207. Hidden in the pages

Chen Ren took a step away from the portal, recalling the words on the plaque very clearly. It had said to explore and kill the master of the house, but the swordsman hadn’t been hidden at all. He had been calmly waiting on the second floor. So what was the explore part meant to be?

Princess Yanyue had told him that every floor of the pagoda hid different secrets, and that many of them were never discovered. Chen Ren felt like he was close to uncovering one of them.

So he stepped back into the building, even as Wang Jun grumbled, “You do know others will leave you behind like this.”

“It’s fine,” Chen Ren replied. “It’s not a race right now. And if I want to make money off other cultivators later, I need to explore everything.”

He slowly checked the furniture in the first room but didn’t find anything. Then he entered the hallway. He doubted there was anything upstairs, but he still planned to check it later.

Chen Ren first searched the two bedrooms, but they were completely empty. If spatial rings had worked here, he might have taken the cots, but that wasn’t an option.

The room he expected to find something in was the library.

When he opened the door and looked at the dozens of books inside, Wang Jun said, “You already looked through those.”

“Not all of them,” Chen Ren replied.

He began going through each book one by one, flipping through every page in case something was hidden in the middle. When he finished checking a book, he threw it onto the floor before moving on to the next.

Like that, he went through half of the books, but he found nothing. All of them were empty, their pages clean and untouched. Wang Jun kept grumbling the whole time, saying Chen Ren was wasting his time, and a part of him actually believed him. Still, he didn’t stop.

There was one thing that kept bothering him. If there was truly nothing hidden here, then there was no reason for this many books to exist. The other rooms were bare to the extreme. Even the kitchen only had a few knives and plates. Yet this room had shelves filled with books. That imbalance didn’t make sense.

When only three books were left, his persistence was finally rewarded.

As he flipped through one of them, he paused. One of the pages wasn't blank.

Chen Ren froze for a heartbeat, then smiled. “This is it.”

He placed the book on the floor and leaned closer, reading carefully. The writing was faint but was written in a more traditional way than what he was used to. From what he could tell, it was some kind of sensing technique, meant to extend one’s perception of their surroundings. However, it was incomplete—only a fragment of the full method.

He picked up Wang Jun and held him in front of the page. “What do you think?”

The head read it and nodded slowly. “It’s a technique, no doubt. It’s called [Void Sense],” Wang Jun said. “It sounds useful, but this is only one page. I’d guess it’s about a third of the full method.”

Chen Ren nodded. “But it’s still something.”

Wang Jun hummed in agreement. “You were right. There was something hidden here. I don’t think there’s anything else, though.”

“Maybe,” Chen Ren said, “but I still want to check everything.”

He carefully tore out the page with the technique and tucked it inside his robes. Then he finished checking the remaining books. Just as Wang Jun expected, there was nothing else hidden in the library.

Chen Ren didn’t stop there. He checked the kitchen again, then both floors, room by room. Nothing. No traps, no hidden compartments, no other rewards.

In the end, the single incomplete technique was all there was.

Still, Chen Ren didn’t regret it.

Even one page of a sensing technique was a good addition to what he already had.

​​Chen Ren didn’t leave the house right away.

He sat down on the cold floor of the library, the torn page resting in his hands. The words were few. He read them once. Then again. Then a third time, slower, tracing every line with his eyes as if afraid something would slip past him.

Wang Jun’s voice came from his belt. “It’s a technique that would also help to see through illusions.”

Chen Ren nodded. The pagoda loved tricks. A technique like this being hidden in the tutorial made too much sense. If the tower was filled with false walls and fake rooms, then this was a key. And keys were never given to everyone.

He closed his eyes.

Qi stirred inside him, flowing out of his dantian the same way it always did when he checked his surroundings, but this time, he didn’t let it spread wide. He pressed it thinner. Sharper. Like fingers instead of fog.

The air around him trembled.

His qi slid into the walls. Not bouncing off them, but sinking in. He felt the grain of the wood behind the shelves, the uneven stone beneath the floor, even the hollow spaces where air had been trapped for years. It was slow, uncomfortable, like pushing his senses through mud, and he felt a pressure on his head.

Sweat formed on his brow. He tried again. And again.

Time passed without him noticing. His breathing steadied. The strain lessened. What once felt heavy began to feel natural, like learning how to flex a new muscle.

When he finally opened his eyes, he released the technique fully.

