Chapter 269: Merchant negotiations |
Merchant Shrey paused when Chen Ren said he was the city lord of the second floor.
Chen Ren had not expected much denial. There was not much point in it now. City Lord Xiangrui had already confirmed it when Chen Ren asked, and after that, too many things started making sense for him.
He had spent a while wondering who the city lord of the second floor actually was.
Unlike the other floors, the second was open, noisy, and always full of movement because of the arena. It had always felt strange to Chen Ren that the lord of a place like that almost never seemed to appear openly. But in the end, the answer had been simple enough. The city lord had been right in front of him the whole time.
He just preferred being a merchant.
That also explained a lot of other things. It explained how Shrey always had goods that looked far too valuable for an ordinary trader to get his hands on. It explained why he seemed to know more than he should, especially about the other floor lords. Because at first, Chen Ren had only thought he might be one of the pagoda’s stronger hidden figures, the kind who looked unimportant until they weren’t. But after dealing with him more, that stopped feeling like the full answer.
A normal merchant should not have had that much information.
What pushed Chen Ren even further was the way Shrey had spoken before when selling him information about the lords. He had a lot to say about the others, but when it came to the arena lord, he had been unusually light on details. At the time, Chen Ren had only found it a little odd. Later, it started to feel more deliberate.
By then, he had already started to suspect. Xiangrui had only confirmed it.
“That motherfucker Xiangrui,” he said and shook his head. “He never could keep his mouth shut. Even when he knew perfectly well he wasn’t supposed to say anything.”
Chen Ren only grinned at that. “It sounds like the two of you know each other pretty well.”
Shrey gave a short nod. “Of course we do. Xiangrui used to come here all the time. He’d watch the fights, drink my alcohol, and then start nagging me about how the trials for climbers should be designed.” He let out a breath that was almost amused. “That was a long time ago, back when he was still interested in things.”
Then he glanced at Chen Ren and added, “You’re probably wondering why I’m here pretending to be a merchant.”
Chen Ren hummed at that. “I was curious—yes. But I wasn't going to ask. Since you brought it up yourself, though, I don’t mind hearing.”
Shrey snorted. “There’s not much to it. I just don’t have anything better to do in this arena.” He gestured lazily around them. “The place more or less runs itself. I don’t have a city to manage like Xiangrui does, and I don’t have some wasteland to brood over. This floor is small. That leaves me with a lot of free time.”
He took a slow breath before continuing.
“So I figured I might as well do something useful with it. Selling things to climbers is at least mildly interesting. Especially the ones smart enough to explore the floors properly instead of treating the whole pagoda like a race they need to sprint through.”
That made enough sense.
But spending one’s time sitting in a corner, drinking and running a shop sounds only slightly less dull than ruling over an arena, but Chen Ren kept that thought to himself.
Instead, he said, “Well, it’s still good to finally meet you properly, City Lord Shrey. I should probably apologize for not being more courteous before.”
Shrey waved a hand as if brushing the words away.
“There’s no need for that. I know you don’t mean it anyway.” His mouth curved faintly. “Being a merchant has its advantages. It lets me see what climbers are actually like when they’re not trying to impress a city lord. And you…” He gave Chen Ren a measured look. “You’re not the type to care much about a person’s status.”
Chen Ren smiled slightly. “No,” he said. “But I do care about someone’s strength. Especially someone like you. You already know—”
Shrey cut him off with a click of his tongue. “Yes, I already know what you’re going to ask,” he said. “And no, I’m not helping you.”
Chen Ren’s expression did not change much. “If you don’t,” he said, “you might lose your only returning customer.”
That only made Shrey snort. “For someone following the Dao of Money, you should know better than that. No one does anything for free.”
Chen Ren showed no surprise at Shrey knowing what path he followed.
A man like him would have noticed. He was clearly strong enough and experienced enough to put pieces like that together just from watching how Chen Ren had moved through the pagoda. More than that, he was old enough—at least in the way pagoda beings were old enough—to know things most climbers did not.
So Chen Ren simply said, “It doesn’t have to be free.”
Shrey looked at him over the rim of his bottle while licking the last drops of it.
“And what exactly are you planning to offer me?” he asked. “If you’ve spent any real time looking through my catalogue, then you already know I have most of the treasures I could reasonably want. Unlike some of the other city lords, I’m content with small things.”
