The three sharp knocks echoed in the sudden, suffocating silence of the shop. They weren't just sound; they were pulses of focused Zhèng Qì, righteous energy, that resonated through the very walls. To Chen Wei's senses, it felt like three precise hammer blows against a massive bronze bell, each one designed to announce presence and demand respect.
"Hide it," Xiao Tong whispered, her face a mask of stone, but her eyes wide with alarm. "All of it. Now."
They scrambled. Chen Wei shoved the freshly made capacitor and the remaining obsidian spheres back into a lead-lined box. Xiao Tong quickly rolled up the rice paper diagram and kicked it under a low cabinet, simultaneously using her foot to smudge the chalk array on the floor into an unreadable mess.
The knock came again, just as sharp, just as demanding.
"Coming!" Xiao Tong called out, her voice a little too high. She took a deep breath, smoothed down her training uniform, and walked to the front of the shop. Chen Wei stayed in the back room, hidden from the doorway, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He heard the bolt slide back and the front door creak open.
"Uncle," Xiao Tong's voice was formal, tight. "What a surprise."
"Lin Xiao Tong," a deep, resonant voice replied. It was a voice accustomed to authority. "It is late. I trust I am not interrupting anything important."
"Just closing up," she said. "Doing some inventory."
"Is that so? Because the 'inventory' in this part of the city has been unusually active tonight. The local energy matrix registered a significant, unauthorized energy draw, followed by a highly unorthodox resonance signature. It originated from this address."
Chen Wei didn't need to see the man to feel him. His arrival had changed the entire atmosphere of the shop. The gentle hum of the various artifacts had fallen silent, as if in deference, or fear. The man's personal qi was like a vast, deep ocean of controlled power. If Hu Meilan was a tiger, this man was a mountain—impassive, ancient, and immovable.
The man stepped inside.
"Your grandfather is worried," the uncle continued. "He sent me to ensure his favorite granddaughter wasn't getting into the kind of trouble that requires the Sect's formal intervention."
"I can handle my own affairs, Uncle Lin," Xiao Tong retorted, a defensive edge to her voice.
"Can you? Your 'affairs' seem to have recently coincided with the agitation of a Greater Yao and now this... power surge. These events are not unrelated. You are playing a game far above your station, Xiao Tong."
As the man spoke, Chen Wei watched in silent horror as a string of protective Fu talismans hanging near the back room doorway began to curl at the edges, as if scorched by an invisible heat. This wasn't an attack; it was just the consequence of his potent presence.
"And who is this?" the uncle's voice was sharp, suddenly directed towards the back.
There was no hiding. Chen Wei took a breath and stepped out of the back room, trying to project an aura of harmlessness.
The man before him was in his late fifties, with a stern face and streaks of grey in his impeccably cut black hair. He wore a modern, tailored suit but carried himself with the posture of a scholar-warrior from another age. This was Lin Wei, Xiao Tong's uncle, a senior enforcer for the Shanghai Daoist Sect.
Lin Wei's gaze swept over Chen Wei, and for a terrifying moment, he felt as if his entire being was being read like an open book.
"This is the source of the resonance," Lin Wei stated, his eyes narrowing. "A mortal. But not. Your energy is... chaotic. A mix of the mundane and something I have not felt before. The 'urban static.' You are the one causing these ripples."
"He is a friend," Xiao Tong said quickly, stepping slightly in front of Chen Wei. "He had an... unfortunate encounter. I am helping him."
"Helping him, or using him as a weapon in a private war?" Lin Wei countered, his eyes never leaving Chen Wei. His gaze swept the room. "The energy in here is a mess. It smells of dangerous experimentation."
His eyes fell upon the locked cabinet where they had found the Mind-Calming Disc and where Chen Wei had just shoved their new device.
"Open it," Lin Wei commanded.
Xiao Tong froze. Panic flared in her eyes.
Chen Wei knew what he had to do. While Lin Wei's focus was on Xiao Tong, he reached into his own mind. He found the "signature" of the capacitor—that coiled, synthetic yin. He didn't try to erase it. Instead, he gently took hold of its energy signature and wrapped it in another. He pulled on the ambient qi of the shop's mundane electronics—the cash register, the credit card machine—and wove them into a cloak of harmless, boring "static" around the dangerous object. It was the supernatural equivalent of hiding a file by renaming it "system32.dll" and burying it in a folder of thousands of identical files.
"I said, open it, Xiao Tong," Lin Wei repeated, his patience thinning.
With trembling hands, Xiao Tong unlocked and opened the cabinet. Lin Wei peered inside, his powerful senses sweeping over the contents. He frowned, sensing the lead-lined box, but the contents within felt... inert. Muddled. Like background radiation.
He straightened up, a flicker of doubt in his eyes. "Your housekeeping is sloppy. This place needs a spiritual cleansing." He turned his piercing gaze back to Chen Wei. "Whatever you are, boy, you are walking a knife's edge. And you, niece, are encouraging him. This foolishness ends tonight. Cease all investigation into Hu Meilan. Cease these... experiments. If she makes a move that violates the treaties, the Sect will handle it. Not a child playing with forces she barely comprehends and her... anomalous pet."
The insult hit Xiao Tong like a physical blow, but she held her ground.
"Yes, Uncle," she said, her voice a low, simmering ember of defiance.
Lin Wei gave them one last, long, warning look before turning and sweeping out of the shop. The pressure in the room lifted as the door closed behind him.
The moment he was gone, Xiao Tong sagged against the counter, her composure crumbling. Chen Wei stumbled back, a nosebleed suddenly trickling down his face, the price of his intense, focused mental effort.
They were safe, for now. But they were no longer just hiding from an external enemy. They were now actively deceiving their own side. The walls were closing in.