Dao of Money

Chen Ren had no idea what was going on, but he hoped this was not truly meant to be his end.

At this point, he was no longer sure.

He had been doing so well. He had taken in the qi he had accumulated through his businesses, circulated it through his body, and pushed himself all the way to the peak of the foundation establishment realm. Honestly, part of him had wanted to stop there. Reaching the peak was already more than enough.

But stopping meant staying. And Chen Ren wanted to leave the pagoda.

This was the only way out he could see. There was no lift, no hidden exit, no golden dragon appearing to save him, and no return ticket waiting in his spatial ring. So even after reaching the peak of the foundation establishment realm, he had used the momentum of his advancement and the remaining qi in his stars to push further.

He tried to break through.

As it turned out, the pagoda hated that enough to rain heavenly thunder down on him.

No one in the world could have expected that. Chen Ren certainly had not. He had not even known the pagoda was capable of summoning something like heavenly tribulation inside its own floor. Was it truly such a great sin that he was trying to live by escaping this place?

Maybe it was. Maybe the pagoda saw it as breaking the rules.

Even then, Chen Ren was lucky he had survived at all.

The first bolt of thunder had come out of nowhere. The only reason he had not died instantly was because so much qi had been gathered around him, and because the thunder itself carried lightning. His body had reacted on instinct, absorbing part of it through his lightning aspect before the rest tore into him.

But even with that, it had hurt worse than anything he had ever felt.

For a moment, Chen Ren had truly believed he was about to die.

Honestly, that still might have happened if the thunder had continued. He had no idea why it stopped or what had changed, but before it did, he had endured a second strike, and that one had told him everything he needed to know.

The next bolt would have been the last. He wouldn’t have survived it.

Just two strikes had been enough to make Chen Ren feel as if his organs were about to fail.

And that was after he had reached the peak of the foundation establishment realm.

So even as he stumbled across the sand with Wang Jun in his arms, he knew he would not survive another one. The head seemed to understand the same thing. Wang Jun kept muttering that what was happening was incomprehensible, and Chen Ren agreed with him completely, though he saved his breath for running.

Thunder cracked all around him. At the time, Chen Ren thought that was already terrible enough.

He had no idea it was only the beginning. Before he could process, something even more incomprehensible happened.

The storm above him vanished.

One moment, dark clouds covered the sky, filled with heavenly thunder that wanted to tear him apart. The next moment, they were simply gone. The sky returned to normal as if nothing had happened, and the pressure that had been crushing down on him disappeared with it.

Wang Jun twisted in his grip, eyes wide. “What the fuck is going on? What did you do?”

“If I knew,” Chen Ren said, still staring up, “I would not be looking this stunned.”

He barely had time to say the words before the next disaster began.

Wind erupted around them.

It came from every direction at once, violently, throwing sand into the air before Chen Ren could even understand what was happening. Within seconds, a sandstorm began forming around them, rising from the desert like the floor itself had decided to swallow him.

Wang Jun let out a yelp.

For once, the head looked as if he had lost all reason. He began cursing immediately, only for the wind to throw sand straight into his mouth. His words turned into choking sounds and more furious noises.

Chen Ren didn’t have time to laugh.

He started moving at once, pushing himself away from the storm as fast as he could. But no matter which direction he ran, the storm followed. It curved with him, closed around him, and kept dragging itself forward as if it had locked onto his presence.

It was nothing like the sandstorm that had separated him from Princess Yanyue. That one had been terrifying because of its size and force.

This one had qi inside it.

Chen Ren could feel it growing stronger with every passing second. The energy filled the wind, thickened the sand, and spread through the storm like blood through veins. The feeling was almost jarring after spending so long in a place where there had been no qi at all.

The fifteenth floor had been dead for months. Now, the air around him was full of power and it had only happened after he tried to ascend.

Chen Ren’s grip tightened around Wang Jun as he forced himself to keep running, but one question kept pressing against his mind no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

Why now?

Was it impossible for anyone to ascend beyond the foundation establishment realm here, or was this something else entirely?

Chen Ren had no answer.

No matter what the truth was, he needed to get away from the storm first. But barely two minutes after he started running, the wind swept his feet out from under him. One moment, he was pushing across the sand with Wang Jun held tightly against him, and the next, the ground disappeared beneath his feet.

He was lifted into the air.

For a heartbeat, Chen Ren thought the sandstorm was going to throw him somewhere and leave him with broken bones. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he kept rising higher and higher, carried upward by wind and qi without the slightest clue of what was going on.

Wang Jun shouted from beside him, his voice barely cutting through the storm. “Kid, I think this is the end!”

Chen Ren gritted his teeth and shouted back, “We can still get out of here alive!”

“I really don’t know,” Wang Jun yelled. “There is too much qi in the air. The pagoda is actively trying to kill us. I do not think anyone can—”

He never finished the sentence.

The qi around them released a massive wave.

