Chương 39: Chapter 38 — Analyst vs Analyst

The night roads were, as they tend to be on weekdays, rather empty. The headlights cut a narrow corridor through the dark whilst everything else remained drenched in a shadow that made the hairs on Chen Wei's arms stand up. He was on the phone, and he was not in a good mood.

"I'm telling you, Mei, I had just sat down. The tea was still hot, and then my phone goes and it's Elder Fang's number and I think, fine, it's late; it must be something serious. So I pick up—""I'm sure she had a good reason," chipped in his wife from the other end of the phone call.

"No, but listen. She wants me to come in straight away because apparently there's been some kind of emergency meeting with Shen Bowen himself, and they need someone who can move quickly and discreetly." He paused for a minute, afraid that speaking too fast would enrage him too quickly.

"'Discreetly,' they said — they said that to me!" Mei laughed through the speakers, and a quieter, more high-pitched voice burbled a noise too.

"Oh is my little butterfly hungry again?," she said, in that hyperaggressively cute voice that comes whenever in conversation with a baby.

"So I go in, and the whole story comes out. Shen Yue — you know, the clan head's granddaughter — was supposed to get married to some mortal today, and now he's just gone. Disappeared this morning and nobody knows where." His wife asked the obvious question.

"That's the thing! Apparently it's more complicated than it sounds. I can't tell you much, but the short version is that they need him found as soon as possible — something to do with the holy land portal or whatever." He drummed his fingers along the steering wheel.

"The others are all busy on another case, so instead they ask me to go alone."

"That's great, Wei Wei!" she chimed.

"Look, that means they trust you and maybe… maybe you'll even be considered for a promotion!"

"Yes, I know it's technically a compliment, but I'm just saying — I had hot tea and was ready to get to bed." He squinted at a road sign as it appeared and disappeared in his headlights.

"And now I'm driving through the middle of nowhere at—" he checked the clock on his dashboard "—one thirty in the morning, trying to find someone based on an IP address that puts him somewhere in a five kilometre radius, which, as you may know, is not a precise location." She asked if he knew what he was looking for.

"I've gone through the maps and pretty much narrowed it down to a cluster of motels. There can't be many and his name'll be in the logbook somewhere. Hopefully I can just get it over with as soon as possible and get home."

"You'll be fine, stop complaining. Message me when you're on the way back — I have a feeling the little one won't let me get any sleep tonight," she said.

"I will do," he said, slowing down as the road narrowed.

"And, for the record, they said to be discreet. I don't do discreet — that's not what sound arts are for! I'm not exactly Jiang Pei to tiptoe through a motel corridor and pretend I'm invisible. My whole thing is being heard!" She said something short.

"Yes, I'll call you when I'm done. I love you too. Take care." He ended the call and set the phone in the cupholder.

Chen Wei pulled over about a hundred metres before the first motel and cut the engine, before getting out in the cold. This was, he reflected, entirely the wrong kind of job for him — stealth operations favoured people with movement techniques and concealment arts, neither of which he could claim any mastery in. In fact, he was ranked near the bottom in his cohort for those specific subjects. Chen Wei's particular skillset was loud by nature, but sound arts required a lot of attentive listening to master as well.

So he listened very closely as he spread his Qi in a thin layer across as many surfaces as he could, and listened very closely for any vibrations. There were many kinds of tracking techniques that could be used, especially when searching for a specific Qi signature, or simply when searching for the presence of Qi itself.

However, this was an extremely advanced application of one's spiritual control, not due to its difficulty, but, rather, because cultivators had very hard limits to the radius around them where their Qi could extend. Going any further than this boundary would turn this 'self-Qi', as people had come to call it, into true, 'external Qi' that can linger and retain its attributes, but can no longer serve as an organ for the practitioner. In this specific instance, sound arts were peerless.

He could sense the rough locations of anything causing significant vibration in a certain manner and follow the trail until he honed in on its exact location. His wife would jokingly call him a sniffer dog. Cultivators had a signature, and even sleeping ones leaked something of themselves into the surrounding air. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He got two distinct pings from the motel directly in front of him.

Chen Wei considered this for a moment: two cultivators was unexpected, with one notably weaker than the other. He had been told the target was a mortal, possibly with some minor constitutional quality, and the weaker one probably fit this theory. The other, he hoped, was someone who just happened to share the same motel as Lin Che. He moved towards the entrance. The front desk was unmanned at this hour, so he walked over behind the counter and found the paper register.

