Dao of Money 231. A cook

Chen Eain looked down at the boiling soup in front of him. From outside the kitchen ca the noise of custors—voices, footsteps, bowls clattering together. For what felt like the dozenth ti that day, he wondered if he had sohow been led astray from his dao.

It did not make sense to him why he was enjoying cooking and earning tokens more than going out to kill a beast.

Yet sowhere in his mind, Chen Eain already knew the answer, and it was simple.

He had nearly died several tis on the way to the fifth floor of the pagoda.

At the beginning, he had no real idea what he was walking into. He was only chasing Chen Ren, his demonic cousin. But after arriving at the Corpse Lands, it beca easy to understand what the pagoda truly was and how valuable cultivators believed it to be. When he heard rumors that a great inheritance might be waiting at the top, he did what anyone from his clan would have done.

He entered it.

He went in with a group of rcenaries. They talked about treasures and rewards, eager to get their hands on anything valuable. Chen Eain did not realize how weak they truly were.

He did not know how it happened, but more than half of them died on the first two floors—the ones everyone said were the easiest. Chen Eain himself had pushed through those floors without much trouble. Duels were nothing new to him. The rcenaries, however, t a very different fate.

Still, he stayed with the rest and moved on to the jungle of the third floor.

It was there that Chen Eain nearly died, when a panther burst out of nowhere and ca at him with bared claws. He was still recovering and was nowhere near his full strength. It was not that he could do nothing, but the attack had been too sudden and too deadly.

The panther had struck fast, tearing away a chunk of his shoulder before one of the rcenaries managed to kill it.

If he had not carried pills in his pouch, he would have died there.

That mont marked the start of his misfortune.

The jungle was filled with creatures like that. Predators that struck without warning. Once, while they were camping at night, Chen Eain watched as one of the rcenaries was swallowed whole by a massive snake. It happened so quickly that no one even had ti to react.

They did not fight it.

They were too exhausted from traveling through the jungle and battling beasts all day. Chen Eain rembered lying there afterward, staring into the darkness, wondering if he would be next.

It felt likely back then.

As he pushed more qi into the soup and slowly stirred it with a wooden handle, Chen Eain finally understood why the journey through the pagoda had made him question his dao so deeply. Part of it was his own weakness, his inability to control everything. But more than that, it was his upbringing.

It was his clan.

He realized why young masters like him died so often before they ever got married. It was because they were raised to believe that nothing could touch them. That they were special. Untouchable beneath the heavens.

He had seen his own cousins die back in the sinkhole, torn apart by beasts. Back then, he had only felt anger. Hatred. A desire for vengeance. He never once thought that he could end up the sa way.

Because his whole life, he had been told he was different. That he was special, and that he was chosen by the heavens.

Lies. They were all lies, because under the unforgiving heavens, everyone was the sa.

Even geniuses died young. In fact, they often died earlier than most, because the heavens demanded more from them.

Compared to them, Chen Eain was nothing. He understood that clearly when he saw a rcenary—one whose na he never even learned—die while chewing on a handful of poisonous herbs. There was no glory in it. No last stand. Just a quiet, aningless death.

The pagoda did not stop being cruel there.

It threw hardship after hardship at him, and one by one, almost every man who was ant to protect him died. The jungle on the third floor had been brutal, but he still managed to reach the lift in the end and pay his way forward.

The fourth floor was worse.

By then, only four rcenaries remained with him. Hours after they stepped onto the sinking snow, one of them died. Chen Eain did not even know exactly how it happened. The land itself seed to swallow him.

When Chen Eain arrived in the icy wasteland, a blizzard was already raging. The wind howled endlessly, cutting into flesh and bone. In the chaos, he saw another rcenary vanish into the storm. He only heard the man’s screams before they were drowned out and silenced forever.

Sohow, Chen Eain and the remaining rcenaries found a cave. For a mont, he thought they were saved.

But it turned out to be the lair of a yeti.

The monster slaughtered the last rcenaries without rcy.

Left alone, Chen Eain made a choice. Walking into the blizzard felt safer than staying near a creature that would surely kill him. So he left the cave and pushed forward through the storm, step by step.

Even that was not the end.

Just as he began to adapt to the cold, he was caught in sothing far worse. A battle raged in the sky above him—between a crazed cultivator wrapped in storms and a massive snow wyvern. Chen Eain had only been walking when he saw it.

Then the cultivator hurled the wyvern down.

Straight at him.

The massive body crashed into the ground, pinning Chen Eain beneath it. Half his body was trapped under the creature’s weight as the cultivator in the sky moved on without a glance.

It was brutal. He had to stay there for hours, circulating his qi again and again, using it only to keep himself warm and alive.

Slowly, painfully, he managed to squeeze his way out from under the dead wyvern.

By that point, he did not even have the strength to cut through the wyvern and take any of its valuable parts. Everything felt like too much. All he wanted was rest, a place to sleep, and a warm al.

It was during his search for the lift to the fifth floor that he began to really doubt his path. His dao.

Was he really ant to be a heaven-blessed warrior, when he could barely survive forests and cold lands? Was he really ant to fight with rciless beasts?

He had excuses, of course. He was still recovering. But that only led to another question. If that was true, then why had he chased after Chen Ren in the first place, without thinking anything through? It had not been reason or planning that drove him forward. It was revenge. Vengeance that filled his mind and drowned out everything else.

