Dao of Money

289. Search for the princess

As soon as Chen Ren heard that Princess Yanyue was gone, a hundred ugly thoughts exploded through his mind at once, and the loudest of them all was simple.She was dead.

For one terrible second, he could already picture the emperor deciding on some execution so excessive it would be remembered for generations, all because Chen Ren had managed to get an imperial princess killed inside the pagoda.

Then Li Qingfeng spoke again.

“We don’t know what happened. She went up through the floors to check the top of the library, but she never came back. We waited more than an hour, then tried looking ourselves, but there’s no sign of her.”

Chen Ren blinked. “So she’s not dead.”

Li Qingxue answered this time. “No. At least, we don’t think so. She just disappeared somewhere in the upper floors, and we’re worried.”

“Couldn’t she have simply gotten lost? This place is huge,” Yalan said.

Li Qingfeng shook his head at that and looked back at Chen Ren. “She went on her flying sword. Even if she got lost, it shouldn’t have taken this long to find her way back down, especially since she only meant to take a look and return.”

That made Chen Ren go quiet. There was a very real chance something had happened to Princess Yanyue.

She was not the kind of person who would spend over an hour wandering around shelves for no reason, not when she had already made it clear she would return. If he had to guess, then she had probably stumbled into another hidden section and was still dealing with whatever trial guardian guarded it.

Even that, however, didn’t sit right. An hour was a long time.

Most fights between cultivators didn’t drag on unless something about them was deeply wrong, and Princess Yanyue was far from weak.

Especially with the weapon technique she used to form different qi weapons on the fly, and that only made Chen Ren more uneasy. Looking at the twins, he said, “We should go look for her again.”

Yalan’s ears twitched. “She went up, right?”

The twins nodded.

“Yes,” Li Qingfeng said. “We’ll need flying swords to reach that high.”

At once, Chen Ren pulled out another spare flying sword from his spatial ring, while Li Qingfeng brought out his own. But the moment Chen Ren stepped toward the sword, Yalan gave him a flat look and scoffed.

“I’m not coming with you. I’ve seen you crash enough times.”

Then, before either of the twins could react, she lightly jumped between them onto their sword.

The twins looked completely unsure what to do with that. “You’ll see how I handle it. I only need to take the sword upward. I’ve had enough practice by now,” Chen Ren said.

Yalan looked like she believed none of that.

The twins, wisely, said nothing.

They rose first, their sword gliding upward through the open space of the library toward the higher levels. Chen Ren stepped onto his own sword, but before taking off, he hesitated for half a breath.

That was enough for Wang Jun to mutter, “Don’t crash into a shelf. I will genuinely bite you if you do. I don’t think I’ll survive something like that.”

Chen Ren smiled faintly. “Don’t worry. It won’t come to that.”

Then he pushed qi into the sword and let it rise.

This time he did not rush. He had no intention of trying to catch the twins in one reckless burst, because he knew that if he did, he really would end up smashing into something. So he let the sword climb slowly, steadily, feeling the pull of it under his feet and keeping his balance centered.

To his surprise, it went smoothly.

The sword lifted higher and higher without the wild shaking he had grown used to, and Chen Ren found that he could keep it stable far more easily than before. By the time he reached the highest point he had ever taken a flying sword, it still had not wobbled once.

That alone made him quietly relieved. At least all those crashes had amounted to something.

With that thought giving him a little more confidence, Chen Ren pushed the sword faster to catch up to the twins. But he soon discovered there was still a limit to how well he could handle it. The higher he went, the more unstable the sword became. The shaking started again so suddenly that it felt almost insulting after the smooth climb from before.

For one ugly second, he nearly rammed straight into a bookshelf. Instead, he caught the edge of it with one hand, used it to steady himself, then pushed off and kept going, guiding the sword close to the shelves as he rose.

Wang Jun was muttering something the whole time, but Chen Ren barely heard him. His attention was fixed on the twins and Yalan far above, and on the sword under his feet that kept trembling harder and harder the higher he climbed. He didn’t even understand what he was doing wrong. He wasn’t rushing. He was trying to keep his balance. Yet the sword still shook beneath him so badly that part of his mind had already started thinking ahead to how he might reduce the damage once he inevitably fell.

Then Wang Jun finally snapped, louder this time. “Point the tip toward the ceiling, you idiot!”

Chen Ren froze for half a breath, which only made the sword jolt worse, but then he shifted his weight and angled the tip upward the way Wang Jun said.

The effect was immediate. The shaking stopped at once.

More than that, the sword suddenly moved more cleanly, its speed increasing as though it had finally found the direction it had wanted all along. Chen Ren still had to stay careful not to tilt too far and slide off, but that part was easy enough to manage.

He glanced sideways toward the invisible head. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this simple before? You stayed silent through all the times I crashed back on the eighth floor.”

The still-invisible head probably wore a smug smile. “I thought you’d figure it out yourself sooner or later. You’d get far more satisfaction that way than if I simply handed you the answer. That’s what good teachers do.”

Chen Ren let out a short laugh. “No. That’s what sadists do when they enjoy watching someone crash. I even wrapped you in qi so you wouldn’t get hurt.”

“And I’m grateful for that,” Wang Jun said, sounding entirely unbothered. “But it’s the least I expect from you.”

Chen Ren only snorted and let the matter drop as they kept rising through the library. A part of him was already wondering how he had overlooked asking Wang Jun for help with the sword in the first place. The man was ancient. If anyone knew more about flying swords than the average cultivator ever would, it was obviously him.

Still, there was no point dwelling on that now.

The ceiling was finally coming into view, and not long after that, he saw the twins waiting there with Yalan. Chen Ren pushed a little more qi into the sword and closed the remaining distance.

