Chapter 9 The Magnetized Soul

The Grand Ballroom of the Jinjiang Hotel was filled with the kind of people who bought art as a tax write-off and ate appetizers with the suspicion that they were being poisoned by their rivals. It was a sea of black ties, qipaos, and the quiet, rhythmic humming of five hundred million yuan hanging in the balance.

Lin Feng stood backstage, hidden behind a velvet curtain. He was holding a walkie-talkie and a half-eaten stick of tanghulu.

“Bao, status report. How are the ‘Spiritual Assistants’?”

“Lin Ge, it’s humid up here!” Wang Bao’s voice whispered through the static. “The two waiters on the ladders are sweating. I told them if they drop a mask on Hans’s head, they’re being demoted to the dishwashing pit for a decade. But the magnets are holding. Mostly.”

“Meili?” Lin Feng clicked the radio.

“I’m at the VIP table next to the Swiss Ambassador,” Su Meili replied, her voice cool and professional. “He’s asking why the stage is currently engulfed in enough dry-ice smoke to hide a small mountain range. I told him it was ‘Atmospheric Qi.’ If the smoke clears before the first change, we’re finished.”

“Roger that. Hans is entering the wings. He’s wearing the gold-sequined cape. He looks like a disco ball had a mid-life crisis.”

Hans stepped into the light. Or rather, he stepped into the thick, swirling grey mist that Lin Feng had insisted was necessary for “Resonant Alignment.” To the audience, he was a silhouette of European confidence; to Lin Feng, he was a disaster waiting to happen.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Hans’s voice boomed, amplified by a microphone Lin Feng had hidden inside the high collar of his mask. “Tonight, I do not perform for you. I perform with the ghosts of the Min River! Witness… the Invisible Change!”

The music—a heavy, bass-boosted remix of traditional Sichuan opera drums—thundered through the hall. Hans began to move. He had spent all night practicing the “Burden of the Goose” walk. He looked less like a master and more like a man trying to find a bathroom in a thick fog, but in the world of high-end performance art, “confused” often looked like “profound.”

“Now!” Lin Feng hissed into the radio.

Hans made a dramatic, sweeping gesture with his fan.

CRACK! Wang Bao hit the metal tray. The stage lights flickered to pitch black.

Up in the rafters, a waiter named Xiao Chen lunged forward with a bamboo pole. The magnet at the end clicked against the metal strip on Hans’s red mask. He yanked it up, and the second waiter, Xiao Liu, lowered the green mask into place with the precision of a claw machine at a shady arcade.

The lights flashed back on.

A collective gasp rippled through the ballroom. Hans was now wearing the green “Envious General” mask. He hadn’t even moved his hands.

“It’s a miracle!” someone whispered at the Swiss Ambassador’s table.

“It’s… it’s spiritual engineering!” another shouted.

Behind the curtain, Lin Feng wiped cold sweat from his forehead. “Bao, keep it going. Four more changes. Don’t let the magnets slip.”

The performance continued. Hans was getting into it. He was spinning, leaping, and occasionally shouting Swiss-German proverbs that sounded vaguely like ancient incantations. With every flicker of the lights, a new face appeared: Blue (The Water Spirit), Yellow (The Sun’s Wisdom), and Purple (The High-Tech Gavel).

But then, disaster struck.

The humidity from the dry ice had made the silk of the masks slightly heavy. As Hans prepared for the final, most difficult change—the “Fire God”—Xiao Chen’s bamboo pole slipped.

“Lin Ge!” Bao’s voice was a panicked squeak. “The pole is stuck! The magnet is caught on Hans’s sequined cape! He’s going to be dragged into the rafters!”

Lin Feng didn’t think. He dropped his tanghulu, vaulted over a crate of stage equipment, and slid into the darkness behind the back-scrim.

Through a slit in the curtain, he saw the nightmare unfolding. Hans was striking a triumphant pose, unaware that a bamboo pole was currently tethered to his shoulder. As he began his final spin, the pole started to lift him off his feet.

“He’s ascending!” a guest cried. “The Fire God is returning to the heavens!”

