Dao of Money

Chen Ren moved through the bookshelves of the grand library, wondering where exactly Princess Yanyue could have gone.

He had split up from Yalan and the twins over an hour ago, and still he had found nothing. Not a trace of her. Not even something small enough to call a clue. He had actually expected Yalan to stay with him, but in the end she had gone with the twins instead, most likely because she still didn’t trust his ability on a flying sword. Thinking of it, Chen Ren couldn’t even blame her. Anyway, if something went wrong, the twins would need protection more than he would.

The problem was that without her, he had been left with Wang Jun.

And the head had spent most of that time doing nothing except telling him how to fly, what angle to keep the sword at, where to push qi, and what not to do every other breath. It had definitely improved Chen Ren’s flying, but that didn’t mean he had enjoyed it.

Before long, he had already grown tired of Wang Jun’s overbearing tone and his constant complaints every single time Chen Ren made even the smallest mistake.

In Chen Ren’s opinion, the fact that he hadn’t crashed into a shelf yet was already worthy of some praise.

Wang Jun clearly thought otherwise.

Chen Ren understood it, to an extent, but right now he wanted to focus on finding Princess Yanyue, not on becoming some master of the flying sword. So when he turned around another corner, saw yet another empty row of books, and stopped, it was more out of frustration than anything else.

“Why did you stop?”

Chen Ren let out a breath. “Because I don’t think we’re going to find Princess Yanyue like this. There’s no way she just vanished unless this place actually has shelves that eat people. Do they?”

To his surprise, Wang Jun actually went quiet.

That made Chen Ren glance around at the shelves near him, half imagining one of them shivering and then trying to lunge at him, but nothing happened.

Wang Jun finally spoke. “I don’t remember anything exactly like that, but there could be other things.”

“Like what? I’m already tired of how many hidden tricks this pagoda has on every floor.”

Wang Jun gave a low snort. “It was built that way. If everything here were simple, cultivators wouldn’t have struggled so much trying to climb it.”

Then he went quiet for a few moments, likely thinking through what could have made Princess Yanyue disappear. When he finally spoke again, his tone had turned more thoughtful.

“I think it’s either a lost chamber… or an inheritance. Maybe both.”

Chen Ren’s eyes widened a little. “There’s an inheritance here?”

“Of course there is,” Wang Jun said, sounding almost insulted that he even had to ask. “Why wouldn’t there be? This place is enormous. An inheritance could be hidden anywhere inside it.”

Chen Ren didn’t argue. Wang Jun was right. So he started moving again. “What exactly are lost chambers?”

“They’re exactly what they sound like,” Wang Jun replied. “Hidden sections that aren’t easy to notice. The princess might have stumbled into one. There’s no telling. Though her luck is annoyingly similar to yours, so if she isn’t dead, that’s probably what happened.”

“Let’s hope she isn’t. Otherwise I might be the one who ends up dead,”

Wang Jun only snorted at that.

Since there was nothing else he could do, Chen Ren turned to the one method that might actually help. He pushed out his [Void Sense] and let it spread through the rows of shelves around him. As he moved, he felt each book one by one, counting them in his head, searching for anything even slightly wrong. A gap. An empty space where there shouldn’t be one. Anything that might hint at a hidden chamber tucked somewhere behind the endless walls of books.

Maybe a switch. Maybe a hollow book he had to pull. Maybe some hidden latch tucked behind a row of titles no one would ever bother to touch. But no matter how much he searched, nothing like that happened.

Even so, Chen Ren didn’t stop.

He kept flying through the library, moving from one section to another, because the place was simply too vast for him to believe the answer had to be in the first stretch he checked. If the hidden chamber wasn’t here, then it would be somewhere else. That much he knew. Sooner or later, he would find the way into it.

Another hour passed like that–maybe more.

And the only real result was that, with repeated use, he found himself able to stretch his senses a little farther than before. Other than that, there was nothing.

Eventually, Chen Ren had to admit that searching the rows like this was getting him nowhere.

So he changed his strategy.

Instead of brushing his [Void Sense] across the bookshelves again and again, he rose higher and began sweeping his senses along the upper walls and the ceiling.

Wang Jun grunted at once. “What are you doing now?”

“Trying to think differently,” Chen Ren said. “Otherwise we’ll just keep wasting time on shelves.”

Wang Jun let out a scoffing sound. “And you think there are hidden chambers in the ceiling? How dumb can you get?”

Chen Ren frowned and said, “What else am I supposed to do? I can’t comb every inch of this place forever with my technique. It’s not like I know the design of the library. There’s no pattern to it.”

Wang Jun answered immediately. “There’s always a pattern. You just need to stop thinking of everything like something you can smash your head into until it breaks.”

Chen Ren opened his mouth, ready to snap back at him again.

Then the words stopped. His body went still right there on the sword as something clicked in his mind. He ran the thought through again.

Then again. Wondering if what he had just realized could actually be right.

Wang Jun’s voice cut through his thoughts. “What happened?”

Chen Ren looked ahead for a second longer. “You said there’s always a pattern. The grand library was built with everything set in its place, right?”

Wang Jun replied at once, “Yes. Otherwise building something like this would be impossible, especially with all the arrays woven through it.”

The moment he heard that, Chen Ren smiled. “Those arrays,” he said. “You know about them.”

Wang Jun went quiet. That silence lasted long enough to feel almost suspicious, and only after half a minute did he finally say, “What exactly are you thinking?”

Chen Ren’s smile deepened a little.

“I think you already know.” He shifted his grip on the flying sword, eyes moving over the vast structure around him. “If the arrays are placed in specific locations, and you understand how they’re laid out, then you should also know the parts of the formation where a lost chamber is more likely to exist. There’s no way something like that would be inserted randomly, right? Not if these chambers are basically small spatial pockets.”

