The moment Chen Wei fastened the black agate bracelet around his wrist, a pleasant coolness spread through him. It was nothing like the deathly chill of the old woman; this was like a cool stream flowing through a desert. The taut wire of anxiety in his chest seemed to go slack.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, he felt a measure of mental quiet.
"It's like turning on 'do not disturb' mode for your soul," Xiao Tong had remarked, seeing the look on his face. "It doesn't make you invisible, it just turns your 'screen brightness' down to the lowest setting. Most of the mosquitoes will fly right by without noticing."
Chen Wei had nodded, genuinely grateful. The price of one thousand eight hundred suddenly seemed very reasonable. He paid via WeChat Pay—a bizarre fusion of modern technology and supernatural transaction—and left the Hall of Assembled Treasures feeling like he had donned a suit of invisible armor.
For the rest of that afternoon and all of the next day, Chen Wei's life seemed to return to normal. He went back to his spreadsheets, his meetings, and his endless emails. But there was a difference.
His sensitivity to the "urban qi" was still there, but it was no longer chaotic. The neon lights still had a "feel" to them, but they were no longer overwhelming. The bracelet on his wrist acted as a filter, a small dam regulating the flow of energy around him. He even managed to get a full night's sleep.
He began to think that maybe, just maybe, the problem was solved. Maybe all he had to do was wear this thing and get on with his life, treating the whole experience as a bizarre, feverish dream.
That optimism lasted until Friday evening, at a fancy restaurant on the Bund.
His company was hosting a party to celebrate a successful project. The air was thick with the clinking of glasses and cheerful chatter. From the restaurant's enormous plate-glass windows, Chen Wei could see the glittering skyline of Lujiazui across the Huangpu River. The Shanghai Tower, the World Financial Center, and the Oriental Pearl Tower stood like man-made mountains, emanating a powerful energy he could now clearly sense.
He was talking to his department head when an unfamiliar feeling washed over him.
It wasn't the cold, life-draining sensation of the Star-Sucking Hag. This was something else, something far more subtle. It was like a single, dissonant note in a perfect symphony. A tiny ripple on a placid lake.
Chen Wei's eyes scanned the room. Everyone was still laughing, eating, drinking. Nothing seemed out of place. The agate bracelet on his wrist was cool and steady, still doing its job. But the feeling of wrongness grew more distinct.
And then he saw her.
A woman in a crimson silk qipao, her long black hair styled in an elaborate bun that exposed the pale, elegant column of her neck. She was sitting alone at a corner table, delicately sipping a glass of red wine. Her beauty was almost unreal, drawing the eye while simultaneously creating an invisible distance. People looked at her, but no one dared approach.
Chen Wei didn't know why, but he couldn't look away. Her gaze swept across the room, gliding over the happy faces with an air of detached amusement, like a queen observing her unwitting subjects.
Suddenly, one of Chen Wei's colleagues, a young man named Li Wei who had just been promoted, stood up, a glass of champagne in his hand. He was a little drunk, his face flushed.
"I... I'd like to make a toast!" he declared, his voice booming. "To our success! To a brilliant future!"
People clapped and cheered. But Chen Wei saw something else.
As Li Wei basked in the moment, a faint, rosy-pink luminescence emanated from him. Chen Wei had never seen anything like it. It wasn't life force; it was something more vibrant, like pure emotion—pride, ambition, and ecstatic joy.
And from her corner of the room, the woman in red smiled.
She raised her glass to her lips, but she didn't drink. Instead, the pinkish light from Li Wei seemed to be drawn out, twisting through the air like an invisible ribbon of silk, and dissolving into her wine. The red of the liquid seemed to deepen, to become richer.
Li Wei stopped talking mid-sentence. The triumphant grin on his face froze, then vanished. He blinked, looking around in confusion, as if he'd forgotten what he was about to say. The earlier euphoria was gone without a trace, replaced by a sudden, weary emptiness. He stumbled back into his seat, a dazed look on his face.
The agate bracelet on Chen Wei's wrist suddenly grew uncomfortably warm. It was still protecting him, still masking his own "qi." But it couldn't stop him from seeing what was happening. And it clearly had no effect on this type of "absorption."
This wasn't feeding on life force to survive. This was savoring emotion like a delicacy.
The woman in red slowly set her glass down. She touched her tongue to her crimson lips, then raised her head.
Her eyes, cutting across the entire noisy room, met his.
A mysterious smile played on her lips. It wasn't a threat. It was an acknowledgment. A greeting from an apex predator to a small creature that had accidentally wandered into its forest.
She gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod—a gesture both polite and utterly condescending—before rising and gliding silently from the room, leaving Chen Wei frozen with a glass in his hand and a terror that dwarfed what he had felt on the subway.
The mosquito had been swatted away, but he had just realized he was sharing a house with a tiger.
And the tiger now knew his name.