The Nine-Meridian Physician

Chapter 8: Dinner With Feng Lao

The address Su Kang had been given turned out to be a private members' club on the thirty-first floor of a building that didn't advertise its own name on the lobby directory — the kind of place, Chen Feng understood immediately, built specifically for men who preferred their business conducted somewhere it could never quite be proven to have happened at all.

"Remember," Su Kang murmured as the elevator climbed, straightening his tie with hands that weren't entirely steady, "you're Mr. Chen, an independent logistics consultant I've brought in to review the supply chain terms before signing. Nothing more. Let me do the talking unless he addresses you directly."

*A reasonable cover,* Ye Chen observed, *though I suspect our host will see through it within the first sixty seconds regardless. Men like Feng Lao do not survive five centuries by believing the story they're told. Play the role anyway. It costs us nothing, and it may buy a few minutes of useful uncertainty on his part.*

Su Wan stood at Chen Feng's other side, dressed for the part of Su Kang's "junior counsel," a leather folio held against her chest like armor. Somewhere below them, invisible in the building's parking structure and the street outside, six of Su Kang's security contractors were watching entrances and exits with the patient professionalism of men paid very well to notice things quietly. It wasn't much. Chen Feng suspected, from the careful, controlled dread still humming beneath Ye Chen's borrowed calm, that it wouldn't be nearly enough if the night turned violent.

The elevator doors opened onto a private dining room lit low and gold, a single long table set with more restraint than the wealth in the room actually called for, and Feng Lao already seated at its head, unhurried, a glass of pale wine untouched at his elbow, as though he'd been waiting there not for minutes but for years.

"Su Kang," he said warmly, rising with the smooth courtesy of a man greeting an old friend rather than a business partner three months into an arrangement. "And company. How thoughtful." His pale eyes moved to Chen Feng and Su Wan with an expression that made no effort at all to hide how little the fiction of "consultant" and "counsel" impressed him. "Mr. Chen Feng. Dr. Su. I confess I didn't expect either of you tonight, though I can't say I'm disappointed. Please, sit."

*He knew we were coming,* Ye Chen said grimly. *Before we arrived. Which means either Su Kang's security contacts were not as discreet as promised, or someone inside this family spoke to him after this afternoon's meeting. Watch everyone at this table carefully, Chen Feng. Trust nothing you cannot verify with your own senses tonight.*

They sat. Two other men flanked the far end of the table — quiet, watchful, dressed in the anonymous dark suits of professional muscle trying very hard to look like ordinary business associates, and failing in the specific, coiled stillness of men trained for violence rather than negotiation.

"Let's not waste each other's time," Su Kang said, pulling a folder from his briefcase with more confidence than Chen Feng suspected he actually felt. "Before we finalize anything, my legal counsel has some questions about the distribution rights terms — specifically the customs clearance provisions in section four."

"Of course," Feng Lao said pleasantly, folding his hands. "Ask away, Dr. Su. I understand you're quite thorough."

Su Wan opened the folio and began, calmly, methodically, walking through clause after clause with the precise, patient thoroughness of a woman who had genuinely done her homework overnight — real questions, Chen Feng realized, not merely theater, each one designed to force Feng Lao's people to reveal more of the deal's actual mechanics than they'd intended to share in a first meeting. It was, he thought, watching her work, a genuinely brilliant piece of misdirection: use the truth itself as camouflage, let real due diligence buy real time.

*Clever,* Ye Chen murmured, something like admiration threading through the words. *She's stalling without appearing to stall. Every question she asks is one Feng Lao's people must answer honestly, on the record, in front of witnesses — which means every answer narrows the space in which he can lie to us later. Watch his associates while she works. Their patience will tell us more than their master's composure.*

Chen Feng did as instructed, letting his attention drift from the negotiation itself to the two men flanking the table's far end. One shifted his weight every ninety seconds or so, a habit Chen Feng recognized distantly, disturbingly, as the particular restlessness of a man carrying a concealed weapon uncomfortable against his ribs. The other's eyes kept flicking, almost imperceptibly, toward a door at the room's rear — not the elevator they'd arrived through, a second exit, unmarked, that nobody had mentioned in the club's public floor plan.

*A second door,* Ye Chen said, sharp with interest. *Memorize its position. If tonight goes wrong, that exit will matter — either as our escape, or as the route through which more of Feng Lao's people might arrive uninvited.*

"—and finally," Su Wan was saying, closing the folio with deliberate finality, "we'll need thirty days for full legal review before any signatures are exchanged. Standard practice for an agreement of this scope."

Feng Lao's pleasant expression didn't waver, but something in his pale eyes went very still. "Thirty days," he repeated softly. "That's considerably longer than the timeline Su Kang and I originally discussed."

"Circumstances have changed," Su Kang said, and to his credit his voice held steady, three months of careful cultivation by Feng Lao finally, visibly cracking under the weight of everything he'd learned in the last twenty-four hours. "My father's health has taken an unexpected turn. Until the family's affairs are settled, I'm not in a position to finalize major transfers of company infrastructure."

For a long moment, nobody at the table moved. Feng Lao studied Su Kang's face with the unhurried, patient attention of a man recalculating an equation he'd believed was already solved, and Chen Feng felt Ye Chen's focus sharpen behind his own eyes to something close to a blade's edge, watching, waiting, for whatever came next.

Then Feng Lao smiled, and it was worse than any anger could have been.

"I see," he said softly. "Su Tianhe's unexpected turn. How fortuitous, that it should happen to coincide precisely with his son-in-law's own unexpected... recovery, three nights ago." His gaze slid, deliberate and unhurried, to Chen Feng. "You've been busy, Mr. Chen Feng. I did wonder how long it would take you to start using what woke up inside you. I confess I expected more caution from a man who refused my handshake so carefully yesterday morning."

*He knows,* Ye Chen said, cold and certain. *Not suspects. Knows. Chen Feng — someone told him. Not Su Kang; his shock at the mention of the health issue was genuine, I watched his pulse when Kang spoke, he hadn't been briefed. Someone else in this family, or close to it, has been speaking to Feng Lao. We need to leave this room, now, before he decides tonight is the night he stops being patient.*

"I think this meeting is over," Chen Feng said quietly, already rising, one hand finding Su Wan's shoulder in a silent, urgent signal to move.

Feng Lao rose as well, unhurried, still smiling, and the two men at the table's far end rose with him, no longer bothering to disguise the coiled readiness beneath their borrowed business suits.

"It doesn't have to be," Feng Lao said, spreading his hands in a gesture of almost gentle reasonableness that fooled absolutely no one in the room. "Sit back down, Mr. Chen Feng. I'd genuinely prefer this conversation end in an agreement rather than an unpleasantness. I've waited five hundred years for you to wake up. I can afford another hour of patience tonight, if you'll simply give me the courtesy of hearing my actual offer."

"And if I refuse?"

Feng Lao's smile widened, thin and terrible, and somewhere behind him the unmarked second door swung open to admit four more men in dark suits, unhurried, patient, filling the room's only alternate exit with quiet, deliberate finality.

"Then I'm afraid," Feng Lao said pleasantly, "we're going to have a considerably less civilized evening than any of us actually wanted."