His father’s words ca back to him then. He had once said that when a cultivator is truly alone, the heavens force him to question every choice he has ever made.

That was exactly what happened to Chen Eain.

He thought endlessly, berating himself for entering the pagoda, for being weak, for living a life that had led him to doubt his own dao. The more he reflected, the more uncertain he beca. He wondered if he could even stand against Chen Ren at all.

Since entering the pagoda, Chen Eain had checked the rankings every hour. The system fascinated him, even as it crushed his spirit. Ti and ti again, he saw Chen Ren’s na at the top, while his own sat near the bottom.

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Chen Eain doubted Chen Ren even knew he was inside the pagoda. His ranking was too low to matter.

The gap between them felt enormous.

And the more he thought about it, the clearer it beca. Instead of closing that gap or hunting Chen Ren down, his heart kept longing for sothing far simpler.

Warm food.

And a bed. Even daydreaming about them both felt blissful. But he knew that he would not be finding that peace on the fourth floor.

The next few days were a blur.

Chen Eain did not even rember finding the lift. When he did, exhaustion took over completely. He slept on top of it, and when he opened his eyes again, he was surrounded by civilization.

Seeing the city, he finally felt safe.

For the first ti in a long while, he believed he would not be eaten by a wild beast. Without hesitation, he went straight to a restaurant and spent all of his ager tokens on a large, warm al.

It filled him in a way he had not felt in a long ti.

After finishing, he cried.

It was sothing Chen Eain rarely did, and never over food. als had always been sothing he took for granted. Now, he could not. The experience changed how he looked at even the simplest things.

At the sa ti, he knew he needed to think carefully about his next move.

He was alone. The rcenaries were dead. The man he had co here to kill was not only alive, but making a na for himself. Chen Eain even heard rumors about Chen Ren during that very first al.

Needing tokens and a way forward, he realized he could not act blindly anymore. He had to think about his dao.

But again and again, the sa question kept haunting his mind.

Was he truly ant to walk the martial path?

That question followed him as he walked through the city. He spoke with other cultivators, now called climbers, and learned how the city functioned and how people earned tokens. They all gave him the sa advice. Hunt beasts. Take odd jobs. Join the guild everyone talked about.

But when Chen Eain stepped toward that guild, his legs refused to move.

He felt it deep in his bones.

The mont he stood before a beast again, his martial dao would collapse. The images of rcenaries being eaten alive replayed endlessly in his mind, along with the certainty that he would be next.

As a result, he found himself unable to do anything, yet still needed to survive. Leaving the pagoda was not an option, and sleeping on the streets was impossible. Not only was it beneath him, but he had learned that doing so would also get him jailed.

So Chen Eain did the only thing he could.

He returned to the restaurant where he had eaten his first warm al and asked for work.

He did not know how to cook, but he could handle simple tasks. He had seen a parchnt outside the restaurant asking for help, and by so twist of fate, he was chosen. For more than three weeks, he worked there, earning a few hundred tokens each week along with a place to sleep.

At first, his duties were simple. He cleaned plates and swept the floors. Each ti he did, his ego cracked a little more. Still, he used those quiet monts to think. He reflected on his dao, on why he doubted it, and where things had gone wrong.

Over ti, he learned how to prepare simple dishes. He learned how to make soup and how to cut vegetables cleanly. They were tasks he once would have considered far beneath him, yet he found that he could do them well. He stuck with them.

Eventually, he was promoted to one of the cooks in the restaurant.

He did not understand why, but he felt a strange sense of pride in it.

Even so, he never stopped questioning his dao. He also never stopped practicing. Every morning before work, he ditated and focused on his cultivation. Yet no matter how much effort he put in, it did not improve.

He could feel it clearly.

There was a gap between his cultivation and his dao. And until he closed it, he knew he would not move forward.

Even if his will to hunt beasts was gone, Chen Eain was still a cultivator. At the very least, he needed to understand his dao properly. But what was his dao anymore?

His martial dao had failed him, and in turn, he had failed it.

As he watched the soup finish cooking, his thoughts drifted back to Chen Ren. If Chen Ren saw him like this, would he laugh? Probably. His entire clan would laugh too, seeing him make soup while others competed with Guardian sects inside the pagoda.

Strangely, Chen Eain did not care.

His clan had not seen what he had seen. They had not lived through what he had lived through. Only he knew that.

Still, he wanted answers. He wanted to understand his dao.

But how?

He had entered the pagoda to kill Chen Ren. Was that still his dao? If he tried to do that now, would it give him his path back? Chen Eain did not know. Yet he also did not know what else he was supposed to do.

The only thing that eased his thoughts was the sll of the soup. It made his stomach rumble. He wondered if he could get the leftovers for dinner.

The mont that thought ford, Chen Eain shook his head.

What am I thinking?

He could not understand why he was looking forward to leftovers from food he himself had cooked. Sohow, he had grown used to this life. Too used to it.

Was this only widening the gap between him and his dao? Should he leave now, find Chen Ren, and challenge him before he becos soone else entirely?

As these thoughts circled in his mind, a sharp voice rang out from outside the kitchen.

“Chen Eain, are you done yet? Custors are waiting. If you delay, I’m docking your pay.”

At once, all his worries vanished.

Chen Eain moved without hesitation. He pulled the soup off the fire and poured it into small bowls, working quickly and carefully.

As he did that, he felt sothing warm bloom in his chest.

But he had no idea what it was.

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