Chapter 45: Pulse of the Truth

  “Morning…” Felix stifled a yawn as he strolled into Lady Meng’s sleeping quarters. The door was open anyway, and he made himself at home. He plopped onto the freshly made bed and sighed. The luxurious silks felt like heaven under his skin.

  “Hey, hey!” Lady Meng barked. “Did you shower before coming here?”

  Felix raised his arm to air his armpit, chuckling when Lady Meng scrunched up her nose. “Why are you here?” she asked as she returned to drying her wet hair, combing tangles out with a comb in hand. “It’s so early that even Shun’s robot chicken hasn’t crowed.”

  “Wanna sleep… Too lazy to walk to my room…”

  “So you came all the way to the top floor just to sleep on mine.”

  “It’s easier to sleep when someone is annoyed,” Felix said jokingly. “Where’s Qingxiu? Haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “She hardly has time for me. Even a night together is getting rare. She’s been summoned back to Chongqing again,” griped Lady Meng as she set down her comb. “What about your students?”

  “Should be havin’ breakfast,” Felix mumbled. “Wake me up in fifteen minutes.”

  “You look worn out for once,” Lady Meng mused as she reached over to pluck out his hairpin that kept his hair in its usual bun. “And I have not seen you for the past few nights. Where have you been?”

  “Doing my duty as governor of the lands!” Felix raised his head to declare before letting it fall back into the soft mattress.

  “Hmph, I bet you only dropped by Singapore.”

  “Goddamn, that place is full of phantoms,” Felix grumbled. “Dante hasn’t been home in a few days, and the population has exploded! There wasn’t that high a concentration in Johor Bahru.”

  “It is a small island with an exceptionally high population density. No surprise, really,” Lady Meng said. “Well, go to sleep then, Venerated Elder Lee. Good job on your hunt.”

  Felix closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Lady Meng’s sheets smelt like lavender – her favourite flower. He slowly drifted off to sleep, images of his favourite kimchi stew slowly forming in front of him.

  Mmm, he thought, smacking his lips. It was one of those family-run restaurants. The phones rang incessantly in the background as customers called in for reservations, and shouts from the kitchen summoned the servers. “Glass noodles for Felix Lee!” Oh, he was drooling so much as the server approached him. “Felix Lee!”

  Instead of setting the food down, the server smashed the tray on his head.

  Something hard cracked against Felix's skull.

  Felix jerked awake with spit dribbling down the corners of his mouth, a hardcover book tumbling off his head and onto the bed. He was about to scold Lady Meng when he saw the look on her face. Lady Meng’s eyes were as wide as saucers as she held out her phone. She pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head. It was on speaker mode, and a familiar but very much unwelcome voice spoke, “Is Felix there? He might want to hear this.”

  “Fanghua?!” Felix mouthed, snapping awake.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Lady Meng shrugged, seeming equally unsure of why her sister had called. Fifth Lady Meng Fanghua – though she insisted no one address her by that title, not that anyone particularly cared to, given how far down the hierarchy she ranked. What truly bothered Felix, however, was her troublesome career. It had gotten on his nerves more times than he could count. Though it had been ages since he'd last seen Fanghua, the image of her asymmetric split bob – blazing neon yellow with fiery orange tips – was seared into his memory.

  Felix knew better than to tell the truth. He made a frantic slashing gesture across his neck. Don’t tell her I’m here!

  “He is not,” Lady Meng answered. “Speak away.”

  “So, as I was going to say, there was an uptick, and it’s massive! Anyway, there’s an increase in discourse about this hospital in Yokohama, something about corpses, an evacuation and some tremors. Social media’s full of Cursed Essence, too bad you aren’t here to see it.” Fanghua spoke like a bullet train. Sometimes, Felix wondered if that woman ever needed oxygen. “Speaking of which, I tapped some comms from the Beacon in Yokohama, and it seems that even though the media pipelines there are flush with Cursed Essence, the sensors are not picking up a corresponding increase in that area. They are also trying to figure out why their sensor network is collectively failing. But what I am hearing is that someone has already begun to interfere, and there is much more proliferation of news on the ground than online.”

  Lady Meng’s face blanched. Felix’s heart leapt to his mouth.

  “And I also heard…” Fanghua paused for a moment. She lowered her voice into a hushed but dramatic whisper. “Three young sorcerers happened to land in Yokohama’s Beacon not too long ago. Their arrival coincided with the surge in social media frenzy. I haven’t gotten their names, but I was wondering – are they Felix's students? Or yours? Who else would be stuck herding three little ones around but the two of you?”

  “Are you sure?!” Lady Meng asked frantically.

  “Pfft, who do you think I am?” Fanghua guffawed. “I am Meng Fanghua, the Pulse of Truth! Unleashing terrific scoops, engaging minds and staying ahead of the game is my thing… Sorta!”

  “Sorta?” Lady Meng narrowed her eyes.

  “Er… This news is like… twenty-three minutes old. Sorry about the hang-up. I needed some time to corroborate and organise all this information.”

  Lady Meng clicked the big red button on her screen to hang up abruptly on Fanghua. Felix locked eyes with her.

  “Shit.”

  “Fuck.”

  The two bolted out of the door at the same time, nearly crushing each other against the door frame. “Deal with the Beacon!” Felix exclaimed.

  “No shit! That’s where I’m going!” Lady Meng shot back.

  Felix grasped the bannister and leapt off the building, his hair whipping behind him. The frenzy of the winds was nothing compared to that in his heart. He was about to jet off when he remembered that he was not only dealing with the situation at Yokohama but also with Fanghua. I can’t make it too obvious that I arrived on the scene far later than they did! Otherwise, I cannot discredit her words!

  Felix tapped the tips of his fingers together and quickly started an incantation. “House of my soul, hearth for my Will!” he chanted. “And make Shun’s sensors eat shit!”

  In a flash, he was everywhere all at once. Flaming apparitions of himself materialised across the Sanctum — hunched over sensor nodes, crouched beside detection arrays and pressed against monitoring stations. Each clone burned with the same intensity as the original, their Essence signatures flooding the system with meaningless noise. He could brush it off as a defence technique development gone wrong while he himself continued his trajectory towards Yokohama.

  It was the only way.

  Dante could not be found by anyone else, especially the Elders. But his students – gods, his students were definitely caught in the middle of this mess.

  We talked about this, Dante! Felix clenched his jaw as he felt the bracelet around his wrist. Why didn’t you burn me?!

  Though he often scorned God, Felix prayed fervently that he could make it before more trouble started.