not yet, but he remembered enough to follow the first stage.

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Then he pushed.

The needles pierced in. A sharp, stabbing pain exploded through his head.

Chen Ren froze.

For a moment, the pain was so sudden and intense that he felt as if his body might simply shut down. His vision darkened behind his closed eyes, and every instinct screamed that something had gone terribly wrong.

He forced himself to keep breathing.

Slowly and steadily.

The purpose was not to destroy his brain. The needles were being placed into specific points to stimulate and strengthen the mind, or at least that was what the manual had claimed. Chen Ren didn’t fully understand how it worked. As someone who still remembered basic biology from Earth, this seemed like an excellent way to die early.

But cultivators weren’t mortals.

Their bodies were different. Their minds, their qi, their meridians, even the way they healed and evolved, all of it followed rules that Earth never had.

So he endured.

The pain grew worse with every passing breath, but he kept the qi steady and refused to let the needles collapse.

Chen Ren didn’t rush the needles.

He pushed them in three at a time, each one placed at a different point before he slowly removed them and formed new ones elsewhere. The process was careful, controlled, and miserable. He couldn’t tell if it was helping yet, because the pain drowned out almost every other sensation, but he refused to stop too early.

He lasted around two hours.

Only when his brain began to feel heavy, as if one more needle might truly damage something, did he finally let the qi disperse. The tiny needles faded one by one, and Chen Ren opened his eyes with a long breath.

His head still felt like it was going to burst.

Sweat covered his body, though he knew it was not only from the desert heat. The pressure of keeping his mind steady through that much pain had left him exhausted in a way that felt different from a normal fight. His limbs were fine, mostly, but his thoughts felt slow and bruised.

He reached for the water he had kept beside him and drank several mouthfuls before lowering the container.

He looked around. Princess Yanyue stood some distance away, beneath a slope of a small dune. She was forming arrows around her, letting them take shape before making them vanish and trying again.

He had no idea what exactly she was trying to achieve, but he didn’t interrupt her. Whatever it was, it looked focused enough that he left her alone.

He only hoped the pain in his head would fade away soon. Before he could dwell on it for long, Wang Jun spoke.

“So, how was it?”

Chen Ren turned toward the head.

Wang Jun seemed to be in a much better mood than he had been yesterday. Three thick books lay open in the sand in front of him, angled in a way that let him read without needing to move. Princess Yanyue had probably arranged them while he was training.

He stared at him for a moment. “It wasn’t bad.”

Wang Jun gave him a look.

“Painful,” he admitted. “But doable. I think I need to do it every day for at least three weeks before I can take the first real step.”

Wang Jun’s gaze moved back to the books. “Unfortunately, there are no plants in this place for you to make the potion for the second step.”

He frowned slightly. He had expected that problem, but hearing it still made the path ahead feel more troublesome.

Mind cultivation was not only about enduring pain. At its core, it was about training the mind to protect itself from anything that tried to break it. Illusions, soul attacks, mental pressure, fear techniques, and all the other strange methods cultivators used to reach into another person’s thoughts. The first step was only the beginning, and from what he remembered, every stage after that required specific potions to move forward safely.

He could only make those once he left this floor. If he left this floor.

Still, the first step should be enough for now. If he managed to complete it, he might finally be able to push himself toward the peak of the foundation establishment realm. That alone made the pain worth enduring.

Thinking of that, Chen Ren lowered his gaze to the books spread out in front of Wang Jun.

He recognised them after a moment. They were the same ones he had taken from the floor lord’s personal chambers.

“Did you find anything good among them?” Chen Ren asked.

Wang Jun gave the books a casual look. “They are not half bad. There is plenty here that might be useful to less resourceful cultivators.”

Chen Ren ignored the insult and picked up one of the books.

He flipped through a few pages, reading the opening section before setting it down and reaching for another. He had been looking to learn new techniques anyway, and starting with the floor lord’s collection made sense. If the man had kept these in his personal chambers, then they should at least be better than most common manuals.

He wasn’t disappointed.

The techniques ranged from Earth-Grade to Sky-Grade, and they covered many different paths.

Some were weapon arts, while some focused on movement. Others were strangers, built around concepts that he hadn’t seen often.

The first manual that caught his attention was meant for a sword cultivator, though calling it only a sword technique felt wrong.

It taught the user to fight with a changing weapon, one that could shift between three forms in battle: sword, spear, and axe. The art was built around mastering all three weapons so completely that the cultivator could change between them in seconds without losing rhythm.

A sword for precision, a spear for reach and an axe for force. The idea wasn’t just to learn three weapons, but to make the opponent unable to predict which one would come next. One breath, the cultivator could thrust like a spear user. The next, they could close the distance with a sword slash, then shift into an axe strike heavy enough to break a guard.

Chen Ren read through the first few pages with growing interest.

It wasn’t something he could use directly right now, but the concept behind it was valuable. Changing rhythm, changing range and forcing the enemy to adjust again and again until they made a mistake.

That was exactly the kind of thing his fighting style needed.

Sadly, there was no real way for Chen Ren to learn that technique.

He was not a weapon cultivator in the first place, and an art like that was not something someone could simply pick up after reading a manual. It required years of work from an early stage, with the body trained to understand three weapons as naturally as breathing. Even Li Xuan would probably struggle with it, and he was a true swordsman. He relied too deeply on the sword to shift between spear and axe without losing the core of his style.

Chen Ren set the manual aside.

The second technique interested him more.

It was half alchemical in nature, teaching the cultivator how to use different beast bloods as tools in battle. According to the manual, many beasts carried traces of their elements in their blood, and with the right method, a cultivator could use those traces to create different effects within seconds.

One example caught his attention.

Burning the blood of a beast called a smokehorn antelope could create a thick cloud of smoke that ordinary wind could not clear away. If the user drank a single drop of the same blood beforehand, they would be able to see through the smoke without trouble.

Chen Ren paused over that section for a while.

The technique was useful because it gave a cultivator flexibility beyond their own aspect. Someone with one focus could still prepare methods for escape, concealment, disruption, or sudden attacks if they carried the right beast blood. It was the kind of technique that rewarded preparation, which made it exactly the kind of thing Chen Ren liked.

Unfortunately, the desert made it useless for now.

There were no beasts here, no blood to experiment with, and no materials he could waste carelessly. So he marked the technique in his mind and placed it aside as something to study properly later.

The third technique was different.

The moment Chen Ren began reading it, his attention sharpened.

It was similar to the method used by the knight they had fought in the library, and perhaps also close to the way the floor lord had kept swords floating around him. But this manual was clearly a higher-grade version. Sky-Grade, most likely.

The technique focused on controlling weapons without holding them directly.

Not just throwing them with qi or guiding them clumsily through the air, but binding them to one’s will and moving them like extensions of the body. The stronger the cultivator’s control, the more weapons they could command. The better their mind, the sharper and faster those weapons became.

Chen Ren read more carefully.

The longer he skimmed through the manual, the more ideas began forming in his mind. He could use it with swords, but he didn’t have to limit himself to them. He could bind daggers, needles, talismans, even strange artifacts he had collected and never found a place for. It would let him attack from different angles while keeping his hands free for lightning, air shields, or other techniques.

More importantly, it would fit with the path he had already chosen.

By the time Chen Ren finished skimming through the manual, his thoughts had settled into a clear shape.

This was it.

This was how he would change his fighting style.

***

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