Dao of Money

The Watcher could not believe his eyes.

He had been keeping his attention on Chen Ren and his party ever since they broke through the [Grand Aegis Array]. Other interesting cultivators had entered the pagoda. Some had talent, some had secrets—a few were even worth observing for a time.

But none of them had held his attention the way Chen Ren had.

And still, even after everything he had seen, the Watcher couldn’t believe that Chen Ren’s fate had led him here.

It almost felt absurd.

As if the man had stepped out of one of those hero novels the Watcher used to read when he was still a starry-eyed child. He did not remember much from that time anymore. Too many years had passed, and too many memories had faded into dust. But he did remember one thing clearly.

The main characters in those stories always found trouble. Chen Ren was no different.

In fact, he might have been worse. How the man was still alive was already a question worth asking, but the Watcher was no longer certain that would remain true for long.

What had happened with the master lift was not something simple. When the orb broke, the entire lift had become damaged in a way that could not be repaired from the inside.

The instability had spread into the portal as well.

That was why the return ticket had failed.

Any item used within the unstable teleportation would have been disrupted before it could take effect. Chen Ren had tried to escape at the right moment, but the portal had swallowed the effect before it could send him out of the pagoda.

Honestly, it was already impressive that the portal had worked at all after that.

It had still managed to take the lift, and the people on it, to another floor. Not the intended destination, of course. The damage had made that impossible. The portal had thrown them wherever it could before collapsing.

And because it was Chen Ren, fate had chosen the worst possible place. The most dangerous floor in the pagoda. It was a place that no one had reached before him.

The Desert of No Qi.

The fifteenth and final floor.

Chen Ren would probably realise it himself once he saw the rankings, but realisation would not help him here. If anything, it would only drive him closer to despair. The fifteenth floor was not a place meant for ordinary climbers. It was not even a place meant for those who were lucky.

It was a trial of emptiness. A floor that stripped away the one thing every cultivator depended on—qi.

The Watcher stared at the image in silence for a long moment.

If Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue lost their minds here, there would be nothing he could do for them. But if they endured, if they stayed calm long enough to understand where they were and what this floor demanded, then perhaps there was still a way.

Even so, the Watcher doubted it.

No matter how strong Chen Ren was, this floor tested something far different from combat strength. It didn’t matter how many techniques he had, how strange his fate was, or how many times he had survived situations that should have killed him. The fifteenth floor was not built to be broken through by force.

It tested the mind.

And that was what made it dangerous.

There was no true exit here—no lift, or path that could be found by simply walking through long enough. As far as it is known, once someone entered the fifteenth floor, they either succeeded or they died.

Those were the rules.

And no matter how entertaining Chen Ren was, even the Watcher could not bend the laws of the pagoda for him.

Chen Ren was going to face something that even true immortals would not have an easy time enduring. The Watcher was certain of it.

If anything, he was more worried about Princess Yanyue. She was strong, and her will wasn’t weak. But strength alone didn’t matter here.

Unless she used her return ticket and left, she would most likely be the first to die.

The return ticket still worked on the fifteenth floor. That was strange in itself.

By all logic, it should not have worked here. This floor was supposed to be sealed in a way that rejected escape. Yet the ticket remained an exception, a loophole in the pagoda’s rules. The Watcher did not know if that had been intentional or simply something the creator had never bothered to fix.

After all, no one was supposed to reach this floor. That was the irony of it.

The first person to ever arrive here had not done so through strength, planning, or qualification. He had reached it because of a broken lift, an unstable portal, and a level of bad luck that almost seemed deliberate.

Still, it was interesting… no, more than interesting—it was unique.

The Watcher doubted he would ever see something like this again, and that alone made it worth observing. So he did what he had always done best.

He watched. A day passed quickly on the fifteenth floor.

Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue took turns resting and keeping watch, though there was almost nothing to look at except the endless horizon. Sand stretched in every direction, flat and empty beneath the unmoving sun. Neither of them travelled far. They were too exhausted from what had happened on the tenth floor, and even Chen Ren seemed to understand that moving without a plan would only waste strength.

For the Watcher, it was boring. But he didn’t look away.

The interesting part would come soon. He knew that much. The fifteenth floor never remained silent forever, and once it began testing them properly, there would be no time left for rest.

His eyes stayed fixed on them. Until eventually, it happened.

They finally began moving away from the master lift on foot.

Neither of them had a flying sword left. That alone slowed them more than either of them liked, but they were still cultivators. After a night of rest, their qi had recovered enough for them to use movement techniques, and they crossed the sand at a speed ordinary people would have struggled to follow.

The Watcher observed in silence as they searched.

Hours passed.

Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue stopped only twice, each time to decide on a new direction before continuing across the endless desert. Their eyes kept moving, looking for anything that might point them toward a lift, a beast, a ruin, or even a change in the terrain.

There was nothing.