“You’ve gotten better with the sword,” Yalan said the moment he got closer.

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Chen Ren smiled at that. “So you regret not trusting me?”

“I never regret.” Then her eyes moved over the rows of shelves stretching on both sides of them. “I don’t see anything here except more books.”

Chen Ren followed her gaze, but before he could say anything, Li Qingfeng spoke. “We already checked around here. It’s safe and silent. There’s no sign of Princess Yanyue. Nothing to track, nothing broken, nothing at all.”

Chen Ren frowned. “There has to be something. Princess Yanyue wouldn’t just disappear. She obviously didn’t get eaten by a shelf.”

“Then where would she have gone?” Yalan asked. “And what should we do?”

Chen Ren’s mind blanked for a few seconds until he thought of the only solution that would help them. “We split up. We’ll cover more ground that way.”

***

As Chen Ren and the others searched through the grand library for Princess Yanyue, Zi Wen made his way through Goldspire City on the fifth floor, still unable to fully believe what the last few days had turned into.

Whenever he tried to think back on it clearly, everything blurred together. It felt almost dreamlike, the sort of thing that should have started fading from memory already, but he knew it was way too real to deny. The proof was on him everywhere he looked.

The robes on his body were new, stitched with the insignia of a wolf and a dragon across the back in white and gold. Rings sat on his fingers that were worth more than a small town, and at his belt hung several vials filled with liquids that would make most alchemists burn with envy once they learned what those substances could do.

And all of it had come from a single choice—one decision—and a great deal of luck.

Maybe this was what people meant when they spoke of the heavens finally smiling on a cultivator, because he could not explain it any other way. He was not arrogant enough to think himself some unmatched genius. Not even close. Yet somehow he had stumbled into an inheritance that others would have killed entire clans to touch the edge of.

He did not even know if he was worthy of it—

A gentle shove against his shoulder broke the thought apart before it could sink deeper.

He turned and saw Little Yuze snorting at him.

A smile tugged at his mouth almost immediately. His friend clearly knew where his thoughts had been heading and had stepped in before they turned too bitter. Even Whiskey, perched on his back, bobbed once as though agreeing with Little Yuze, and that only made the smile on his face deepen a little.

He was just glad that, through all of this, both of them had stayed with him.

He had found Little Yuze only after coming down from the mountain and searching around its base. Apparently, the great wolf had started chasing after him the moment the wyvern flew off with him and had somehow tracked him all the way through the snow. Zi Wen still didn’t understand how. There had been too much wind, too much height, too much white covering everything. He had no idea how Little Yuze had caught his scent after he was carried through the sky, but he was too grateful to question it too much.

Once they were reunited, finding the lift had not taken long.

Still, instead of continuing upward toward the eighth floor, Zi Wen had chosen to return to the fifth. By now, too much time had passed. His sect was probably wondering whether he had died somewhere in the pagoda, and beyond that, he wanted to know what had become of the others. So he made his way through the city, ignoring the curious stares from climbers who clearly looked new to Goldspire, until at last he found the Divine Coin Pavilion.

It was as crowded as ever.

There were customers both outside and inside, enough that under normal circumstances he would have had to wait. But Little Yuze solved that problem without needing to do anything more than walk beside him. No cultivator wanted to stand in the path of a giant wolf that looked fully capable of swallowing them in one bite, and the whispering that spread ahead of him made sure people inside heard he was coming before he even crossed the threshold.

By the time Zi Wen stepped inside, he found Anji already there.

She stood near one of the counters with a few royal guards nearby, and of all people, Li Xuan was there too. Seeing them made something in Zi Wen loosen a little. Whatever else had happened, at least they all seemed to be doing well.

As soon as Anji saw him—Whiskey on his back and the shape of Little Yuze visible just outside the store—her face shifted between surprise and relief so quickly that Zi Wen almost laughed. Instead, he only smiled. “Didn’t expect to see me here?”

Anji gave a small nod, ignoring the wide-eyed customers staring between them. “We actually thought you were dead. There’s been no news of you, and the royal guards heard you had already left the seventh floor.”

Zi Wen nodded and glanced around the shop. “I think we should talk somewhere else. A lot happened.”

They all nodded immediately.

Zi Wen gestured for Little Yuze to sit and behave, then followed Anji, Li Xuan, and two royal guards into her office. The moment they were inside, he asked, “Where is Sect Leader Chen and the others? Still on the eighth floor?”

Li Xuan shook his head. “No. Probably on the tenth.”

Zi Wen stared at them, waiting for someone to admit it was a joke. No one did.

They were serious.

For a second, he couldn’t even understand how that was possible. How had Sect Leader Chen already reached the tenth floor? Anji must have seen the question plainly written on his face, because she let out a breath and said, “It’s a long story. Let me explain.”

And so, for the next half hour, she told him everything that had happened while he was gone. She spoke of the assault, of the [Grand Aegis Array], of how they had managed to break through it, and of how Li Xuan and the others had only survived because the two city lords stepped in at the last possible moment.

By the time she finished, Zi Wen had gone quiet. “...So if we want to make use of the master lift, we need to move through the ninth floor as fast as possible and get to the tenth to find Sect Leader Chen and the others.”

Li Xuan nodded. “Yes. Unless he somehow comes back down to the fifth floor. But I doubt it and moving between the floors ourselves normally would still take too long.”

At those words, something clicked in Zi Wen’s mind. A thought bloomed so suddenly that he looked up at once and said, “No. It won’t.”

The others looked at him with confusion.

Zi Wen’s eyes sharpened as he continued, “I have a way to reach Sect Leader Chen quickly.”

***

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