Dao of Money

Chen Ren and the others stepped into the grand library slowly.

When City Lord Xiangrui had spoken of this place, there had been a rare sort of weight in his voice, one that made it clear even he had been impressed by it. Now that Chen Ren stood inside it himself, he could see the man had not exaggerated. The whole library felt crafted rather than built, as if someone had shaped every detail with endless patience and then gone back to polish it all again. Everything sat in a pattern. Every shelf, every staircase, every table had its place, and not one part of it looked neglected. There was not even a layer of dust anywhere, which made the entire place feel stranger still, as though something unseen passed through it each day to keep it in perfect order.

And on top of that, the place truly felt magical.

Books floated through the air in no clear rush, drifting from shelf to shelf or circling back through the open space like silent attendants. A part of Chen Ren had honestly expected them to turn hostile the same way the books in the lift had, and one of them had even drifted right up beside Yalan only a few steps after they entered. Her tail had lit immediately, but the moment the book noticed that, its pages flapped wildly and it fled with a speed that made Chen Ren nearly laugh. After that, none of the others came too close to her, though they still moved around the group at a cautious distance, as if deciding that the rest of them were less likely to burn first and ask questions later.

If the books from before had been monsters, then these felt more like curious children. They circled, watched, hovered near and then went away again.

For a little while, Chen Ren found himself wondering how they even worked. Whether they were some kind of construct like the others in the pagoda, or something stranger. But the thought faded quickly as he looked out across the shelves and saw just how many books there really were.

Maybe thousands or more.

Li Qingfeng muttered what Chen Ren himself had already been thinking.

“I don’t think even the Guardian sects would have this many books.”

Princess Yanyue let her gaze travel higher, toward the upper levels and the rows upon rows of shelves above them. “Probably not. Especially not if the other floors here are filled the same way.”

“I think they are, but we’ll only know once we go higher,” Chen Ren said. His eyes went to the nearest shelf. “I think we should split up. If there’s danger, shout or send a burst of qi into the air. I may be wrong, but I think we can take any book we want, at least in this area.”

To test that, he stepped closer to one of the shelves and pulled out a book that seemed to be about poisons. He opened it carefully, half expecting some trap, but nothing happened.

The others seemed to take confidence from it and slowly started to separate, though Yalan stayed with him. The twins moved left at first and then split into different rows of shelves, while Princess Yanyue went to the right, no doubt already planning to search for the book she had come this far for.

Chen Ren remained in the same row, glancing over the shelves before saying in a quieter voice, “That was a close one back at the lift.”

At once, a rough and irritated voice sounded from his side. “Of course it was close, because you were careless. You nearly got me killed. You should be grateful none of those cursed books hit me.”

Yalan let out a small, amused sound and looked toward the space beside him where the invisible head hung. “I didn’t miss your voice at all.”

Wang Jun gave a cold snort. “Do you think I care, you little cat?”

Yalan’s tail twitched once, and before she could answer, Chen Ren had already reached for more books. “You two should keep it down,” he said. “I don’t need anyone else noticing.” He paused, fingers brushing over another spine. “Either way, I’m more curious about what we’ll find here.”

Wang Jun answered immediately. “You won’t find much in this section.”

Chen Ren pulled out two more books. “You know this place? Were you involved in building it?”

“Not the library itself,” Wang Jun said. “But I was asked to donate books so the place wouldn’t look empty. Though none of those should be in this section.”

By then, Yalan had taken out a book of her own and was flipping through it with one paw pressed against the cover. Without looking up, she asked, “Then what other sections are there?”

Wang Jun gave a scoffing sound. “Now you want me to talk.”

Chen Ren paused and looked toward where the invisible head hung. “You know very well that if I started talking to you in front of Princess Yanyue, you’d spend the rest of your life in the imperial palace as a curiosity for the emperor.”

Wang Jun was quiet for a breath. “She doesn’t seem that bad for a royal.”

“I know she isn’t,” Chen Ren said, “but you don’t gamble with things like that. So just tell us. What other sections are here?”

“There are several. I don’t know how many in total, but enough. The more valuable books won’t be here. There are sections for rarer collections. Some of them even hold Sky-Grade techniques.”

Chen Ren glanced at the long rows around him, then lifted his eyes toward the upper floors circling the chamber.

“So they’re up there?”

“I don’t know,” Wang Jun said. “They could be anywhere. But yes, the important sections won’t be easy to reach. The library was never meant to let every cultivator take whatever they wanted. There are restrictions. Tests, perhaps. Something you’ll need to pass.”

Chen Ren nodded faintly. “Well, nothing in this pagoda has ever been simple. Do you know where I might find information about the medallion?”

“I can’t say exactly. But if you want anything about the medallion, then start with sections that deal more directly with the pagoda itself.”

Chen Ren nodded and went back to the shelves around him.

There was no point rushing off to search for another section immediately. This place was too large for that to be a casual decision, and moving through the library would take time no matter what. So he stayed where he was for now, pulling books out one after another and scanning their titles.

This row seemed focused mostly on alchemy and poisons.

A lot of the books were about herbs, compounds, and the kinds of effects even simple plants could produce if prepared properly. Though with how old some of these texts clearly were, Chen Ren wasn’t even sure whether half the herbs they mentioned were still easy to find in the world outside. Even so, there were useful ideas in them.

A few titles did catch his eye for entirely different reasons.

One was about potions meant to restore a man’s sexual vitality. Another dealt with contraceptives.

Chen Ren had no use for either one personally, but he would be lying if he said his mind didn’t immediately wander toward business ideas. There had to be a market for things like that. Cultivators apparently thought so too, which raised enough questions on its own, though he had no intention of wasting time wondering about the details.