The Watcher wondered how long it would take them to accept the truth of the floor.

Chen Ren already seemed to have hints of it. His expression had grown heavier with every passing hour, and his senses kept spreading outward, searching for qi that did not exist. But cultivators, in the Watcher’s experience, were very good at denying a truth when that truth meant despair.

So they kept searching. They checked caves carved into distant rock formations. They examined smaller stone structures, thinking they might be beast nests or hidden entrances. They even circled dry pits in the sand, studying the ground for tracks and paused whenever the wind shifted strangely.

Every time, they found nothing.

The Watcher almost laughed whenever they stopped to catch their breath and discuss what might be happening. At one point, they even tried to test whether they had been trapped inside an illusion, using several methods to check the sky, the sand, and their own senses.

But there was no illusion. The floor was exactly what they saw—a desert. And endless, empty desert.

It took three days of constant searching before Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue finally accepted the fact that they were on a barren floor. The revelation left them silent, because neither of them seemed to know what to do with it.

As cultivators, they could go for days without food or water under normal conditions. Their bodies were stronger than mortals, and qi could replenish what they lost.

But that was the problem. Qi was energy. It was breath, strength, recovery, and survival. And on the fifteenth floor, they no longer had that luxury.

They could only rely on the qi stored inside their dantians to keep themselves moving, but the Watcher knew that would not last forever.

Every step took something from them. Every use of movement techniques drained more qi. Even keeping their bodies steady without enough food or water forced them to spend what they had saved. At first, the loss did not seem too serious. They were both strong cultivators, and their reserves were not small.

But the fifteenth floor was patient. It didn’t need to directly attack them, it only needed to let them continue.

Two weeks passed before they realised something was wrong. Their qi was still recovering but not the way it should have.

The speed had slowed. What once returned naturally with time now came back in smaller and smaller amounts, as if their bodies were trying to draw water from dry earth.

The Watcher found their concern almost amusing, though he understood it well enough.

For their entire lives, they had lived with qi around them. It was in the air they breathed, the land beneath their feet, the pills they swallowed, and the formations they used. Princess Yanyue had it even better. The qi of the imperial castle had been rich and potent, constantly surrounding her body and nourishing her skin, bones, and meridians.

Now, both of them had been thrown into a place without any of it.

Of course there would be consequences.

Their recovery would continue to fall. Slowly, day by day, their bodies would adjust to the absence of qi in the worst way possible. Eventually, they would only recover about ten percent of their reserves each day, and that was assuming they didn’t push themselves too hard.

Food and water could help, even pills. But both were limited.

Chen Ren realised that after another week.

From that point on, they began eating only once a day. They also stopped rushing across the desert and used their movement techniques less often, saving qi wherever they could. Their pace slowed, but they kept moving, still searching for the common lift they believed had to exist somewhere on the floor.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Perhaps that goal was the only thing keeping them sane.

The Watcher knew how important such things were. A person who had something to aim for could endure far longer than someone who had already accepted there was no way out. Hope did not need to be realistic to be useful. Sometimes, it only needed to be there.

Maybe that was why Princess Yanyue still refused to use her return ticket. Chen Ren told her to leave several times.

Each time, she refused.

And every time she did, the Watcher couldn’t help but smile at the relief Chen Ren tried so badly to hide.

Chen Ren would’ve lost his mind much faster if he had been alone.

The Watcher was almost certain of that. Princess Yanyue’s presence gave him something to hold onto, even if neither of them said it out loud. A voice to answer his own. A second pair of eyes to look across the same endless sand. Someone to argue with, plan with, and share the silence with when words became too tiring.

So they kept searching.

Another month passed.

By then, the Watcher was sure both of them had lost track of the exact number of days. They knew a lot of time had passed, but the desert made each day feel too much like the last. It was the same sun, the same sand, the same empty horizon, and the same time that didn’t move here as much as it stretched, wearing them down grain by grain.

To them, everyone outside had probably already assumed they were dead.

If only they knew the truth.

Time on the fifteenth floor did not move the same way it did on the other floors or in the outside world. A month here was only a single day elsewhere. While Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue dragged themselves through the desert, barely holding onto hope, almost no time had passed for the others at all.

But there was no one to tell them that.

Because of that, their morale continued to fall. Their pace slowed until it became almost pitiful compared to how they had first moved. They no longer used qi to travel unless they had no choice. Most of the time, they simply walked, conserving every bit of energy they could while the desert stretched on around them.

Even so, the Watcher was surprised by one thing. Their ambition had not disappeared.

They were still searching for the lift.

That single goal had become an anchor, something to keep their minds from drifting too far into despair. As long as they could believe there was a common lift somewhere on the floor, they could keep moving. They could keep planning. They could keep telling themselves that one more day of walking might matter.

They even began mapping the floor.

It was a smart decision. They marked directions, counted steps, used the position of the sun, and left traces wherever they could to make sure they were not walking in circles. The Watcher approved of the idea, even if he knew how useless it would be in the end.

