As Chen Ren had expected, three days later, when he walked into Heavenly Sky General Store for All Cultivators, the owner was ready to sign the deal.

  That did not mean Du Rensheng intended to make it easy.

  The man tried to squeeze out every last sliver of profit he could, circling the same points again and again, revisiting clauses that had already been discussed, and “accidentally” misunderstanding terms whenever it suited him. Chen Ren felt a flicker of irritation more than once. After all, Du Rensheng wasn’t even a real person in the conventional sense—but that didn’t change the fact that he was stubborn, experienced, and annoyingly sharp when it came to contracts.

  In the end, after hours of back-and-forth, Chen Ren relented.

  He agreed to give Du Rensheng five percent of the shop’s total profits until the full payment was complete. On top of that, he consented to employ Du Rensheng—or someone from his family—for the next ten years.

  The second condition was essentially meaningless to Chen Ren. If things went according to plan, he had no intention of staying in the pagoda for so long. Du Rensheng, however, had no way of knowing that, and the clause clearly reassured him. With that, the deal was struck.

  It took another full day to finalize the legal documents.

  During that time, Chen Ren gathered all the information he could get. With Princess Yanyue’s royal guards already spread out in Goldspire City, information flowed to him steadily—mostly about the cultivators gathering on the fifth floor. Some of it was useful. Some of it was troubling.

  All of the Guardian sects had reached the fifth floor and were grinding relentlessly for lift tokens.

  And among them was Yun Zhaotian of the Thunder Blade Sect.

  According to her guards, he had been distributing sketches of a man, loudly swearing that he would find the culprit and scorch him to death. When Princess Yanyue brought the news, she also brought one of those sketches with her.

  For a brief moment, Chen Ren stiffened, knowing there would be no one else Yun Zhaotian would be looking for.

  Then he looked closer at the sketch.

  The drawing was crude—so crude that he couldn’t help but blink. The proportions were off, the eyes uneven, and somehow, inexplicably, the man in the sketch looked like he had a beard because the artist had drawn over the face lines quite a few times.

  “Do you know anything about it?” Princess Yanyue asked after a beat, probably sensing he knew what it was about.

  Chen Ren nodded at that.

  He had no reason not to explain what had happened on the mountain, though he kept the details concise.

  By the time he finished, Yanyue was laughing openly.

  She waved a hand, amusement clear on her face. “Don’t leave the city for the time being, Sect Leader Chen. From what I know about that man, he would not let the matter rest so easily. I’m pretty sure he’d already stationed people around the fifth floor with explicit orders to find and kill you.”

  Chen Ren took the advice seriously and nodded. Laying low in Goldspire City suited him just fine.

  The conversation soon shifted to other high-ranking climbers. In particular, Princess Yanyue spoke about her brother, Prince Yuelan, whose experience in the Pagoda had been far harsher than expected. He had entered with a group of noble sons, confident that numbers and background would carry him forward. More than half of them had already fallen. According to her, the prince had grown hesitant, unwilling to bring the remaining few to higher floors, and had instead been trying to attach himself to one of the Guardian sects for protection.

  Chen Ren could picture it easily. Prince Yuelan struck him as the sort who believed influence and status would function inside the pagoda as they did outside. Reality, it seemed, had corrected him swiftly and brutally.

  Aside from that, most cultivators in the city had settled into a repetitive rhythm—accepting guild jobs to hunt beasts, gather herbs, or escort clients in exchange for tokens. Still, unsettling news continued to spread. Deaths were becoming more frequent. While some were the result of ordinary conflict between cultivators, Princess Yanyue suspected something more deliberate was at work.

  Demonic cultivators that had entered the pagoda were likely thinning the competition.

  The thought did not surprise Chen Ren in the slightest. It was exactly the sort of thing he had expected from them. Even so, he hoped he would not cross paths with any. His history with demonic cultivators had never been pleasant, and every encounter he’d had with them ended the same way—with someone trying to kill him for one reason or another.

  Once he had gathered all the information from Princess Yanyue, Chen Ren realised he could not afford to delay any longer. Right now, cultivators in Goldspire City were flush with tokens. They were taking on jobs, hunting beasts, and completing guild commissions, but most of them were hoarding their earnings. The reason was simple—the existing shops sold pills and weapons at absurdly inflated prices, and few items felt worth the cost.