He lifted the bottle in his hand slightly, as if to prove the point.
Chen Ren went quiet because the man was right.
With Xiangrui, Chen Ren had at least been able to think of angles to press, especially the possibility of doing something no one else in the pagoda’s history had managed. But Shrey was different. He was rich, comfortable, and—more annoyingly than anything else—did not seem to be lacking in any obvious way.
That was the worst kind of person to bargain with.
Merchants lived on transactions. Give and take. Need and reward. Profit came from finding what another person lacked and filling that gap at the right price. But standing here in front of him, Shrey did not seem to have much of a gap at all.
Chen Ren could not offer him tokens. That would have been stupid.
He could not offer him treasure either, because Shrey already had more than enough of that. And as for himself, Chen Ren doubted Shrey cared enough about him as a person for that to matter. At best, he was interesting to him.
Which, Chen Ren had to admit, was not the same thing as valuable. As he turned that thought over in his head, Shrey gave a low chuckle.
“See?” he said. “You don’t actually have a way to make me help you. If I were you, I’d try my luck with the fourth floor lord instead.”
Chen Ren looked at him. “The yeti?”
Shrey nodded lazily. “Yes, but it depends on whether you can beat it with strength or not. It’s in the creature’s nature to listen to anyone stronger than itself. A far simpler thing than trying to convince me. And certainly simpler than dealing with the third floor lord’s traps.”
Then he snorted faintly. “I don’t like speaking poorly of women, but I would never trust myself to walk comfortably beside her. So if she somehow says yes to helping you, be careful anyway.”
Chen Ren said nothing to that.
If anything, both of those options sounded worse than being here trying to pry a ‘yes’ out of Shrey. At least this problem was already in front of him. Going elsewhere would only mean trading it for a different problem that might be even harder to solve.
So instead of leaving, Chen Ren simply sat down across from him.
That earned him a raised eyebrow from Shrey, but after a brief look, the man only shook his head and took out a new bottle, and went back to drinking.
Chen Ren stayed there. And while Shrey drank, he kept thinking.
His plan needed at least two city lords. That much had become obvious the longer he worked through it. Xiangrui’s involvement was not a clean yes yet, which meant Chen Ren needed another firm answer from somewhere, no matter what. But the more he turned Shrey over in his head, the clearer the problem became.
He had nothing to use.
Shrey was still, in many ways, a mystery, and because of that, Chen Ren could not rely on information to corner him the way he might with someone else. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became that he was running out of angles.
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In the end, Chen Ren scratched at his head lightly and let out a quiet breath. There was only one thing he could even try here.
So after circling through his thoughts one last time, he looked at Shrey and said, “I have a question.”
Shrey looked up at that. “If you’re about to ask how to deal with the other city lords,” he said, “that will cost you.”
Chen Ren shook his head. “It’s not about the other city lords. It’s about you.”
That seemed to catch Shrey off guard. For the first time in a while, the man looked genuinely surprised. Then he laughed. “I could sell you information about myself too,” he said, “but it would be useless. There’s nothing in it that would help you convince me.”
“Maybe there is one thing,” he replied.
“And what would that be?”
“That,” Chen Ren said, “is actually my question.” Shrey said nothing for a moment, so he continued. “What do you want?”
For a brief second, Shrey looked as though he meant to answer immediately, but Chen Ren kept going before he could.
“I’m asking because whatever it is,” Chen Ren said, “I can give it to you. That’s what I’m willing to offer in exchange for your help when I move to break the array.”
Shrey leaned back a little. “I don’t want anything,” he said sincerely.
Chen Ren looked at him intently. “Everyone wants something. And I doubt you’re any different. So why not just tell me?”
“And what exactly would you do with that information?” Shrey asked and pointed to him.
“I’d offer it to you,” Chen Ren said simply.
That made Shrey laugh. “You’re too weak.”
“Maybe,” Chen Ren admitted. “But I’ve still done things far beyond what someone at my level should have been able to do.” He held the man’s gaze. “There are things in this pagoda that only a climber can do. You know that. So if there’s something you want done, then I’m the right person to ask.”
He paused, then added,
“And in return, all I’m asking is for your help with something that won't take more than a few hours out of your day.”
Shrey went quiet after that.
