Chapter 979: Money Can Reach the Gods, Proving the Great Dao

Dou Dabi’s dull, gray eyes suddenly flashed with strange light: “Master Bei! Among us, only you might defeat this man!”

Yang the Scholar also suddenly understood: “Of course! His Divine Eye of Peering Heaven, my Chonglong Jade Nose—whether treasure or incense, all are external things, none can surpass the power of money.”

“And earlier, Master Bei, you overcame the Hair Demon precisely because appetite is humanity’s most fundamental desire, surpassing even the twisted desires money creates.”

“If a man is starving to death! Before him lie a bowl of rice and a pile of money—he will choose the rice!”

“So if Master Bei you strike directly at humanity’s most basic appetite, you will surely defeat him. This may also be why the mastermind behind all this left you for last.”

They suddenly understood, their confidence surged—but Bei the Immortal Maiden herself hesitated.

“Manipulating human appetite, forcing people into utter starvation to make them feel delicacy—that’s the dark kitchen’s method! A true chef must make people feel the beauty of food!”

“The beauty of food cannot overcome money—only hunger can!”

Master Dou declared firmly.

Bei the Immortal Maiden hesitated deeply: “But if I do that, my culinary Dao will be utterly defeated by the dark kitchen’s philosophy; the beauty of humanity will be utterly crushed by desire! To pursue victory through such demonic means…”

“They’re right!”

A copper coin was tossed into the air, then abruptly snatched by a hand emerging from the darkness.

The Daoist of Divine Money slowly stepped out of the shadows, clad in a tattered robe, his hair white and tangled into a Daoist topknot, strands of white falling across his face—he looked exactly like a destitute old Daoist.

“My entire Dao is bound to the word ‘money’!”

“Thus, with just a few simple tricks, I defeated the previous few! The Insect King was obsessed with fame and fortune—trying to escape the word ‘money’ was impossible! I merely showed him money—the clinking of silver, the clanging of gold—resonated in his heart. The Heavenly Sound Divine Ear in his hands was pure waste. The insect-fighting art took his ears, but not his inner voice; his heart had long been blinded by the sound of gleaming silver!”

“So I easily seized his Dao path.”

“That old woman, Xuan Weimiao Fa, entered Dao through emotion, her heart bound to hair.”

“But how can emotion compete with money? She held on this long, clinging to a single strand of hair, only because the person she loved was already dead! But money can reach even the gods—I can make the dead return to life.”

“Such emotion—the two people Xuan Weimiao Fa cherished both became ghosts, yet she clung on for a while. But love ultimately cannot withstand the erosion of daily life. Little by little, the word ‘money’ grinds down everything. Even if her man was merely an ordinary mortal, what of her own decades-long thread of true feeling? How long could it resist the wear of the mortal world, the wavering of her beloved?”

“Three days!”

The Daoist of Divine Money smiled: “In just three days, I fully refined Xuan Weimiao Fa.”

“And your Illusion-Shattering Divine Eye!”

The Daoist of Divine Money pointed at Dou Dabi: “You’re the most useless of them all! Your eye’s Dao path is tied to ‘treasure light’? What is treasure? Only what’s valuable is treasure! If your Divine Eye valued ‘truth,’ I’d need effort to invert truth and falsehood. But you value ‘treasure’—don’t you know all worldly value is measured by money? I measure with money, so I determine the value of your ‘treasure.’ I control the treasure-light in your eyes—what obstacle remains to seizing your Dao?”

“The Chonglong Jade Nose was slightly more troublesome—obsessed with fragrance, repulsed by stench—too refined!”

“Yet even high refinement, though seeming distant from the stink of copper, cannot escape it. The fragrances of people, of earth—you can all be absorbed by the stink of copper. If you’d grasped even a hint of Heavenly Fragrance Dao, you might have had hope. But you’re a waste.”

“Among the five, only you, Bei the Immortal Maiden, have the deepest cultivation.”

“Appetite strikes at the root of human desire, subtly restraining my Divine Money Dao. If you turned to demonic means, using demonic methods to counter demonic methods, you’d indeed give me great trouble.”

The Daoist of Divine Money sighed: “But you’re trapped in the hypocrisy of orthodox Dao, too prejudiced against demonic ways.”

“The Xuanzhen Sect lured you five here to forge a Dao path directly pointing to immortality, to complete a secret ritual for our Tai Sui Alliance’s centuries-long scheme to ascend to transcendence—the Five Organs’ Head, the Sunken Corpse, the Half-Man, the Fried Bones, the Open-Belly Buddha, the Great Golden Man, the Eunuch Ghost. These seven Dao paths of immortality, offered as sacrifice, must be assembled into one complete immortal to achieve cloud-riding ascension and become a transcendent!”

“The tragedy of pawns lies here…”

“The moment your innate talents drew their gaze, your fate was no longer yours to choose! What else could you expect? Your talents could piece together part of the blueprint for immortality!”

The Daoist of Divine Money sighed.

In Dou Dabi’s right pupil, a copper coin slowly emerged, carrying all the divine light of his Treasure Eye, carrying the entire Dao path of the Dabi lineage, falling into the Daoist’s palm.