It struck Chen Ren like a wall and pushed him even higher into the air. Before he could fight against it, the qi wrapped around his body, closing over him from every direction. His vision blurred almost immediately.

Chen Ren blinked, trying to clear it.

It only grew darker.

The world faded around him until there was nothing but blackness. He could still hear Wang Jun shouting somewhere nearby, but the words no longer registered properly. They sounded distant, as if they were coming from the other side of a wall.

At that moment, Chen Ren truly felt as if he was going to die.

There was no other explanation for what was happening. The thunder had failed to kill him, so now the pagoda was swallowing him whole. Maybe this was how it ended. Not with a final strike or a heroic struggle, but with his senses fading one by one until nothing remained.

Then the sensation changed.

The qi wrapped around him began sinking into his body. It climbed through his limbs, spread through his chest, moved along his meridians, and pressed against every part of him at once. The darkness in his vision trembled, then slowly cleared on its own.

Chen Ren opened his eyes.

What he saw made his breath catch.

He was no longer in the desert. He was floating in an open sky, with no earth beneath him and no sun above him.

There was only an endless open sky. And right in front of him floated the golden dragon.

Chen Ren had no idea how long it had been since he had last seen it. The dragon drifted in the empty sky, its massive body surrounded by an ethereal aura of primordial qi. Its scales shone with a light that did not need the sun, and its two star-like eyes looked down at him with an ancient weight that made his chest tighten.

Chen Ren opened his mouth to speak. He looked to his side. Wang Jun was not there.

For a moment, panic cut through everything else. Had he dropped the head in the storm? Had Wang Jun been pulled away before Chen Ren arrived in this strange place? He looked around quickly, searching the empty sky, but there was no sign of him.

Before Chen Ren could focus on it for long, the golden dragon spoke.

“You disappointed me.”

Chen Ren froze.

The dragon’s voice rolled through the sky. “I suppose it was my fault for relying on someone so talentless.”

Chen Ren’s eyes widened at that. “What do you even mean?”

The golden dragon only stared at him.

“I never wanted to be part of whatever you dragged me into,” Chen Ren said, anger rising through his confusion. “You chose me. I did not ask for this.”

“And yet you played a part in it,” the dragon said. “Even if you do not care for the path, your ambition makes you clash against what is happening. You cannot run away from it.”

Chen Ren clenched his fists.

“I thought I could make you someone worthy of the goals I have,” the dragon continued. “But in the end, you cannot even defeat an old pagoda.”

“It is not that easy,” Chen Ren snapped.

“There is nothing easy in this world,” the dragon said, its primordial qi stirring around it. “Yet you were given a dao that could allow someone talentless to compete against geniuses, and you still failed. You could not even face a demonic cultivator without being thrown aside.”

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Chen Ren’s breath caught.

The primordial qi around the dragon grew stronger, roaring through the empty sky like a storm without wind. The pressure pushed down on him from every direction, far worse than anything the sandstorm or heavenly thunder had done.

The dragon looked at him without pity.

“It is time to end our relationship,” it said. “I will strip you of your dao and your life.”

The words struck Chen Ren harder than any attack. Death approached with them.

He felt it in a way he had never felt before. Not like when Jun had attacked him. Not like when the heavenly thunder had fallen. Not like any moment where his life had hung by a thread.

For the first time since arriving in this place, Chen Ren truly understood that the sky around him was not safety. It was a trial. It was like his worst nightmare playing out in real life.

How had it even come to this?

Chen Ren didn’t understand. He had wanted help. Or at least an answer. He had hoped that if he saw the golden dragon again, it might show him a way out of the pagoda, or explain what was happening with the heavenly thunder and the sudden storm.

Instead, it wanted to kill him.

Before he could even begin to make sense of it, the primordial qi gathering around the golden dragon shot forward.

Chen Ren tried to move immediately. He had to move.

If he stayed there, he would die.

But there was nowhere to go. The primordial qi filled everything he could see, swallowing the endless sky in gold. His vision disappeared under the light, and the next moment, pain stabbed through his stomach.

It was so sharp that his thoughts stopped.

Chen Ren looked down.

There was a large hole through his body.

His organs had melted away. Blood poured from the wound and fell into the empty sky beneath him. For a few seconds, he could only stare at it, unable to understand how his body was still upright when so much of it was missing.

Then the horror hit him. His heart began to fail.

A part of him screamed, trying desperately to stitch himself back together, to force qi into the wound and keep his body alive. Another part of him already knew it was impossible. The damage was too great. His body was ruined, and there was nothing he could do to stop what came next.

This was truly the end.

But before he could fall from the sky, the primordial qi around him shimmered and entered his body.

Chen Ren blinked.

The hole in his stomach began closing. Melted flesh rebuilt itself. Torn organs returned in seconds, forming as if time had reversed inside his body. The pain lessened, then vanished so suddenly that it almost felt worse than the wound itself.