Chen Ren could see the shift in him, slight though it was. The man’s expression did not change much, but something behind his eyes had started moving. Thought. Consideration. A line of possibility opening where there had been none a few breaths ago.
The moment Chen Ren noticed it, he pressed. He stood up, stepped closer, and said, “Tell me. What is it that you want? Help me, and I’ll give it to you in return.”
***
As it turned out, Shrey did want something.
The problem was that the moment Chen Ren heard what it was, it felt like a blow straight to his chest.
For a second, he honestly thought the man had to be joking. He even asked him that directly. But Shrey made it clear soon enough that he was entirely serious. If Chen Ren wanted his help in the coming siege of the [Grand Aegis Array], then this was the price.
And it was not a small one.
Shrey did not stop at naming what he wanted either. He went further, laying out the dangers attached to it with an almost irritating calm, telling Chen Ren exactly what he might have to face if he tried to obtain the thing being asked of him. The more Chen Ren listened, the more it began to sound like a task designed to place him one step away from death and then ask him to keep walking.
That should have been enough to refuse.
But standing there, Chen Ren found himself asking the same question again and again—did he actually have another choice?
The higher he climbed in the pagoda, the more everything worthwhile seemed to lie just beyond something that could kill him. At some point, that had stopped being unusual. It had simply become the shape of his life now.
So in the end, he just accepted.
The answer came out more easily than it should have, perhaps because by then he had already begun to understand there was no cleaner road left for him.
Shrey’s reaction to that was almost amusing.
The man looked genuinely startled, as if he had expected Chen Ren to bargain, complain, or leave—not agree so directly. For a moment he stared as though he had not heard right. Then, once it settled in, he quickly added that if Chen Ren was lying to him, he would hunt him down personally.
Chen Ren took the threat for what it was and did not bother acting offended. Instead, he offered to bind the agreement with a qi oath.
That seemed to surprise Shrey even more. Apparently he had not expected Chen Ren to be that serious about it. Even so, after a brief pause, he agreed.
What followed took the better part of two hours.
They sat there and negotiated the terms carefully, because even if Chen Ren had agreed to what Shrey wanted, that did not mean he intended to let the arrangement become entirely one-sided. Shrey, for his part, used the same stretch of time to set down his own conditions for helping in the siege. One of the more important ones came early and stayed firm—whatever support he offered, Chen Ren would not be allowed to use Shrey’s items without paying for them properly.
That, at least, sounded exactly like him, and was unfortunate.
Part of Chen Ren had been hoping he might be able to take advantage of Shrey a little through the arrangement, especially when it came to the man’s stock, but in the end there was no real way to pressure a city lord into that kind of concession. Shrey made it clear enough that while he was willing to help with his own strength, that help would stop there unless proper payment was involved.
Still, he also said something else that mattered more. If he chose to take part, he would not hold back.
Chen Ren did not actually know how strong Shrey was in a real fight, nor did he have any clear idea what the man’s battle style looked like. But for now, he accepted the promise and let that part rest. Afterward, the conversation shifted toward the other parts of the oath, and by the end of it, the agreement was finally in place.
Once that was done, Chen Ren immediately turned his attention to the catalogue. More specifically, to the first hundred items—the ones priced in the millions.
He went through them carefully and, after some time, settled on one that he believed would be useful during the siege. He also bought another from the top thousand of the list. Shrey approved of the choice as well, which was hardly surprising now that he was more personally invested in the whole matter. One of the terms Chen Ren had insisted on during their negotiation was that if they failed to break through the [Grand Aegis Array], then the agreement between them could be renegotiated afterward. He would still carry out what Shrey wanted, but if he never reached the master lift, then the oath would not remain exactly as it was now.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Shrey had agreed to that part rather quickly.
After making his choice, Chen Ren simply told him to bring the items to the eighth floor in two days. He would pay for it there.
Shrey did not even ask whether Chen Ren would actually have the money by then.
That alone told Chen Ren enough. The man probably already knew about the lottery, or at least knew enough of what was happening on the fifth floor to make his own conclusions. Shrey seemed exactly like the kind of person who would have an information network spread quietly through the pagoda without anyone ever realizing it.
Once everything was settled, Chen Ren finally left the arena and headed for the lift.
For the first time in a while, it felt as though all the important pieces were finally beginning to sit where he needed them to.
Now all that remained was to gather everyone and explain how they were going to attempt the impossible.
***
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