  If he acted quickly, those tokens would flow to him instead.

  Fortunately, the very next day, the remaining legal procedures were completed. The contracts were signed, seals affixed, and just like that, the shop belonged to him, even if Du Rensheng still owned it in the papers. But the control was with him now.

  With ownership secured, Chen Ren immediately turned his focus to preparing for the opening. The first thing he did was to catalogue everything the shop still possessed.

  Despite operating at a loss for years, the store was packed with items. Racks, shelves, and hidden compartments were filled to the brim, and Chen Ren needed a precise accounting of every last thing. Du Rensheng had never maintained a proper inventory, so Chen Ren enlisted the help of Princess Yanyue’s guards and began from scratch.

  The results were… disappointing.

  More than half of the stock was outright trash. Pills had long since expired, their medicinal qi unstable or completely dissipated. Many of the weapons were poorly forged, some so fragile they would snap with a careless swing. There were cultivation manuals and martial techniques that looked promising at first glance, but after confirming with Du Rensheng, Chen Ren learned that they were widely circulated throughout the city and held little real value.

  For a moment, he was tempted to simply throw most of it away.

  In the end, he restrained himself. He had paid for everything in that shop, and he refused to let any of it go to waste. If the items themselves lacked value, then the answer was not to discard them, but to change how they were presented.

  As he stood amid shelves of forgotten goods, a familiar idea surfaced in his mind—one he had seen countless times back on Earth.

  If something could not succeed as it was, there was always another option.

  Rather than disbanding, he could rebrand.

  He decided to repurpose the expired pills instead of discarding them.

  In the end, they still worked, just not in the way most cultivators would want. With a few careful adjustments, they became poison pills, effective enough to harm or debilitate anyone foolish enough to consume them.

  As for the broken weapons, Chen Ren rented several forges with investment from Princess Yanyue and had them melted down. The salvaged materials could be reused in other products, and nothing of value would be wasted.

  The cultivation manuals were trickier.

  For those, he enlisted the help of both Yalan and Wang Jun. Neither of them was particularly happy about spending their time rewriting low-grade techniques, but Chen Ren had his ways of convincing people.

  Within a single day, they had modified several manuals and martial techniques, smoothing out flaws, simplifying difficult sections, and making them far more appealing to the average cultivator.

  He also changed their names.

  A technique once called [Basic Nine Styles to Learn a Spear] became [Nine Styles of the Spear God]. Subtle? Not at all. Effective? Absolutely. Chen Ren had yet to hear of any laws against false marketing in the pagoda, and he doubted anyone would bother suing even if such laws existed.

  That said, these refurbished items were never meant to be the core of his business. They were fillers—necessary to make the shop look full and active, but not what would draw people in.

  The true backbone of the store would be artifacts and pills he would need to produce.

  For the artifacts, Chen Ren hired blacksmiths willing to work on a daily wage. The physical shells of the items were easy enough to produce.

  What truly mattered were the runic enchantments, and for that, Princess Yanyue’s men would take the lead. Many of them had been trained in such work, and their expertise was more than sufficient.

  The real problem lay with the pills.

  To produce them, he needed a proper pill furnace, and more importantly, alchemists. At the moment, he had neither in sufficient numbers. His original plan had been to rely on Tau Liu and his group, but they still had not reached the fifth floor. It was a setback, and one he could not immediately fix.

  Knowing there was no point worrying about what he could not control, Chen Ren gave Zi Wen clear instructions to keep an eye on cultivators arriving from the fourth floor.

  If Tau Liu appeared, he was to be informed immediately.

  With that taken care of, Chen Ren turned his attention elsewhere.

  If he wanted his shop to make a splash, he needed more than good products. He needed someone important to personally inaugurate it.

  ***

  Tau Liu believed that the best decision he had ever made in his life was joining Jadefire Hall.

  If there was a worst decision to match it, then entering the Pagoda of Eternity was without question the one.