He ran his finger down the entries until he reached tonight's bookings, and, sure enough, Lin Che's name was there, and he had seemingly booked two rooms. Chen Wei went down the corridor and stood outside the door closest to him. He listened for the vibrations, and they matched those of the weaker signal he had detected just earlier. He tried the handle, and, thankfully, the door was unlocked. He stepped inside the dark room and could just about make out two bed-shaped masses.

Both were motionless, but one had a steady breathing rate, whilst the other faintly snored. He moved towards the bed closer to the window and needed to confirm the identity before doing anything else. In this light, he couldn't see enough to be certain. He stood about three feet from the bed and clicked his fingers. A small spark of Qi ignited the air above his hand, just enough light to see with, revealing the sleeping face beneath him. It was the wrong person.

Someone who looked completely different to the file shown in the briefing. Chen Wei looked back up. There was a face there, directly in front of him, and it was one that he recognised. He had barely moved when the figure blurred, and something — something was being pushed into his open mouth. Chen Wei brought up his hands to pull away the wrist that was embedded deep into his kisser, but it wouldn't budge.

He tried to ignite the Qi in his throat, but his posture had been compromised and he was unable to do anything useful. In a panic, the light which Chen Wei had summoned went out, and he was soon on the floor with a minor thud and multiple pairs of socks gagging him. Without sight to help him bear his grounding, all he could rely on was the sensation on his skin and the tempo of the snoring just a few feet away. He felt himself being lifted as the door swung open again.

He was moving quite fast, judging by the air resistance that tickled his face. And then another door opened, and he was in a new room. Another door opened, and he was being stuffed in a wardrobe. This time, the door shut in his face and something heavy moved to seal him inside. Chen Wei, sock in mouth, stood twisted in a claustrophobic closet, unable to shout for help.

Lin Che was up before either of them. He showered and got dressed before reviewing his notebook, and then knocked on the twin room door at half past seven. Xu Fang opened the door after a couple more knocks went unanswered, and his eyes were hardly open. One eye had been crusted over with so much sleep that it had transformed into a glue which fused the eyelids together. The other eye simply struggled in the light.

"Breakfast," said Lin Che.

"Give me ten minutes."

"You have five." Xu Fang gave him a look and closed the door. A couple of minutes later, he and Mingzhe appeared in the corridor, both carrying their bags. Mingzhe rolled his neck and hit himself a couple of times in the trapezius to loosen some knots from his sleep.

"There's a place about a ten minute drive from here," said Lin Che, already moving towards his room.

"Come in first, though. We need to go over the day."

"Can't we do that over food?" asked Xu Fang.

"We can do both — I have snacks." Mingzhe perked up slightly.

"What kind of snacks?"

"No protein bars, I'm afraid." They followed him in, and Lin Che had already set out three chairs in a rough triangle. Lin Che handed him a packet of biscuits, from which he took one before passing it along to Mingzhe.

"So," said Lin Che, pulling him notebook onto his knee.

"Today's plan is as such: we're about forty minutes from the historical site, which I want to do in the morning before it gets busy. The farm trail is just a bit further along the same road, so we can do that after lunch. Before we get there, however, I'd like to stop by the city real quick to see someone and make a couple of quick purchases that would make the farm trail go much smoother for us." He looked up.

"Any objections so far?"

"What's the farm trail actually for?" asked Mingzhe.

"Is there anything to do there or are we just walking in a field?"

"Walking in a field, mostly," said Lin Che.

"I don't know, maybe there'll be a couple of goats."

"I'm going to need more than goats."

"There are definitely goats," confirmed Lin Che.

"I can't promise anything beyond that." Xu Fang, who had been looking around the room in a somewhat restless way, leaned forwards.

"Why does your room smell weird?"

"Old building."

"No, it's something else. Like—" He sniffed.

"Cologne?"

"Ah, yes. There is one other thing," said Lin Che, as he stood up and tucked his notebook under his arms. He looked at the two of them.

"I owe you both an explanation about a few things, and I'll get to it properly. But first—" He moved to the wardrobe in the corner of the room and shifted the desk that was flush against its doors before opening the door. Chen Wei was exactly as he had been left, upright and twisted slightly at the hip. Three pairs of socks remained embedded in his oral cavity, as the man began blinking in the sudden light. Xu Fang stood up very fast. Guo Mingzhe swallowed.

Lin Che looked at his two friends, then back at Chen Wei, and said, with complete composure: "This is Chen Wei. He came here last night on behalf of some people who are looking for me. I'll explain everything, but I thought it was better if you heard it together." Chen Wei tilted his head and awkwardly grinned as much as he could muster.