Dao of Money

268. Watcher's interest

The Watcher could not help but laugh as he watched what was unfolding inside City Lord Xiangrui’s castle on the fifth floor.If he had still needed food or drink, he might have summoned an entire feast for the occasion. What was happening before him had the feel of a king preparing for the greatest war of his life—not in scale, perhaps, but in intensity, in the sense that every piece being moved now might decide everything that followed.

The Watcher had seen his share of such conflicts in life. He had even been dragged into more than a few of them.

He had never enjoyed any of it.

Only now did he realize why.

It had not been the war itself that he disliked, it had being a part of it; being forced to stand inside the storm rather than watch it from afar. Seen as a spectator, all of this became something else entirely. It was endlessly engaging—the most entertaining spectacle the pagoda had given him in centuries, perhaps in all its history.

And all of it revolved around one man.

At first, the Watcher had fully expected Chen Ren to give up on the master lift eventually and simply continue climbing floor by floor like everyone else. In truth, if the man had managed to reach beyond the tenth floor, he might have ended up with a better natural chance of reaching the master lift in the long run anyway. That would have been the sensible route.

But Chen Ren had turned out to be far more stubborn than the Watcher first judged. Instead of letting the matter go, he had dug in.

And in the end, he had begun laying plans to break the array itself. That alone made the Watcher smile.

No one in the history of the pagoda had ever truly attempted such a thing.

At first, he had looked at the whole effort the way one might watch a chicken trying to climb the sealed walls of a castle. It was absurd. A creature too small for the task, too weak, too limited, flinging itself at something so far beyond it that the attempt became entertaining purely because of how doomed it seemed.

But that was no longer quite what he was seeing.

Now the chicken had started finding ways upward.

It had noticed the larger trees near the walls. It had begun using the branches. One little advantage at a time, one ridiculous adaptation after another, and somehow the impossible attempt had begun to slowly work out.

Even the lottery had impressed him.

In the Watcher’s eyes, that part in particular showed real cleverness—taking perfect advantage of the pagoda’s current state, of the endless stream of new cultivators pouring into it, especially the mediocre ones. Those were the easiest to move, the easiest to tempt, because they wanted so badly to believe the pagoda might still change their fortunes. Chen Ren had seen that hunger and built his scheme around it with almost offensive efficiency.

It had been as successful as the Watcher expected.

The lottery, once set loose, had spread through Goldspire City almost perfectly, feeding on the exact sort of desperation Chen Ren had gambled on. That part alone had been clever enough. But what came after impressed the Watcher even more.

Chen Ren had gone straight from that success to City Lord Xiangrui’s castle. He hadn’t hesitated one bit—rather, he had gone straight there, as though marching from one impossible thing into the next was the most natural path in the world.

That took more nerve than the Watcher had first given him credit for.

Then again, perhaps it was not only nerves. Chen Ren likely understood that he was running on a time limit whether he admitted it or not, and that too much preparation might mean very little when placed in front of someone like Xiangrui. If that had been his reasoning, then he was not wrong.

City Lord Xiangrui was one of the most complex soul puppets in the entire pagoda.

In truth, he was hardly different from a real person at all. He simply lacked the organs a human might carry, and that absence had made him functionally immortal. But those were not the only things that set him apart. Xiangrui was difficult in the way only truly complete beings could be. He was hard to sway, hard to tempt, hard to corner into another man’s design. Even arranging a first meeting with him was something only a handful of climbers had managed since the pagoda first appeared.

And now Chen Ren was asking for more than a meeting. He was trying to convince Xiangrui not only to leave his own city, but to move toward another one and take part in something that, on the surface, offered him very little in return.

As the Watcher had expected, the city lord’s first reaction was disbelief sharpened by irritation.

But Chen Ren did not retreat from it.

He bowed, asked only to be heard, and—more surprising than anything else—Xiangrui allowed it.

That made the Watcher pause.

Had Chen Ren somehow built enough rapport in their previous dealings to earn this much? Or was it something else entirely? After centuries of repetition and boredom, had the soul puppet simply recognized that this conversation might finally be something out of the ordinary?

The Watcher could not say for certain. But the reason mattered less than the result.

Chen Ren had been given room to speak. And that alone was already a victory. At least, that was how it looked in the Watcher’s eyes.

The fact that City Lord Xiangrui was even willing to sit there and entertain such a request said a great deal about how much Chen Ren had already accomplished on the fifth floor. Men like Xiangrui did not hand out attention freely, much less patience. Yet there he was, still listening while Chen Ren continued laying out what he wanted and why he believed it could be done.

