Dao of Money

291. Princess in a crowd

Chen Ren frowned as he looked around the dark space before immediately moving toward Princess Yanyue.The only reason he had not panicked already was because she was still breathing. Beyond that, he had no idea what this place was. For something called a lost chamber, there was almost nothing here.

Before he could even ask Wang Jun, the head muttered, “Her luck is terrible if this is what she managed to find in the whole library.”

Chen Ren’s eyes sharpened. “You know this place?”

“This is one thing I remember because I was warned about it. It’s one of the inheritances hidden inside the library. But unlike some of the others, this one isn’t easy. It looks like the princess is already in the middle of the trial.”

Chen Ren glanced at Princess Yanyue again. “What kind of inheritance is it?”

Wang Jun opened his mouth, but before he could answer, another voice spoke from somewhere in the darkness.

“One that requires you to overcome your deepest fears. Only a cultivator who can master fear can one day step toward immortality. This is the trial for that.”

Chen Ren went still the instant he heard it.

Lightning immediately flared around him as he turned sharply, but there was no one there. Just that feminine voice, seeming to come from every direction at once.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The voice answered calmly, “You do not need to know my name. Just know that I am the one who created this trial. And if the girl manages to overcome her fears, then I will be the one to reward her for that courage.”

At once, everything clicked into place in Chen Ren’s mind. So this was what Princess Yanyue had found—an inheritance trial, and she had been trapped inside it this whole time.

He looked down at her again. There were no wounds on her body, nothing to suggest she had been physically harmed, but her expression told him enough. Whatever she was facing inside the trial, it was not going well.

He lifted his head toward the darkness. “What happens if she fails?”

The voice answered without delay. “Then she will pay the price for attempting the trial. Her fears will deepen and take a stronger root in her heart, enough that her mind will not remain stable easily. But she agreed to that before accepting.”

Chen Ren’s frown deepened. That was very bad.

He had no idea what kind of fears a princess like Yanyue carried, but he didn’t need to know the details to understand that this could ruin her if she stayed trapped for too long. Just looking at her face was enough to tell him she wasn’t getting through it quickly.

But what could he actually do?

It was obvious that she was trapped in something like a lucid dream, or at least a mind-bound illusion. Chen Ren had heard enough about such techniques to recognize the shape of it, even if he had never experienced one himself. So the real question became whether there was any way for him to interfere.

As he turned that over in his mind, one thought suddenly surfaced. “Does she have to do it alone?”

This time the voice did not answer at once.

The silence stretched for a few moments before it finally said, “You want to help her?” Then, after another pause, it added, “You should know I will not split the inheritance. It can only belong to one person.”

Chen Ren answered immediately. “I don’t want the inheritance. I just want to help her.”

The voice returned, calm as before. “And why should I allow that?”

Chen Ren opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Wang Jun spoke sharply from his side.

“Because if I understand this place correctly, anyone who finds it is allowed to take the trial. You already have one person inside it. Chen Ren could still enter one of his own, but he doesn’t want that. So just let him help her in exchange for giving up any reward. I don’t see why that should be difficult for you.”

The voice said nothing for a full minute.

Chen Ren looked down at Wang Jun, grateful for the interruption, though he still had no idea whether the head had just helped or offended whatever was speaking to them. Then, at last, the woman’s voice returned.

“Something like that has never happened before.”

There was surprise in her tone, but not refusal. Chen Ren caught that immediately and said, “But you can do it, right? It’s not as if it costs you anything.”

“The trial would no longer be fair.”

“Nothing under the heavens is fair. And what exactly do you think I can do to erase all her fears for her? I only want to give her a little help. Not enough to make the whole thing meaningless. You still owe me a trial either way.”

“But you do not want it.”

Chen Ren nodded. “Maybe not. But you still owe it to me. So let me help her, and we call it even.”

The voice fell quiet again. Chen Ren waited without speaking further.

He had done well enough in negotiations before, but this time he could not even see the other side. His presence inside the trial might really change things, and there were a lot of reasons why he might get rejected. Still, if there was one lesson the pagoda had forced into him again and again, it was this: Nothing here simply followed one rigid rule without ways to move around it.

Even the voice he was speaking to likely belonged to some sort of lingering soul entity, one that probably hadn’t had a proper conversation with anyone in centuries. These spirits were aware enough to grow bored, curious, and even tired of their own endless existence. Because of that, Chen Ren had already guessed that the woman hidden in the darkness was more likely to agree than refuse. After all, this was probably the most interesting thing to happen to her in a very long time.

And when the voice finally spoke again, it proved him right.

“Even if I allow it,” she said, “you will not be able to alter the outcome of the trial too much. You will be nothing more than a pair of eyes inside it, much as I am now. You will not be able to directly interfere with her mind in any other way.”

“... Can I cancel the trial and return if I wish to?”

“Yes,” the voice replied. “You will not be a competitor in the trial, so you may return. But I am telling you again, you will not be able to do as much as you seem to imagine.”

Chen Ren gave a small nod and said, “That’s fine. As long as I can give her some support. I believe Princess Yanyue is capable enough on her own.”

The voice answered simply, “Very well then. Prepare yourself. You will enter the trial in precisely one minute.”