  Weeks into this heaven-forsaken place, he sometimes wondered why he had even come here in the first place. The answer, when he thought about it, was painfully simple—it had all started because of his rivalry with the Darkmoon Sect. He had heard about the pagoda from their disciples, listened to them boast about the opportunities within, and let his pride do the rest. If they could enter it, then so could he. If they could gain resources, then Jadefire Hall would gain more. Master Hun Tianzhi had also motivated him, partly for him to bring back resources. But he still had given him confidence.

  The news that Sect Leader Chen had also decided to enter the pagoda had only strengthened his confidence. With someone like Chen Ren climbing ahead, Tau Liu had believed that he and his junior disciples would be able to follow safely, perhaps even travel together.

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  That belief shattered almost immediately.

  From the very beginning of their journey, things went wrong. Along the way, Darkmoon Sect disciples had littered their paths with beasts—less to kill and more to delay. None of those disciples were true fighters. They relied almost entirely on pills, formations, and tricks, yet Tau Liu and his people were still forced to struggle through treants that burst from the ground and entire spider nests that clogged the forest paths on their way toward the Corpse Lands.

  Even after they finally reached that cursed place, there was no relief.

  Zombies rose from the ground in waves, clawing at them from every direction. It was only then that Tau Liu realised something—they were late. Far too late.

  Most of the stronger cultivators had already passed through, leaving behind only danger and scraps.

  Originally, he had planned to meet up with Sect Leader Chen and move together with his group. With Chen Ren’s strength and foresight, survival would have been far more likely. Instead, Chen Ren had already gone ahead, climbing higher while Tau Liu was forced to fight tooth and nail just to reach the pagoda.

  Even so, Tau Liu did not turn back.

  He did not give up.

  The Pagoda of Eternity stood before them, indifferent and unmoving, and now that they were here, there was only one path left—to climb. What he had not anticipated was that entering the pagoda itself would become a greater nightmare than the journey to reach it.

  The first two floors, at least, had not been unbearable. His group had been separated, but through grit and stubborn persistence, every one of his junior disciples had eventually made it to the third floor.

  It was there that they faced their greatest challenge yet.

  The Darkmoon Sect had been waiting for them.

  Tau Liu did not know why.

  Instead of pressing ahead like everyone else, they had chosen to linger on the third floor, deliberately blocking paths and watching for Jadefire Hall disciples to appear. It was impossible to mistake their intent. This was no coincidence.

  In the past few months, the rivalry between Jadefire Hall and the Darkmoon Sect had only worsened. The Darkmoon Sect blamed Sect Leader Chen—and by extension Jadefire Hall—for their loss of dominance in Broken Ridge City. Tau Liu understood resentment. He even understood competition. But this? This was despicable.

  Still, he did not allow them to kill his people.

  The jungle was vast, sprawling in every direction, and there were countless paths one could take. Tau Liu kept his group together and led them away from the Darkmoon Sect’s main routes, searching for the lift while avoiding direct confrontation whenever possible. That hope did not last long.

  They were chased.

  Over the course of the next week, several battles broke out. The Darkmoon Sect pursued them relentlessly, striking whenever they saw an opening. Tau Liu and his junior disciples fought back every time. Although they didn't win, they also didn't lose outright, but their numbers thinned.

  After each clash, someone was lost. Some died outright. Others were wounded so badly that they could no longer continue climbing.

  Yet they kept moving.

  When they finally found the lift to the fourth floor, it was already under the control of another group. Tau Liu had no patience left by then. There were no negotiations, no warnings.

  He led his remaining disciples into a desperate battle, fighting through sheer will alone. By the time it ended, his arm was broken, his qi depleted, but they had won.

  They boarded the lift.

  As it rose, Tau Liu truly believed that things would finally get better.

  They did not.

  The fourth floor was even harsher than the third. Snow covered the world in an endless white shroud. Blizzards tore through the land without warning, and beasts lay hidden beneath blankets of ice, striking the moment someone let their guard down.

  Each step forward felt heavier than the last.

  As they pushed on, rumours spread among the climbers. Stories of a Guardian sect disciple, roaming the floor in a fury—dragging beasts from their nests and slaughtering them one after another, venting frustration after being scammed by an unknown cultivator.