Illusions could happen on this floor, but that was not the problem here.

The problem was size.

The fifteenth floor was enormous, and the space inside it had been stretched by too many arrays to count. Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue had been walking mostly straight so far, and even if they kept walking for a year, the Watcher doubted they would reach the edge at their current pace.

Not when the floor itself refused to be measured like an ordinary place. Still, they were not going to give up soon.

And knowing Chen Ren, the Watcher was sure the man would eventually try to think of a way out that did not involve the lift.

He would fail, of course.

The floor had not been made to be conquered by cleverness or force. It had been made to break those who entered it, slowly and completely.

But it would still be amusing to watch him try. More than that, there was something else the Watcher was waiting for.

The Watcher was waiting for the truth of the head to come out. It was inevitable.

Wang Jun had been one of the most interesting parts of this run through the pagoda, and after months on the fifteenth floor, even he had been reduced to near silence. Chen Ren had not spoken to him much, but desperation had a way of making people reach for whatever help they could find. Sooner or later, he would need advice on how to deal with this floor, and when that happened, the secret would no longer stay hidden.

Until now, most of the conversations between Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue had been short.

The Watcher had wondered about that at first. There was no real awkwardness between them, at least not the kind that came from dislike or distrust. But after observing them for some time, he understood the reason well enough. This was the first time they had truly been alone together for so long.

Chen Ren could not be fully casual with a princess.

Princess Yanyue, on the other hand, had likely spent most of her life surrounded by attendants, guards, servants, or other people of status. Silence had never been something she needed to fill by herself. So, for the most part, they only spoke when they had to. Their conversations were about the floor, sleeping arrangements, food, their remaining supplies, and possible ways to escape.

But that was bound to change.

There was only so much silence a person could endure when the world around them looked the same in every direction.

It began after another full day of walking.

Chen Ren and Princess Yanyue stopped near a cluster of boulders, both of them too tired to continue without rest. The princess created an arrow of ice and placed it between them before sitting down. Cold air spread from it in a faint mist, pushing back some of the desert heat.

The Watcher had noticed that the heat increased slightly with every passing month.

Neither Chen Ren nor Princess Yanyue had realised the pattern yet, but they had both learned to appreciate the ice arrows during their breaks. In a floor where there was no shade, no water, and no qi to draw from the air, even a small pocket of cold felt like a gift.

Usually, neither of them spoke during these rests.

They would lean against separate boulders, close their eyes, and steal what sleep they could. By now, they knew there were no beasts wandering the floor, so resting in the open did not feel as dangerous as it once had.

Today was different.

Princess Yanyue kept her eyes open.

For a while, she only stared at the sand stretching beyond them. Her face was calm, but the silence around her felt heavier than usual. Eventually, she turned slightly toward Chen Ren.

“Do you think we’ll die here, Sect Leader Chen?”

Chen Ren blinked.

The Watcher saw Chen Ren go silent for a few seconds before he answered.

“I don’t think so,” Chen Ren said. “You can still leave this place.”

Princess Yanyue stared at him. “Then are you going to die here?”

Chen Ren looked out across the sand. “Probably,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t know. I’m not at the stage where I’ve given up all hope yet.”

“What hope do you even have?” Princess Yanyue asked. “This place is like an illusion that never breaks. We could stay here for over a year, and I doubt anything would change.”

Chen Ren slowly nodded, lowering his head slightly.

“I know,” he said. “I do wonder if the others have already prepared my funeral or not. I hope a lot of people attend, at least.”

Princess Yanyue glared at him at once. “You shouldn’t say that,” she said. “You aren’t dead.”

Chen Ren gave a faint smile, but it did not reach his eyes. Princess Yanyue hesitated for a moment before continuing, her voice quieter than before. “I don’t want to leave you here alone if I can help it.”

“Then do you plan on dying with me?” Chen Ren asked.

“No,” she said immediately. “I don’t want to die here. But I do want you to find a way for us to get out. I’ve tried my best, but I can’t think of anything.”

“What makes you think I can?”

“Because you always find a way out of problems,” she said. “And here, we have a lot of time.”

Chen Ren went quiet.

The Watcher leaned forward slightly, his interest sharpening. He knew that look. The man was contemplating telling her the truth about the head, so they could ask him what to do.

Chen Ren’s gaze even drifted toward his side, right where Wang Jun was hidden.

Perhaps he would finally say it.

Perhaps the secret would come out in the careful, awkward way mortals revealed things they thought were too difficult to explain.

Before Chen Ren could speak, another voice cut through the silence.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Just tell her. I’m tired of this heat already.”

Princess Yanyue’s eyes widened.

She scooted back at once, qi flaring in her palm as her gaze snapped toward Chen Ren’s side.

The Watcher laughed.

Things had finally become interesting.

***

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