The library peeled open in his senses.

Every shelf stood clear in his mind. Every crack in the walls. Dust hidden beneath the floorboards. He could even feel the faint outline of the chamber below, blurred but present, like a shadow under water.

But there was nothing else. Chen Ren frowned.

He stood up and moved.

The rear rooms came next. His qi brushed across empty stone, bare walls, cold corners that held nothing but silence. Then the first floor. The large hall opened under his senses, wide and clean, just as it looked.

Still nothing.

His jaw tightened, and he wondered if he was just wasting his time.

He climbed to the second floor.

The moment his qi spread there, something felt wrong.

Not loud or obvious—in fact, he could’ve completely missed it. Because it just sensed… off.

A hollow where there shouldn’t be one.

Chen Ren stopped. His eyes locked onto a section of the wall, his senses pressing harder into it. The stone resisted for a heartbeat, then gave.

Something was hidden inside.

A ripple passed through the pressure of his qi.

It was faint, almost easy to miss, but it was undoubtedly there.

Chen Ren stopped on the second floor, his senses locked onto the spot. Behind the wall, buried beneath layers of stone and dust, there was a hollow space.

And inside it… something solid.

Without hesitation, he stepped forward and drove his fist into the wall.

The stone cracked with a dull thud. Chunks fell away, revealing a narrow cavity, and a small wooden box slid out and hit the floor.

Wang Jun let out a short chuckle from his belt. “I guess you aren’t completely dumb.”

Chen Ren snorted. “Took you long enough to admit that.”

He crouched, picked up the box, and opened it. And his breath immediately caught. A ring sat there. If he was right, it was a spatial ring.

Chen Ren didn’t waste time. He pushed his qi into it, and the ring responded instantly, the familiar pull confirming what he had suspected. The space inside was smaller than the one he was used to, but more than enough for now. In the end, he doubted he would be able to find another before the fifth floor.

A smile crept onto his face as he slipped it onto his finger.

He headed back down to the ground floor at once and tested it. One by one, the blank notebooks vanished from the shelves and appeared inside the ring.

Wang Jun clicked his tongue. “Why are you taking trash like that?”

Chen Ren replied calmly, “It’s good to have something to write on. Who knows if we’ll find paper inside.”

He didn’t stop there. The cots from the bedrooms followed, pulled into storage in case he ever needed to camp in a cave.

Only when the rooms were stripped clean did he finally pause.

He glanced once more around the house. Almost half a day had passed. The others were definitely far ahead by now.

But he didn’t regret it.

Turning back, Chen Ren stepped out of the building and went through the portal.

The burning sensation returned, touching his skin, soul, everything, then vanished just as quickly.

When his vision cleared, he found himself in a small, quiet room. A single desk stood at the center, and on top of it rested another box.

Chen Ren walked over carefully and opened it.

Inside was a bracelet.

Chen Ren slipped the bracelet onto his wrist the moment he saw it. A chill ran through his arm, spreading up to his shoulder, and then faint words bloomed in the air before his eyes. They weren’t carved or written—more like light shaped into meaning. He knew at once it was an illusion technique.

It reminded him of a game interface. A status screen, if he had to give it a name.

His name hovered at the top. Below it sat his cultivation realm. Under that was a single number—2000 tokens. Chen Ren didn’t need anyone to explain it. That had to be the reward for clearing the tutorial.

Another line pulsed softly beneath it.

[Pagoda rankings can be viewed with a thought.]

Chen Ren focused, just for a moment.

The space in front of him shifted, unfolding into a long list that stretched far beyond his vision. Names covered it alongside tokens, and he realised he could scroll it with his finger. At the bottom, a line updated itself in real time.

Current entrants: 879

Even as he watched, the number ticked upward.

His eyes moved back to the top of the list. The first name stood far above the rest, paired with a number that made Chen Ren narrow his eyes.

[Han Qingshi — 5100 tokens.]

The genius of Frostpeak Sect had sacculated the most tokens till now.

As he scrolled down, it only confirmed what he already suspected. The top ten were all Guardian sect disciples. Prince Yuelan’s name appeared among them at ninth position, higher than Chen Ren expected. That one made him pause, lips pressing into a thin line.

Further down, familiar names began to appear.

Li Xuan sat at twelfth. Princess Yanyue followed at seventeenth. Zi Wen was twenty-ninth with Yalan just behind him at thirty.