Instead, he simply tried to slide the first book into his spatial ring. It didn’t move. He frowned and tried again, more carefully this time, but the result was the same. The book resisted as if the space around it refused to acknowledge the ring at all. That was enough to make him understand one thing. The whole library was probably protected against theft. He could, in theory, try carrying the book out by hand instead, but he doubted that would work either. If it did, then this place would never have remained so full. Any climber who reached it would have stripped the shelves bare long ago.

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So Chen Ren let out a quiet breath and changed his approach.

If he couldn’t take the books with him, then he would have to memorize what mattered.

The next few hours passed in much the same way.

He and Yalan moved from shelf to shelf, pulling out books, skimming through them, and trying to remember anything useful enough to matter. At first, Chen Ren relied on memory alone, but that soon became impractical. There was simply too much information, too many details that blurred together if he tried to hold all of it in his head. So he eventually started using the blank books he had taken from the first floor, copying down whatever seemed valuable on alchemy, poisons, and different recipes.

Further down the row, the category shifted. To his surprise, it shifted into flying swords.

Chen Ren had never thought an entire row of shelves could be dedicated to nothing but different kinds of flying swords, but that was exactly what it was. There were books on how to ride them properly, books on sentient swords, and others that focused entirely on their crafting and structure. Those last ones held his attention the longest. He carefully noted down whatever seemed most important about how flying swords functioned and what made them stable, responsive, and worthy of use.

Once he had taken as much as he reasonably could from that section, he forced himself onward.

It was time to stop lingering and actually look for something related to the medallion. The trouble was that the library was too large.

Even after walking—almost running—for half an hour, Chen Ren still felt as though he had barely made any real progress through the place. From time to time he stopped to check another row of shelves, but Wang Jun had been right. Most of the books in these lower sections were basic in nature. Rare, valuable, certainly useful, but still basic. Not the kind of information Chen Ren was truly after.

Worse, many of the books covered the same subjects again and again, only written by different authors with their own views on cultivation. That sort of thing would probably help an ordinary cultivator trying to deepen their understanding of the dao.

It did not help him much.

In the end, after more wasted time than he liked, Chen Ren finally found the stairs leading to the upper floors.

This time he didn’t climb them leisurely.

He pushed qi through his body and rushed upward, cutting down the time it took to cross the hundreds of steps.

Once the stairs finally ended, another broad floor opened up in front of him.

Tables and chairs had been arranged all across it in careful rows, enough that for a moment Chen Ren thought he had stepped into some kind of grand reading hall. That was likely exactly what it was, though he still found the scale of it strange. There were too many tables, too much space, far more than the few cultivators who had ever made it this far should have needed. Perhaps the master of the Azure Immortal Sect had once believed that, in time, more and more climbers would find their way toward the upper floors.

Or perhaps this place had simply been built with abundance in mind.

Either way, Chen Ren did not linger on the thought. He kept moving through the floor, his eyes sweeping across the space until he finally spotted a door. The moment he opened it, another hallway stretched out beyond.

Yalan looked ahead. “Whoever handled the spatial arrays here was a genius. I don’t think even the Guardian sects can match this kind of spatial work in their buildings. If they could, they wouldn’t need to carve whole mountains apart just to house their sects.”

Wang Jun clicked his tongue at that.

“Of course they can’t. The cultivators of this era could barely compare to the ones from my time. Back then, people actually had to risk their necks to achieve anything worthwhile.”

Chen Ren shook his head as he walked. “You also had far richer resources around you. The world hadn’t been drained by centuries of use.”

Wang Jun fell quiet after that.

There was not much to argue with. Chen Ren was right. Building something on the scale of this pagoda in the current era felt almost impossible. He doubted even the full might of the Kalian Empire could truly recreate it now.

So they walked on in silence for a while longer.

At the end of the hallway, there was no gate waiting for them this time. It simply opened out into yet another chamber.

But this chamber was different.

It was smaller, much smaller than the other sections he had passed through, with only a few hundred books resting on the shelves. Even so, the moment Chen Ren stepped inside, he noticed what made the place special. Every shelf was wrapped in chains, the links winding over them like cages. He walked closer at once, and when he tried to slip a hand through one of the gaps to reach a book, a purple barrier flared into existence and stopped him.

Chen Ren frowned. So this was one of the restricted sections Wang Jun had mentioned.

“What now?” he asked.

Wang Jun answered almost immediately. “There should be some kind of trial to unlock the chains. Unless…” He paused for a second. “Unless breaking the chains is the trial itself.”

Chen Ren looked around the chamber, but he saw nothing that resembled a test. No plaque, writing in the air or formation obvious enough to explain what the library wanted from him. So after a moment, he turned back to the chains, pushed qi into his palms and struck them.

He hadn’t expected them to break. He only wanted to test their strength.

But the instant his blow landed, all of the chains in the chamber shook—not just the ones on the shelf in front of him, but every chain in the room. Chen Ren immediately stepped back as Yalan said, “What did you do?”

He did not get the chance to answer.

One of the walls shifted.

Both of them turned toward it at once and saw a figure stepping out from within the stone itself. It wore full black armor from head to toe, and chains were wrapped around both of its arms, the same chains that bound the shelves around them.

Wang Jun let out a dry mutter. “Looks like you found your trial.”

Chen Ren’s eyes narrowed.

Then, in the very next breath, the armored figure moved, and chains shot toward him.

***

A/N - You can read 30 chapters (15 Magus Reborn and 15 Dao of money) on my patreon. Annual subscription is now on too. Also this is Volume 2 last chapter.

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