Chen Ren nodded again, then looked down at Wang Jun. “I don’t think you’ll be able to come with me.”

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Wang Jun gave a dismissive sound. “It’s fine. Just make it quick. I have no desire to stay here staring at you for hours.”

Chen Ren smiled faintly at that. He lowered himself to the ground and closed his eyes, mostly because he had no better idea how one was meant to prepare for stepping into another person’s mind. He did not know what he would see once he entered Princess Yanyue’s mind, and that uncertainty sat uneasily in him.

While he was still thinking about it, a sharp jolt suddenly ran through him.

It was a pain that struck him right in the center of his head.

Chen Ren groaned immediately, but before the sound could even rise into a full cry, a crushing heaviness dropped over him. His eyes shut on their own. The darkness of the chamber seemed to stretch toward him, swallowing his senses, and the next thing he knew, he was no longer in that room.

He was floating high in the sky.

The feeling of it turned his stomach almost at once. A vast sky spread around him, too huge to take in, but before he could even properly see it, something pulled at him again. The whole scene twisted, and in the next instant everything changed.

The open sky vanished.

Now he was inside a great chamber built of polished marble, its floor and pillars shining faintly under warm light. Golden banners hung from above, stirring softly in a wind he couldn't feel, and everywhere he looked, the place radiated wealth and power. It was the kind of room made to remind anyone standing in it that they were small compared to the people who ruled there.

But Chen Ren barely noticed any of that for long.

His eyes fixed on the scene unfolding in front of him.

Several figures stood in a circle. Their forms were tall and thin or broad and severe, their shapes different enough to suggest they were all separate people, yet their faces were nothing but drifting mist, blank and unreadable. They surrounded a little girl kneeling on the floor.

She held a dagger in trembling hands.

Her eyes were wide as she looked up at them, and one glance was enough for Chen Ren to know exactly who he was seeing.

Princess Yanyue.

Or rather, Yanyue as a child.

As he watched, the little girl took a small step backward on her knees. Chen Ren immediately tried to move toward her, wanting to ask what was happening, but he found that he couldn’t. His body stayed fixed where it was, like he was no more than a witness trapped in the memory.

Then something happened so suddenly that even he almost missed it. One of the mist-faced figures moved.

A sword flashed toward the child.

And in the very next moment, Princess Yanyue’s head was cut clean from her body.

***

Jun hated creatures that bred too much, especially ones that mixed with other species.

That always led to new abominations he had never seen before, and that was troublesome for one simple reason. If he didn’t know what a creature was, then he couldn’t know its weakness right away, and that meant wasting more time than necessary killing it. Even half a minute was irritating when it came to things like that.

That was exactly the sort of creature he and his disciples ran into almost as soon as they reached the tenth floor.

After tearing through far too many annoying pirates on the ninth floor and stealing a small but fast boat to move around, they had finally made their way to the burning tenth floor and started heading toward the grand library. Jun had expected the journey to be dull at worst.

Instead, a large dragon-like beast had attacked them.

He had not been in the mood to fight anything. Even Jun wanted some quiet after killing roughly two hundred pirates. But the creature kept chasing after them while his disciples attacked it again and again, and still it refused to fall back. Just the fact that it thought he could be prey was insulting enough on its own.

So when it circled around the boat again, dodging the attacks and rising from the front with another shriek, Jun decided he had tolerated it long enough.

He raised his hands.

In the next second, a huge pair of blackened chains burst out from them and shot through the air. The creature tried to twist away, but the chains moved with it, snaking around its body and wrapping it tighter and tighter until it screamed in fear and rage.

But it couldn’t shake the chains loose.

A moment later, Jun watched the creature lose control entirely and plummet toward its death. In his view, the easiest way to kill a large flying beast was often to force it onto the ground it spent its whole life avoiding. As it crashed below, Jun merely shook his head. “Let’s hope that’s the last beast on this floor. I’m not in the mood to fight before entering the library.”

Both of his disciples nodded at once, knowing better than to say more.

After that, the next few hours passed quietly enough. Jun sat in meditation again, not even bothering to open his eyes whenever another beast tried its luck against them. His disciples handled those interruptions well enough on their own. He only kept thinking about the medallion and what else the library might hold, and the only reason he finally opened his eyes again was because Wenji spoke.

“Master, we’re almost there.” Jun blinked, rose to his feet, and looked ahead.

The grand library stood before them, just as the Zombie Queen had described it. Even Jun had to admit it was impressive from the outside, but appearance alone meant little to him. A grand exterior did not guarantee anything worthwhile inside. He would decide what he thought of the place after entering it.

As he looked at it, Shuyi spoke from his side. “Do you think there will be other climbers inside, Master?”

Jun paused at that.

By now, the three of them already knew other climbers had moved ahead. The rankings made that obvious enough, even if Jun himself had not yet crossed paths with them. But if some of them were inside the library, then that changed things. Closed spaces with other climbers could turn ugly very quickly.

In the end, Jun simply smiled. “If there are, I’ll decide what to do with them once I know what they want. But if they get in our way…” He looked at both of them. “Then you already know what to do.”

His disciples smiled at that.

The next moment, the boat began lowering toward the library gates.

***

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