Chen Ren kept scrolling until he found the twins, listed back-to-back at thirty-six and thirty-seven. His gaze lingered there for a second before moving on.

Anji appeared at seventy-nine. But he didn't find his own ranking until he scrolled down for a minute.

[Chen Ren — Rank 198.]

He let out a slow breath. Considering how long he had stayed behind in the tutorial, it wasn’t bad at all. If anything, it confirmed what he already believed.

Most of the people ahead of him had rushed forward.

He hadn’t.

Chen Ren frowned at the numbers for a moment, trying to make sense of them.

Had he gotten extra tokens for finding the hidden reward? It felt likely. And if that was the case, the pagoda clearly favored those who explored instead of rushing ahead. That alone made him more certain he had made the right choice by staying behind.

As he continued to scroll through the rankings, Wang Jun suddenly spoke.

“You need to reach the top.”

Chen Ren glanced down at the invisible head hanging at his belt. “Why?”

“I don’t like being this low,” Wang Jun replied flatly.

“Huh?” Chen Ren snorted. “You’re not even on the rankings.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Wang Jun said without hesitation. “I’m with you. Your ranking is my ranking. If you stay this low, it’s mud on my reputation.”

“You don’t have a reputation in this era,” Chen Ren shot back.

Wang Jun clicked his tongue but didn’t argue.

Chen Ren dismissed the hologram with a thought. The cold feeling faded, and the air around him felt solid again. “Enough looking,” he said. “Time to move on.”

He stepped into the portal once more, having nowhere else to go.

The burning sensation returned, brief but sharp, and then vanished just as quickly. When Chen Ren opened his eyes again, he wasn’t inside a room anymore.

He stood high above an enormous arena that looked straight out of the Roman empire.

Stone seats curved in a wide circle below him, packed with shouting figures. Their faces were vivid, their movements lively, yet something about them felt hollow. Cheers rose and fell like waves, shaking the air itself.

In the center of the arena, two cultivators fought.

Their blades clashed angrily. Qi burst and scattered like sparks. Blood stained the ground as the crowd roared louder with every exchange.

Chen Ren leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing.

None of the people below were real. They moved, shouted, and reacted, but they were no more than constructs—illusions given form. Puppets that were the residents of the pagoda and were simply meant to push those inside the pagoda forward. He knew that much from the princess’ musings.

Beyond this arena, he could see more of them rising in the distance. Circular shapes that would probably house more and more cultivators, and would be quite similar to this one.

“So this is the second floor,” Chen Ren muttered.

From the information he had, he knew the second floor was a test by combat. A place designed to crush the weak and entertain the rest while doing it.

Of all the trials he had heard about, this one had always been the most direct.

As he watched the fight below, the bracelet on his wrist gave a faint tremble. A soft glow spread in front of his eyes, forming clear instructions.

To clear this floor, he needed to win at least three out of five arena matches.

There was another option too. Instead of fighting other cultivators, he could challenge an arena beast and advance by killing it.

Chen Ren’s gaze lingered on the glowing words. Fighting the beast sounded tempting—one fight, no drawn-out battles. But the pagoda was never kind. If it offered a beast, it wouldn’t be anything ordinary. Princess Yanyue had already warned him about it, and told him what to do.

Fight the cultivators.

That had been her advice, and it was what he had planned from the start.

He gave the ongoing match one last look—the clash of techniques, the roar of the unseen crowd—then turned and began walking along the stone stands.

On his belt, Wang Jun spoke, clearly bored. “Get it over with. The faster we’re done, the faster we climb.”

Chen Ren shook his head. “Not so fast,” he said calmly. “This arena isn’t just for fighting.”

Wang Jun snorted. “Then what else do you think is here?”

“The princess mentioned a merchant,” Chen Ren replied. “And think about it. This place is built too well. You really think no one hid anything here?”

Wang Jun clicked his tongue. “Even with that new sensing technique, you can’t search the whole arena. That would take forever.”

“I know,” Chen Ren said. A faint smile touched his lips. “But I have something else in mind. Let me tell you—”

Before he could share his plan, a voice cut through his words.

“Chen Ren? Is that you?”

His steps halted instantly as the voice sounded familiar.

He turned, already knowing the man the voice shouldn’t be here. But when his eyes landed on the figure standing a short distance away, his breath caught.

For a moment, he could only stare—frozen—wondering what he was doing in the pagoda.

***

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