Again and again, Xiangrui returned to the same point.

Why should he involve himself in any of this when he already possessed a master lift of his own?

That question alone should have ended the conversation several times over. The fact that it did not was telling.

And Chen Ren had clearly prepared for that.

He did not fold when the city lord’s tone grew colder. Instead, he kept talking, kept pressing forward, listing reason after reason Xiangrui ought to help him. Before long, what had begun as a request had become something closer to a negotiation, each sentence balanced so precariously that it felt as though one wrong word might tip the whole exchange into something ugly.

Li Xuan’s face made that much obvious.

The man Chen Ren had brought with him looked as though his nerves were being peeled apart one layer at a time. Fear passed over his face in waves, shifting each time Xiangrui’s mood seemed to tilt. The Watcher found that almost as entertaining as the conversation itself.

And still he watched, fascinated, because even he could not quite predict how it would end.

Would Xiangrui grow tired of the whole thing and simply banish Chen Ren from his sight? Would irritation finally boil over and push the city lord into using a martial technique for the first time in a hundred years? Or would it become something else entirely?

As the exchange went on, the Watcher found his answer, and it surprised him.

The more Chen Ren spoke, the more attentive Xiangrui became.

There was a subtle change in the way the city lord held himself, the way his eyes stayed on Chen Ren. And the moment Chen Ren noticed it, he pressed the advantage without hesitation, bearing down harder on the arguments he had already laid out.

The next half hour was something the Watcher would never have imagined seeing.

In the end, City Lord Xiangrui did not give Chen Ren a full yes, but he did not say no either.

And that alone was enough for the Watcher to notice the satisfaction in Chen Ren's eyes the moment the exchange ended. The man looked quietly pleased with himself, pleased enough that he even went on to ask another question—one the Watcher had not realized he had already pieced together. That earned a laugh even from Xiangrui, and not long after that, Chen Ren was leaving the castle with a noticeably lighter step, leaning toward Li Xuan now and then to murmur things the Watcher barely bothered following.

His attention was elsewhere.

It stayed fixed on the conversation that had just taken place, turning over each part of it again and again as a new question slowly rose to the surface of his thoughts.

Could Chen Ren actually breach the [Grand Aegis Array]?

Until now, the Watcher had only entertained smaller possibilities. He had thought Chen Ren might perhaps break through one layer of it. Maybe even crack the second if the man proved unusually resourceful.

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But no more than that.

And yet, so far, things had gone far better for Chen Ren than even the Watcher would have expected. Worse—or perhaps more interestingly—it was not simple luck carrying him through. The man had been making things possible. Forcing open paths that should not have existed, one after another, until what first looked absurd no longer felt quite so easy to dismiss.

So could he do it?

Could he actually push one step further and break through the array itself?

The Watcher let out a quiet sigh at the thought. He could not decide yet.

There were still too many moving parts. Too many variables. Too many places where all this preparation might still amount to nothing at all. There was no guarantee that everything Chen Ren had gathered and set in motion would produce a result big enough to matter in the end.

But one thing the Watcher had become certain of.

Whatever happened next, he was going to enjoy watching it. And with that thought came another decision, one he made almost absently.

Whether Chen Ren failed or succeeded, it no longer mattered. The two of them were going to meet.

***

Chen Ren made his way toward the lift on the fifth floor with a head full of thoughts, but above all of them, he found himself grateful for one thing.

He still had his head attached to his shoulders.

When he had gone to meet City Lord Xiangrui, part of him had genuinely felt there was a real chance he might never walk out. Or at the very least, lose an arm. Xiangrui might have looked calm enough—almost pleasant sometimes—but that changed very little. The man stood several realms above Chen Ren, and facing someone like that was not the sort of thing he could do with easy confidence, especially not without Yalan beside him.

That was part of the reason he had brought Li Xuan.

Chen Ren had known that if things somehow turned ugly, Li Xuan would step in whether the odds made sense or not. It was a poor foundation for a real defense, but better than standing there entirely alone.

In the end, none of it had been necessary.

The meeting had gone far more smoothly than Chen Ren had expected. Smoothly enough, in fact, that he had never once needed to resort to the more dangerous lies he had considered on the way there. He had not needed to promise Xiangrui future service after reaching the peak of the pagoda. That was probably for the best. Chen Ren had a strong suspicion that if he had tried something like that, the city lord might have seen straight through it and decided to kill him for the insult.

Fortunately, it had not come to that.

Xiangrui had not given him a definite yes, but he had not refused either.

