"A 'recurring revenue stream'... a 'retainer'... a 'battery'..."
Lin Xiao Tong repeated the words, shaking her head as she unlocked the door to the Hall of Assembled Treasures. The sun had set, and the antique market was deserted, leaving them in a pool of quiet stillness.
"You negotiated with a three-hundred-year-old ghost like you were closing a Series A funding round. I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed."
"He's a merchant," Chen Wei replied, following her into the fragrant darkness of the shop. "His motivations are transparent. It's the ones you can't negotiate with, the ones who see you as food or entertainment, that are the problem."
The casual way he said it sent a small jolt through him. A week ago, he would have been trying to rationalize Qian Lao Gui as a trick of the light. Now, he was analyzing the ghost's motivations as if he were a business competitor. The speed of his adaptation was unsettling, but also necessary.
'This is the new normal,' he told himself. 'Analyze, adapt, or be consumed. There is no other option.'
"You're not wrong," Xiao Tong conceded, flipping on a single low-wattage lamp that cast long, dancing shadows across the room. "But making a promise to a ghost is one thing. Delivering is another. We've never made a 'ghost battery' before. I'm not even sure how."
"I have an idea," Chen Wei said, his mind already working. "It's about input, process, and output. We need a vessel, a 'hardware' to store the energy. We need a 'power source,' which is the urban qi. And we need a 'converter,' a process to make the energy palatable for a spirit like him."
Xiao Tong looked at him, her skepticism warring with curiosity. "You make it sound like building a power bank."
"Isn't it?" he countered. "It's just a different kind of energy."
For the next hour, they went through her inventory, searching for the perfect "hardware." It couldn't be something with its own strong Líng Qì, like jade, as that would interfere. It had to be something neutral, a blank slate. They finally settled on a set of nine obsidian spheres, each the size of a large marble, smooth and completely black. Obsidian, Xiao Tong explained, was volcanic glass, known for its ability to absorb and hold energy without judgment.
"Okay, we have the vessel," she said, arranging the spheres in a circle on the floor of the back room. "Now for the 'converter.' Qian Lao Gui is a spirit formed of Yīn Qì, the cold, passive energy. The urban qi you sense—electricity, data—is a form of Yáng Qì. It's active, hot, and chaotic. If you just pump raw electricity into these stones, you won't make a battery; you'll make a ghost-repelling grenade. We need to cool it down."
She began to draw a complex diagram around the obsidian spheres using chalk mixed with powdered silver. It was a small-scale bàguà formation, but with modifications Chen Wei had never seen before.
"This is a pacification array," she explained. "It will act as a 'transformer.' It will take the raw energy you channel and filter it, stripping away its chaotic Yang properties and leaving a more stable, neutral essence."
"Now for your part," she said, finishing the drawing. "The power source. You're the cable. I need you to sit in the center of the array. Reach out with your senses, not to the whole city, but to the main power conduit running under this street. Find it. Connect to it. And then, slowly, carefully, draw its energy into the array. Think of it as turning on a faucet, not opening a fire hydrant."
Chen Wei took a deep breath and sat cross-legged in the center of the chalk circle. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. He ignored the whispers of the objects in the shop and focused downward.
At first, there was nothing but darkness. Then, he found it. A deep, powerful, humming line of pure energy. It wasn't alive or chaotic. It was a man-made river of power, a testament to the city's unceasing heart, flowing with a 60-hertz rhythm he could feel in his bones. It was beautiful in its precision.
"I've found it," he said, his voice quiet.
"Good," Xiao Tong's voice came from outside the circle. "Now, pull. Gently."
Chen Wei focused his will. He imagined a thin tendril of his own consciousness reaching out, tapping into the river of power.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
A jolt of raw power surged into him. It was like grabbing a live wire. His whole body convulsed, his teeth clenched, and a gasp of pain escaped his lips. The lights in the shop flickered violently. The air crackled with ozone.
"Too much! You're pulling too hard!" Xiao Tong yelled. "You're trying to lift it with brute force! Don't command it, persuade it! It's not your enemy, it's a current. Find the path of least resistance!"
Her words cut through his pain. Persuade it. He had thought of it as a resource to be taken. But it was a system, with its own flow. He stopped trying to pull and instead tried to... align. He adjusted his own internal 'frequency' to match the steady 60-hertz hum of the conduit. He didn't try to siphon the power; he simply made himself an attractive side channel where the river would naturally want to flow.
It worked. The violent surge subsided, replaced by a steady, powerful, but manageable flow of energy. It coursed through him, warm and buzzing, a thousand tiny needles dancing under his skin. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
"That's it! Now channel it!" Xiao Tong instructed. "Push it out of your hands, into the stones. And I'll handle the rest."
As Chen Wei directed the flow, Xiao Tong began to chant. Her voice was low and melodic, the words ancient and resonant. The silver-laced chalk lines of the array began to glow with a soft, blue light. The raw, buzzing energy flowing from Chen Wei hit the glowing barrier and seemed to change. The crackle smoothed out, the heat cooled, and the energy that flowed into the obsidian stones was transformed into something dense, calm, and dark, like still water in a deep well.
One by one, the spheres began to change. Their matte black surface started to absorb all light, becoming impossibly dark. It took nearly half an hour, an eternity during which every muscle in his body screamed in protest.
Finally, the last sphere turned a deep, lightless void-black.
"It's done," he gasped, cutting his connection to the power main. The flow ceased, and he slumped forward, utterly exhausted, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead.
The blue glow of the array faded. Xiao Tong stepped into the circle and carefully picked up one of the spheres. It no longer felt inert. It hummed with a contained, potent, and deeply cold energy. It was Yīn Qì, but a clean, synthetic version of it—distilled from the very heart of the modern city.
"My god," she whispered, a look of pure astonishment on her face. "You actually did it. You created a synthetic yin-energy source."
She looked at him, no longer as a mentor to a student, but as a peer.
"I've never seen anything like this. This... this changes things. This changes a lot of things."
Chen Wei could only nod, his body aching but his mind alight with a dizzying sense of accomplishment. He had not only promised a ghost a recurring revenue stream, but he had just manufactured the first payment.