One moment, he had been dead.

The next, he was alive again.

Chen Ren took a deep breath, chest heaving as he stared at his healed body. He truly did not understand what was happening anymore. The golden dragon spoke again.

“Do you not understand?”

Chen Ren slowly looked up.

“You failed me,” the dragon said. “The price for that is far worse than a simple death. You are going to suffer, child.”

Chen Ren opened his mouth. “No.”

That was all he managed before it all happened again.

More holes appeared across his body. Flesh melted away from his arms, chest, and legs. Pain followed immediately, deeper and sharper than before, tearing through him from every direction at once. His vision darkened as something ripped one of his eyes from his face, and his scream broke across the empty sky as the golden light swallowed him again.

It was the most pain Chen Ren had ever felt. Not even a second later, it happened again.

He was healed as if the injuries had never existed.

This time, Chen Ren didn’t waste time wondering how it was happening or why the golden dragon was suddenly here. He turned and ran, hoping that somehow, by some miracle, he could get away from it.

But there was no ground beneath him.

He ran through the open sky anyway, his body moving because fear gave him no other choice. For a moment, he thought he might be able to put distance between himself and the dragon. Then his body suddenly dropped, his vision shifted, and pain tore through his chest as a hole opened directly through his heart.

Chen Ren closed his eyes. It felt like he had been trapped in a loop of death. And for the next few hours, that was exactly what happened.

He would be injured in the blink of an eye. He would die, or come so close to dying that he could feel his mind slipping away. Then the primordial qi would enter him again, rebuild his body, and bring him back. Once he was alive, the golden dragon would do it all over again.

Sometimes, it tore holes through his body.

Sometimes, it melted his flesh.

Sometimes, it crushed his bones or ripped away parts of him so quickly that Chen Ren could not even understand what had happened until the pain arrived.

From time to time, the golden dragon spoke.

It told him he was incompetent. It told him choosing him had been a mistake. It told him he would never become anything without his dao, and that this suffering was only the punishment for his grave sin of disappointing a heavenly beast.

Chen Ren didn’t simply stay silent.

It was hard to speak. The primordial qi pressed on him so heavily that even opening his mouth felt like forcing apart stone. But he did not want to endure quietly, not when the dragon was treating him like something it had the right to break just because it had once given him power.

So he spoke whenever he could.

He told the dragon he had never wanted to be chosen. He told it that what it was doing was unfair, because it had never truly explained what it was dragging him into. It had given him a dao, pushed him toward a path he did not understand, and now punished him for failing expectations he had never agreed to carry.

Most of his words never came out properly.

Before he could finish a sentence, another hole would open in his chest, or his throat would be torn apart, or the pain would become so strong that his voice broke into a scream.

But every time he was healed, Chen Ren tried again.

Even if the dragon killed him a hundred times, he refused to let it be the only one speaking. Chen Ren doubted the golden dragon even wanted to listen.

It only wanted to punish him for existing.

Trying to attack it would not work either. Chen Ren knew that much. He could not even properly defend himself against Jun, so how was he supposed to defeat one of the heavenly beasts at its full power? He was just a—

Chen Ren froze as the thought entered his mind.

A blade of primordial qi cut through his neck the very next second.

His head separated from his body, and for a brief moment, everything went dark again. Then the golden light wrapped around him, his body returned, and Chen Ren found himself alive once more.

But this time, the thought did not disappear. How was the golden dragon fighting at its full strength right now?

Was it not still healing? Was it not supposed to be weakened? Moving like this, killing him over and over again, and healing him every time should have taken a ridiculous amount of power. More than that, why had it appeared here so suddenly, right when the pagoda had started testing him?

The whole thing felt too familiar.

It was exactly like one of the nightmares he had imagined before, where whatever mess the golden dragon had dragged him into fell apart, and the beast turned all its anger on him. Even the killing and healing felt familiar. It was not the same, but it reminded him of what Princess Yanyue had gone through back in the library with her illusionary brothers.

Chen Ren’s breathing grew rough. Was this an illusion?

The moment he thought that, the golden dragon killed him again.

Primordial qi tore through his body, and pain swallowed him whole. A moment later, he was revived again, standing in the same endless sky with the same dragon looking down at him.

But the thought remained once again.

Chen Ren stared at the golden dragon.

If this was an illusion, knowing it was not enough. He had to break it. That was the only way out. He remembered what Princess Yanyue had done in the library, how she had faced her brothers and destroyed the illusion by refusing to let it control her.

The idea settled in his mind. This time, Chen Ren did not run.

He rushed toward the golden dragon.

For the first time since the nightmare began, he moved forward instead of away. He did not know if this would work, but he had to try. If touching the dragon was enough to break the illusion, then he only needed to reach it once.

But he barely crossed half the distance before primordial qi pierced through him again.

Chen Ren died before his hand could even rise.

***

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