“He’s not returning to the heavens, he’s going to break his neck,” Lin Feng muttered.

He grabbed a long-handled hook used for moving stage lights. He reached out into the smoke, hooked the bamboo pole, and gave it a violent jerk.

The magnet snapped. The pole flew upward, disappearing into the darkness of the ceiling.

Lin Feng, caught by his own momentum, stumbled forward—right into the edge of the stage light’s beam.

For half a second, the audience saw a man in a rumpled beige trench coat and sunglasses, holding a hook and looking like he’d just come from a very stressful fishing trip.

“Who is that?” the Ambassador asked, leaning forward.

Su Meili didn’t miss a beat. She stood up, her voice ringing out over the music. “Behold! The Guardian of the Threshold! The Liaison of the Unseen! He represents the human struggle against the divine!”

The audience erupted in applause. They thought it was part of the show.

Hans, seeing Lin Feng, assumed this was a “Spiritual Intervention” he’d been warned about. He let out a primal roar, threw his fan into the air, and—at that exact moment—the final mask, the “Fire God,” fell perfectly into place as Xiao Liu dropped it from above.

The lights went to full brightness. Red and gold streamers exploded from the ceiling.

Hans stood center stage, the Fire God mask glowing in the spotlights. He looked magnificent. He looked like the most successful man in the history of the world.

The ballroom was silent for three seconds, and then the standing ovation began. It was deafening.

The Aftermath

An hour later, the contracts were signed. Five hundred million yuan was officially flowing into Chengdu. The Swiss delegation was so impressed they were already talking about a “Cultural Liaison Exchange Program” involving chocolate and spicy tripe.

Lin Feng was sitting on a plastic crate in the loading dock, finally finishing his tanghulu. His “Guardian of the Threshold” status had made him the most popular man at the gala, which meant he had spent forty minutes dodging handshakes and business cards.

The door to the dock opened. Su Meili walked out. She had discarded her blazer, and her eyes were bright with the adrenaline of a successful closing.

“You’re a maniac,” she said, leaning against the brick wall. “You nearly got yourself killed with a stage hook.”

“I saved the ‘Face’ of the province, Meili,” Lin Feng said, not looking up. “I expect a medal. Or at least a very large bonus.”

“The bonus is coming,” she said, stepping closer. “But the medal might have to wait. Auditor Wu is currently telling the press that your ‘interception’ was a choreographed metaphor for the volatility of the global market. You’re a hero of the state, Lin Feng.”

“I just want to go to sleep.”

Meili looked at him, the sarcasm fading from her expression. She reached out and flicked a piece of red glitter from his shoulder. “The invitation still stands. Dinner. Tomorrow night. No magnets, no bamboo poles, and definitely no masks.”

Lin Feng looked at her. For the first time, he didn’t have a deadpan comeback. “Is it going to be a ‘Strategic Review’?”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s going to be a meal. And maybe… a conversation.”

She turned and walked away, her heels clicking a rhythmic, much more relaxed beat on the concrete.

Lin Feng watched her go. He looked at his “Liaison” badge, which was now covered in dry-ice residue and stage dust.

His phone buzzed.

Wang “Little” Bao: Lin Ge! We did it! Hans just bought me a watch that costs more than my restaurant! He wants us to go to Zurich to perform at his daughter’s wedding!

Lin Feng: Tell him I’m dead, Bao. Tell him the Fire God took me.

He stood up, stretched his aching back, and began the long walk home through the neon-lit streets of Chengdu.

Phase 1: The Freelance Fiasco was well and truly dead.

Phase 2: The Hotpot Wars were heating up.

But as he passed a small, 24-hour tea house, Lin Feng saw a group of old men playing Mahjong. One of them looked up, nodded at him, and slid a tile into place.

“Good game?” the old man asked.

“The best,” Lin Feng replied, adjusting his sunglasses. “But the next round is going to be even spicier.”

He walked on into the night, a “Face-Saving” genius who had finally realized that sometimes, the only way to save someone else’s face is to risk losing your own.