Cultivation Loans, Anyone?

Lin Fan transmigrates into a cultivation world, only to discover that he hasn't been handed the part of an invincible hero. Instead, he's saddled with a disastrous start as a debt-ridden pauper! His cave abode is rented, his cultivation manual is an incomplete, dime-a-dozen version, and the only thing glowing with spiritual light at his side is a talisman from his "Cultivation Loan," nagging him to pay up. If he defaults, he won't just end up on a credit blacklist: he'll be sent to a spiritual mine to toil for the rest of his life! In this world, spiritual-energy cave abodes come with fixed price tags, breakthrough pills can be paid for in installments, and lectures by powerful cultivators require a lottery and competitive bidding. The scions of immortal families spend their way to ascension, while Lin Fan, an unaffiliated cultivator, is just another leek in the wave of cultivation-era capitalism. Is his only choice to shovel filth in the spirit-beast pens or risk his life gathering herbs in toxic marshes to earn a few humiliating low-grade spirit stones? No! A soul from the modern world will never give up! No spirit stones? Then he'll find a way out with economic thinking! Arbitrage through information gaps, recycling and reusing resources, cooperative societies for unaffiliated cultivators... Spirit-stone loans? Venture capital? Short-selling rivals? I'll rewrite the rules of the cultivation world's financial game! From a dirt-poor cultivator forced to hustle to the uncrowned king who sets off a financial storm across the cultivation world. Lin Fan's rise proves an unconventional truth: "Financial power is the primary productive force!" "Get the leverage right, and no bottleneck can hold you back!" But when he touches the sky screen of finance monopolized by ancient banking clans, he discovers that at the end of cultivation loans lies karma with its price already set. Behind the spirit stones lies the ultimate secret to the supreme Dao...