  All those beasts were driven out into the wild, and ordinary cultivators like Tau Liu and his remaining disciples were forced to fight through them head-on. Each passing day, the cold grew more vicious. At first, their qi was enough to keep their blood warm, but soon even circulating it nonstop failed to stop the numbness creeping into their limbs.

  If not for the Frostguard Warming Pills they carried—precious pills that burned gently in the dantian and spread heat through the meridians—they would not have survived at all.

  Another week passed in a blur of running, fighting, and barely sleeping. By the time they finally found the lift to the fifth floor, their spirits were shattered. His junior disciples walked like husks, their eyes unfocused, staring into empty space. Tau Liu knew exactly what they were thinking, because the same thoughts gnawed at him as well.

  What comes next? When does this end? Will we ever be allowed to rest?

  For the first time, he truly understood why his master had chosen to shut himself away in seclusion, refusing to deal with the world. Tau Liu found himself wishing he could do the same.

  Then the lift carried them upward, and the fifth floor came into view.

  All of them froze seeing it.

  It was not a wasteland. It was not a frozen battlefield or a death trap waiting to spring. Spread out before them was a vast, thriving city—roads, buildings, lights, and movement stretching as far as the eye could see.

  Civilization.

  Someone laughed. Someone else cried. Then the entire group erupted into cheers, relief washing over them like warm rain. When the city guards explained that fighting was forbidden within the city walls, the tension they had been carrying for weeks finally loosened. For the first time since entering the pagoda, they allowed themselves to believe they were safe.

  They descended the mountain with lighter steps, already thinking of food, rest, and proper shelter.

  Before they even reached the city gates, Tau Liu spotted a familiar figure ahead.

  A young woman stood there, waving enthusiastically.

  “Anji?” he said in disbelief.

  She hurried over the moment she saw them, greeting them like long-lost family. Tau Liu had not even known she had entered the pagoda, and seeing her alive and well felt unreal. She quickly explained the situation—about the city, the rules, and how rooms had already been arranged for them.

  Then she added, smiling brightly, “Sect Leader Chen is waiting for you.”

  Tau Liu felt his chest loosen at those words. For the first time in weeks, a genuine smile spread across his face.

  He must have figured out how bad things were for us, he thought.

  Without wasting a single second, they moved through the streets, weaving past horseless carriages that glided smoothly along the roads. Lights flickered from shop windows, voices overlapped in a hundred conversations, and the city felt almost unreal after weeks of blood, forest, snow, and death.

  They soon reached the inn Anji had spoken of.

  Tau Liu felt his legs grow heavy just looking at it. A bed. A real bed waited for him inside. For the first time in days, sleep tugged at his consciousness like a gentle hand, and all he wanted was to collapse and not wake up until the world stopped spinning.

  But before that, he steeled himself and went to meet Sect Leader Chen.

  As they stepped inside, Tau Liu was already preparing his words. He would explain what they had been through, and how he was grateful for the rooms he had already prepared, and wanted nothing more than just a rest for a week.

  When he saw Sect Leader Chen sitting on the ground floor, he smiled, but before Tau Liu could speak, he looked up. “Tau Liu, you’re finally here. I’ve been waiting for you and your group.”

  Relief flickered in Tau Liu’s chest.

  Then Chen Ren continued, completely serious, “When can you get to work? I need a batch of pills made as soon as possible. At least a hundred.”

  Tau Liu froze.

  Batch… of pills? A hundred?

  His mind stalled, exhaustion crashing into disbelief. His mouth opened, and after a moment he managed to stammer,

  “Sect Leader Chen… we wish to rest. We had endured… hard times.”

  Chen Ren looked at him calmly and replied, “Who doesn’t have hard times? But this isn’t the time to rest. It’s time to work. If we don’t work, how are we going to reach the next floor?”

  Tau Liu felt the words sink into his bones. He wanted to say it—that he had no desire to climb higher, that surviving this far already felt like a miracle.

  But the words wouldn’t come and before he knew it, he was already in front of a cauldron, cursing himself again for entering the pagoda.

  ***

  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.

  Magus Reborn 3 is OUT NOW. It's a progression fantasy epic featuring a detailed magic system, kingdom building, and plenty of action.