The Daoist of Divine Money caught the coin, opened his hand—and saw a Mingshang Treasure resting in his palm.

Yang the Scholar, leading the big gray donkey, smiled bitterly; his nose itched. Just as Dou Dabi moved to cover his mouth, he sneezed.

Another copper coin flew out with the sneeze, caught effortlessly by the Daoist of Divine Money.

“The Jade Dragon Treasure!”

Mingshang Treasure, Jade Dragon Treasure, Canghua Treasure, Kongxian Treasure—

The Daoist of Divine Money threaded the four coins into a string, then turned to Bei the Immortal Maiden: “To carve out the Immortal Bone is simple. But seizing another’s Dao path? That’s exceedingly difficult.”

“Master Bei! You’ve walked the farthest among them. Yet you never truly entered the True Dao.”

The Daoist of Divine Money regretted: “Your Dao path runs deep enough to escape the reach of my Divine Money Dao. But its foundation is far too shallow! What imprint can a chef leave in this world? Only the dishes remembered by diners. Your Dao path rests mostly on others’ memories of flavor—those beautiful memories…”

“But how much is that worth in money?”

The Daoist of Divine Money looked at Bei the Immortal Maiden with regret: “Not much! In Sichuan, for thirty years, hundreds of thousands have eaten your dishes—from high officials to common folk. You’ve given your all to culinary Dao!”

“Yet I bought each dish they remembered for just a few copper coins—and bought all their beautiful memories.”

“Even high officials merely satisfy a few petty desires…”

“In total, I spent one hundred thousand taels to purchase every imprint your Dao left in this world.”

As he spoke, a copper coin in his palm faintly formed a phantom image.

Hundreds of thousands of memories of food, all recollections of Bei the Immortal Maiden’s dishes, were stripped away, coalescing into the phantom of a Tongming Treasure.

All memories of those who had eaten Bei the Immortal Maiden’s cooking were bought.

She was severed from most of the foundation of her Dao path.

“Flavor can be measured by money. Only hunger cannot be measured. If you controlled their appetite, etching your dishes into their deepest hunger, completely overwhelming their desire, your Dao path would not be so shallow!”

“And so easily, I stripped it away…”

The Daoist of Divine Money gathered all the flavor imprints he had stripped, all of Bei the Immortal Maiden’s memories of food, all taste imprints, fusing countless flavors into one.

A simple bowl of Yangchun Noodles—concentrating the memories of countless people toward food—was pushed before Bei the Immortal Maiden.

“Eat it! This is what you deserve!”

The Daoist of Divine Money stood high above, his gaze calm, mastering all.

Bei the Immortal Maiden sighed. For a chef devoted to culinary Dao, the most terrifying thing is to have every flavor, every dish left for the world, stripped away.

That bowl of Yangchun Noodles was not only all the flavors she left behind—it was also the diners’ most beautiful memories.

Before the Dao of Money, these beautiful memories were sold so cheaply.

Because the past is always cheap—once stripped of its power to fill bellies and satisfy hunger, is beauty so easily shaken?

Bei the Immortal Maiden knew she could not refuse him—because returning those beautiful memories, those taste recollections, to the people was something no chef could refuse.

Eating that bowl of Yangchun Noodles meant accepting that her own taste, her pursuit of culinary beauty, had been twisted by money.

“Beyond the beautiful memories and culinary satisfaction I brought others, you cannot strip away my legacy and the future’s potential, correct? You can buy back every memory of those who ate my dishes, but you cannot buy what else I left behind—Mapo Tofu, Twice-Cooked Pork, Fish-Flavored Shredded Pork… Even if those dishes are no longer made by my own hands, their forms and flavors still bear my imprint.”

“A chef’s memories of dishes will eventually fade.”

“But the flavors he leaves behind will endure forever. My culinary Dao will still live on in the future…”

The Daoist of Divine Money fell silent. Of course! Seizing a person’s Dao path is never that simple. Had he been able to fully erase the foundation of Bei the Immortal Maiden’s Dao, why would he have forced her to eat the memories he stole?

The Dao of Divine Money seizes essence—whether tangible or intangible—still through transaction.

That bowl of Yangchun Noodles was also a transaction: exchanging all the beautiful memories left in diners’ hearts for the remaining foundation of Bei the Immortal Maiden’s Dao.

But Bei the Immortal Maiden still had a glimmer of hope—she must cook a dish even the Daoist of Divine Money could not resist, imprinting her culinary Dao upon him.

Then, his act of seizing her Dao path would contain an irreparable flaw.

He could take her Dao path—but a trace of her Dao path would remain on him. Others might forget her flavors, but he himself would remember.

Thus, a thread of her Dao path would still remain in her grasp. In the future, she might reclaim her Dao through that trace.

After all, culinary art is not the Daoist of Divine Money’s foundation—his Dao path always leaned closer to Bei the Immortal Maiden.

Provided she left an imprint deep enough, one the Dao of Divine Money could not strip away…

“Now turning to demonic means is your only chance!”

The Daoist of Divine Money saw this clearly, speaking calmly: “Conquer me with your appetite—that is your only opportunity!”

Bei the Immortal Maiden fell silent.