Tuesday arrived with the subtlety of a supernova. True to her word, Lin Xuerui had delivered a purple Lamborghini Revuelto to Chen Feng's doorstep. It sat there, glowing with a deep, violet luminescence that made it look less like a car and more like a tear in the fabric of reality.
Chen Feng stood in front of his bedroom mirror, facing his greatest challenge yet: Formal Wear.
"Meiling says I need to 'dress to impress' for the underground auction tonight," Chen Feng muttered, holding up a high-end designer tuxedo. "But this garment is a sensory deprivation chamber. Why are there so many buttons? Is this a suit or a containment field for a mid-tier demon?"
He tried to apply his Sovereign logic to 21st-century fashion. He decided that since purple was the color of the car, he should match the "energy."
He emerged from his room wearing a neon-purple silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel, a pair of vintage gold-sequined trousers he'd found in a "Retro" shop, and his black tuxedo jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape. To top it off, he wore a traditional jade thumb ring and his orange aviator sunglasses.
He looked like a cross between a 1970s disco king and a chaotic deity who had lost a bet.
Su Meiling, who was waiting in the living room, dropped her handbag. "No. Absolutely not. You look like a flamboyant magician who got kicked out of Vegas."
"I am expressing the 'Vibrant Dao'!" Chen Feng argued, adjusting the sequins. "The gold represents the sun, the purple represents the Lamborghini, and the sunglasses represent... well, they represent me not wanting to look at you rolling your eyes."
"Change," she pointed a finger at the bedroom. "Now. Or I'm telling my father you're a fraud."
An hour later, dressed in a sensible, charcoal-grey suit (under extreme protest), Chen Feng arrived at the "Hidden Dragon" lounge, an underground club for the city's elite.
As he leaned against the bar, waiting for Meiling to finish talking to a group of socialites, he felt a familiar, albeit incredibly faint, aura. It was like the smell of old parchment and incense, buried under layers of cheap cologne and desperation.
He turned to see a man in a rumpled, sweat-stained white shirt and thick-rimmed glasses, frantically punching numbers into a calculator at a corner table.
"Lord... Lord Sovereign?" the man whispered, his voice cracking.
Chen Feng squinted. "God of Earthly Wealth, Zhao Gongming? Is that you? You look... terrible."
The man, once a deity who oversaw the treasuries of the Heavenly Realm, looked like he hadn't slept since the Great Reset. "It's 'Gary' now, My Lord. I'm a junior accountant for a logistics firm. My 'Divine Abacus' was replaced by Microsoft Excel, and the 'Infinite Treasury' is now just a series of spreadsheets I can't get to balance!"
"Gary," Chen Feng patted his shoulder sympathetically. "What happened to your Golden Cinnabar beard?"
"Tax season happened!" Gary wailed quietly. "I tried to use a Wealth-Gathering Array to help my firm, but the IRS flagged it as 'unexplained income' and 'potential money laundering.' I've spent three months in audit hell. To the mortals, my magic is just 'fraud'!"
Meiling returned, looking suspicious. "Who is this?"
"An old acquaintance," Chen Feng said. "He's currently being tortured by a demon sect known as the 'Internal Revenue Service.'"
Meiling rolled her eyes and pulled Chen Feng aside. "Look, Lin Xuerui is over there, and she hasn't stopped looking at you. She looks... different. Softer. Is this what love looks like for people like you?"
Chen Feng looked at the "Ice Queen," who was indeed watching him from across the room with a gaze that could melt lead. He then looked at Meiling's frustrated face.
"Meiling," Chen Feng said, leaning back.
"Love in this world is like a Wi-Fi signal. When you're close to the router, the bars are full, and everything is fast and exciting. But the moment you move to another room, the signal drops. You spend your whole life wandering around the house, holding your phone in the air, trying to find that one spot where the connection doesn't lag."
He gestured to himself. "I am a man with no data plan and a broken router. Lin Xuerui is looking for a 5G connection in a 3G world. And you? You're just trying to figure out the password."
Meiling stared at him, genuinely stunned by the sheer cynicism of the analogy. "That is the least romantic thing I have ever heard."
"The truth is rarely romantic," Chen Feng said, his eyes drifting back to the 'Accountant God' who was now crying into a glass of lukewarm tap water. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go tell Gary that his Excel formulas aren't working because he forgot to lock the cell references. Even a God of Wealth needs to understand basic syntax."