Chapter 40 — Drinking Games

Lin Che sat in the passenger seat of the minivan and stared at the road ahead, his mind running laps thinking about what he had just done.

He had, in the span of an hour, convinced his best friend and two other people — one of whom was a Shen Clan operative which he had gagged and wardrobed — to believe that they had been personally selected for a secret special operations unit, all using a notebook and a very confident tone of voice.

The terrifying part wasn’t that it had worked on Xu Fang and Guo Mingzhe, no, that was explicable. After all, he was their introduction to the entire cultivation world, so of course they’d believe everything he said like gospel after showing just a little proof. The terrifying part was Chen Wei.

He was sitting in the back of the minivan and currently watching the road with contentment scribbled over his face. He had accepted the entire situation without asking a single probing question, assumedly filling in the gaps in the story all by himself. He had looked at Lin Che’s story and immediately decided it was a promotion.

There were three potential explanations for this. One: Chen Wei was being genuine and excited to join them. Two: Chen Wei had seen through it entirely and was playing along for reasons of his own, which was considerably more alarming. And three: he wanted so badly to believe it that his analytical instincts had simply gone offline.

None of these were fully reassuring.

***

In a small briefing room in the Shen Clan compound, Elder Fang and Shen Bowen sat opposite one another, a projector between them beaming a report from one of Elder Fang’s subordinates onto the wall.

“His phone has been off since approximately two in the morning,” she said. “His wife contacted the clan at seven when he failed to return or send word. Given that his location data stopped near the rough coordinates we sent him to—”

“It means he must have been taken down or is in hiding,” finished off Shen Bowen, fiddling with his fingers for lack of tea cup to hold. “So he is currently uncontactable, and his last known location traces back to that IP address cluster in Hebei.”

Shen Bowen was quiet for a moment.

Chen Wei was not, by any measure, a pushover. That was the key bit of information that made all this rather unsettling. On paper he was a mid-rank operative and not especially distinguished in terms of raw cultivation level, but his sound arts were deeply unorthodox, which led to disproportionate difficulty for people who had never encountered it before.

For someone to have neutralised him without him having a chance to call for backup of any sorts, in the middle of the night in a public area without drawing any attention — that required either considerable skill or considerable luck.

Bowen picked up a pen and began scribbling on the clipboard on the table in front of him.

“Revise the threat assessment,” he said.

Elder Fang looked at him and typed on her laptop.

“Take him up two tiers,” he said. “Unknown cultivation level, possibly concealed. Treat any field contact as high risk until we know more.”

“We’ll keep direct contact with Chen Wei’s wife in case his location data comes back suddenly. I don’t have high hopes,” sighed Elder Fang. “We don’t know what Lin Che is like… we’d best prepare bereavement compensation just in case.”

***

The town was mid-sized and rather unremarkable, serving primarily as a logistical node between more interesting places. Just off the river, there was a main high street with mostly defunct businesses. Some ways away from this high street was a shop with a green painted door and no sign.

Lin Che had half-remembered this address from a passing reference in Hu Baolin’s records, but wasn’t too sure that he had had the correct place. Thankfully, Chen Wei was much more familiar with this location.

He pushed the door open.

The inside of the shop had a scent Lin Che now understood was not unique to Hu Baolin’s pharmacy. It was a dry and complex scent with a faint mineral undertone that got stronger the closer you got to certain jars.

A long wooden counter ran the length of the far wall, and behind it, a woman in her fifties was reading something on a tablet. She looked up as they came in and took in the four of them with a short glance.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

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“I have a list,” said Lin Che, setting his notebook on the counter and spinning it around towards her. She put on her glasses to read the text, which Lin Che suspected was purely for performative reasons given her vast quantity of Qi he could sense within her.

Her name was Qiu Renying, and she had been running this shop for twenty three years, first with her husband, and then, for the past nine years, alone. In that time she had supplied ingredients to everyone from provincial clan juniors buying their first basic tonics to senior practitioners whose deeds she had heard faint rumours of.

She had a reliable sense for what a list revealed about the person who had written it.

She read Lin Che’s list twice.

“Where did you train?” she asked.

“Nowhere,” said Lin Che.

She looked at him again. “This is a modified breath-opening blend.”

“Yes.”

“The modification here—” she pointed to the third item on the list “—reduces the clearing effect but extends the absorption window. That’s not a standard substitution.”

“The standard formulation is designed for practitioners consolidating an existing foundation having been raised in a Qi-dense environment. These two,” Lin Che said, indicating to Mingzhe and Xu Fang, “are building from scratch. A slower absorption window reduces the shock to the meridian pathways and makes the early stages of the Liuhe method significantly more comfortable.”

Qiu Renying set the notebook down. “And the binding agent?”

“Neutralises the bitterness enough to be tolerable, but doesn’t affect the active compounds.”