Wang Jun took another moment before answering.

“Well, of course not. If they were added randomly, the whole formation would collapse. There are already enough spatial arrays layered through this place, just like every major structure in the pagoda.”

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Chen Ren nodded, inwardly glad once again that he knew at least the basics of arrays.

Overlapping formations were possible, but the larger and more complex an array became, the worse that usually was. Too much overlap created friction between different layers of power, and that friction often ended in instability, sometimes even in an outright explosion. Something like that had clearly never happened here. The library had stood for hundreds of years. That meant its foundations had to be precise.

And going by the way Wang Jun spoke, there was only one real conclusion. The lost chambers couldn’t be anywhere.

They had to be placed in the gaps.

In the spaces where the great arrays didn’t intersect.

It was, of course, far easier to think of the answer than to act on it, and Chen Ren knew he had no way of doing something like that himself. So he immediately asked, “Can you find the gaps between the arrays?”

Wang Jun sounded almost offended. “Me?”

“Who else?”

The head went quiet again. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost some of its earlier sharpness. “Even for me, it won’t be easy. I would have to use some of the qi I’ve been saving in case of emergencies.”

Chen Ren frowned at that. “I’ve already been doing everything I can to keep you protected. You know that. We haven’t run into a single enemy that directly targeted you.”

Wang Jun fell silent once more.

Chen Ren waited, not pushing further. There was no point. He couldn’t force the head to help him, and he didn’t want to. All he could do was hope Wang Jun would decide it was worth the risk.

A few long moments passed.

“Get to the center of the library and as high as you can. I need a proper look at the whole place,” Wang Jun said finally.

Chen Ren smiled immediately.

Without wasting another second, he guided the sword out through the shelves until he found enough open space, then pushed upward. Higher and higher he went until he finally reached the ceiling, and from there it was only a matter of crossing toward the center.

Once he got there, he drew Wang Jun out beside him, letting the invisibility fade away. “What now?”

“Just… Give me a moment.”

So Chen Ren did.

Holding the severed head there in the air, he couldn’t help but think he looked more than a little like some deranged cultist in the middle of a ritual. The thought almost made him laugh, but then he felt Wang Jun start to shake.

The motion was so sudden that Chen Ren nearly lost his grip. He tightened his hand at once and managed to hold on.

And then Chen Ren felt golden qi stir across Wang Jun’s head.

It brushed against his hand first, making his skin buzz, before gathering more and more densely around the man’s eyes. Chen Ren had no idea what Wang Jun was seeing through it, but the effort clearly wasn’t small. The head groaned, then said, “Turn. I need to see all of it.”

Chen Ren did exactly that.

He guided the flying sword in a slow circle, careful not to jolt too much while Wang Jun kept looking around the grand library. A full minute passed like that before the golden qi finally faded, and Chen Ren let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Then he turned the head slightly. “What was that?”

“It’s called [Arraypiercing Vision]. Peak Earth grade. I made it myself.” There was a trace of pride in his tone, though it sounded tired too. “It lets me see the lines of the arrays and formations woven through this place. The trouble is that they were hidden properly. I had to focus through every layer of concealment.”

Chen Ren smiled faintly. “But you did it.”

“Of course I did,” Wang Jun said. “Though I also used up all the qi I had been saving.”

“Don’t worry,” Chen Ren said. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. Now tell me, did you actually find any gaps, or was all of this for nothing?”

Wang Jun gave him an annoyed look.

“Of course I found some. I wouldn’t have agreed to use this if I thought it would be pointless.” Then he began listing them off. “One is to the left, after the second shelf from the eighth row. Very small gap. Another is hidden behind an entire wall of shelves. And the third is near the floor in a small circular space. There should be more, but those are the ones I saw.”

Chen Ren nodded at once.

The moment Wang Jun finished, he was already looking toward the places the head had described. Then he moved toward them one by one, hoping one of them would be what he was searching for.

And he did find something in all three spots.

The first gap was the smallest. Using [Void Sense], Chen Ren found a tiny cabinet hidden beneath one of the shelves. It was awkward to reach, but inside it was a whole box full of talismans. He didn’t waste time checking them one by one and simply stored them away for later.

The second gap was much larger. It opened into another hidden section of the library, one even bigger than the last one he had entered. Shelves full of books stretched inside, and for a second Chen Ren truly was tempted to step in and see what was there. But the moment he looked properly and saw no sign of Princess Yanyue, he gave up on that thought. A place like this wouldn’t have kept her occupied for so long.

So in the end, all his hope settled on the third one.

It was only a little bigger than the first. Just a small circle formed by the arrangement of a few shelves, something that looked completely ordinary if one only glanced at it. But with [Void Sense], Chen Ren could tell there was something below.

Ahole.

Without wasting another second, he drew up [Thundering Fist] and drove it into the wooden floor.

The wood exploded apart into splinters.

But instead of some simple chamber or stairway, what opened beneath him was a black hole so dark it almost looked unreal. Chen Ren had only enough time to widen his eyes before the darkness pulled at him. His fist had barely brushed it, yet the force that grabbed him was sharp and sudden, yanking him downward with terrifying strength.

He immediately struggled, trying to wrench himself free, but the pull was far too strong. Fighting against it felt like his limbs were about to tear apart, and before he could do anything meaningful, the darkness swallowed him whole.

The next moment, Chen Ren crashed flat onto a hard surface. He lifted his head at once, disoriented for only a breath before his eyes found what mattered.

Princess Yanyue.

She was lying on the ground not far from him, just as sprawled out as he was, her eyes shut and pain clear on her face.

***

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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