Chen Ren had never liked being left hanging in the middle. It was the sort of outcome that tempted a man to build hope on something that might still dissolve when it mattered. But even so, he knew this was likely the best result he could have gotten. He had not gone into the meeting truly expecting Xiangrui to simply stand up, agree, and march off with him toward the eighth floor.

In truth, Chen Ren had not even known exactly what he expected when he first stepped into that room. What he had now was better than enough.

And with that part done, only one thing remained. He still had one more person to convince.

There was every chance that, much like with City Lord Xiangrui, he would not come away without a definite answer. But Chen Ren was comforted by one simple fact—this time, he was far less likely to lose his head in the process.

Because of that, he had even sent Li Xuan back.

The man had not liked it, of course. He had insisted on coming along the moment Chen Ren mentioned he was heading to the second floor to meet its lord, but Chen Ren had refused. There was no need for him to drag Li Xuan along for this part. At least, that was what he told him. In truth, Chen Ren simply felt this was something he could manage alone.

At the very end of his meeting with Xiangrui, Chen Ren had taken the chance to ask a few questions about the city lords of the first five floors and what the man thought of them, also to confirm the information he had gotten from Merchant Shrey.

The answers had been… useful (and entertaining).

The first thing Chen Ren learned was that City Lord Xiangrui seemed to dislike all of them.

According to him, the other floor lords were strange, irritating, or outright defective in one way or another, which Chen Ren found mildly ironic coming from someone like Xiangrui. Naturally, he had been wise enough not to say that out loud.

As for the specifics, Xiangrui had been more helpful.

The first floor lord, apparently, was a recluse who preferred to sleep rather than involve himself in much of anything. Since the first floor was spread across many separate areas instead of centered around one major location, the man rarely bothered with outsiders at all. Xiangrui had dismissed him as weak and advised Chen Ren not to waste time trying to involve him.

The second floor lord was another matter.

Xiangrui had called him a weirdo first and foremost, but beyond that had not said much with certainty. Even he did not seem to know the full measure of the man’s strength. As far as Xiangrui was concerned, that alone made him unusual, because apparently he had never once seen the second floor lord fight.

The third floor lord was a woman.

She lived inside a heavily protected cave somewhere on her floor and, according to Xiangrui, was an alchemist. That part interested Chen Ren for a moment, though Xiangrui quickly made it clear that speaking to her would not be easy. Anyone who wanted an audience would first have to break through her defenses and survive whatever traps she had placed around herself. Which would almost certainly get him killed.

That alone had been enough for Chen Ren to set her aside for now.

That left the fourth floor lord.

According to Xiangrui, the ruler there was not even human, but one of the beasts that lived on that floor—a yeti. He supposedly fought anyone who approached his cave, though Xiangrui had spoken of him with a strange sort of ease, claiming the creature was actually harmless enough once it liked someone. The city lord had even said, almost casually, that he once climbed onto the yeti’s back while visiting him.

Chen Ren did not believe for a second that the same courtesy would be extended to him.

So after weighing the four options Xiangrui had laid out, and after pressing him for a few more details, the second floor lord seemed like the best choice.

That was how Chen Ren found himself stepping onto the lift and heading down to the second floor.

When he arrived, the place looked much the same as it always did. Arena fights were still going on in the distance. Climbers moved through the floor in clusters, and the countless NPCs carried on with their routines as though the whole place had been frozen inside its own habits. Chen Ren paid none of it much attention. He walked straight through the familiar noise and activity until he reached Merchant Shrey once more.

The man looked up at him over his drink.

“Back to buy something again?” Shrey asked, taking another gulp of his booze. Then, with a faint curl of amusement in his voice, he added, “How’s your grand plan for the [Grand Aegis Array] coming along?”

Chen Ren smiled a little. “Well enough,” he said. “I just came from speaking with City Lord Xiangrui.”

That made Shrey raise a brow. “Did he actually agree to help you?” he asked. “That man would never do something like that.”

Chen Ren’s smile sharpened slightly. “Well, he didn’t say no,” he said. “So I’m counting that as a good sign.” Then his gaze fixed on the merchant. “Actually, I came to this floor because I wanted to speak to the city lord here as well. I’m hoping to convince him to help me too.”

At that, Merchant Shrey’s expression shifted. “Well,” he began, “you’ll find him in his—”

Chen Ren shook his head before the man could finish.

“I’m already talking to him, isn’t that right, Merchant Shrey?” Chen Ren asked. “Or should I call you City Lord Shrey?”

***

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