“What - what is happening? What happened?” Just a few seconds later, Sue coughed, sniffled, shivered then opened her eyes, looking at her surroundings, Gloria and Gyuu Park: “I - where? Where am I? Are you… did you bring me here?”

“You’re at my noodle shop.” Chef Tang came from the side, holding a small bowl of fragrant soup with some small blobs of boiled dough inside: “Here, have some dough drop soup. Mde with ginger, white pepper powder and chicken broth. It’s a bit hot, so be careful.”

“Than - thank you Chef.” Sue accepted the soup and took a quick sip, after making sure that it was actually warm, she opened her mouth and gulped it down. There were a few dough drops in the soup, and she just devoured them without much chewing as if she had been starving for a while.

“Slow down, slow down. You don’t wanna choke. ” Chef Tang patted Sue on her back, then sat on a chair at the corner of the room.

Gloria and Gyuu Park got their soups as well, but they just put them aside and came to check on Sue. When Gloria had her fingers on Sue’s wrist, she felt that Sue’s body temperature seemed to be quite low, and her muscles and pulses were weaker than normal.

“How does this even happen?” Gyuu Park checked the temperature on Sue’s forehead, then the pulses on her neck: “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. I don’t think anyone has.” Chef Tang put the short sword on the velvet cushion and let the two staffers with him to store it away. “At least - I don’t think anyone today should be expected to know about it in order to avoid such a thing.”

“Chef, you know more about everything that’s going on in the city than anyone. Do you know who might be behind this?” Gyuu Park turned to Chef Tang: “This surely isn’t natural. I mean, Dusters having some kind of horde leader and possessing a living human? That can only be the result of something truly poisonous and sinister.”

Chef Tang went silent. Gloria had her right palm on Sue’s back, slowly pushing her Qi into her friend’s body to help her get rid of anything that might still remain. Luckily, the ritual seemed to be pretty thorough, there were only very little traces of paranormal energy left in Sue’s meridians, even if not completely cleared today, she would still be fine after some rest.

“... your information is vital to the peace of the district. Here I thank you, all of you.” Chef Tang stood up, and bowed to all three of them: “And with this matter, I will share with you everything we could. But - as of now, all I have with me are bits and pieces of disjointed intelligence, still needing to be pieced together. Thus, I cannot give you a definite answer right now. Come back here at the same time the day after tomorrow, I shall share with you the crucial information. In the meantime, try to rest and stay vigilant.”

“Understood, thank you very much, Chef.” Gyuu Park immediately bowed back at Chef Tang.

“It’s a pleasure doing business with you. ” Chef Tang nodded: “And I guess I don’t need to remind you, what you just heard and will hear, you do not hear any of it from us.”

—--------------------

When the time came, Gyuu Park, Gloria and Sue all got to the noodle shop as promised. They were welcome in through the same door by the same two staffers. Chef Tang was waiting for them with two small piles of freshly printed and stapled notes.

“Here’s what we found out, all documented here. ” When the three came and sat down, Chef Tang pointed at the documents: “It’s not much, and according to our internal code, we cannot put down anything regarding the forbidden arts and crafts in writing. So, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you. And no, you cannot use recording devices.”

“We know, it is the old ways.” Gyuu Park nodded and looked at Gloria and Sue: “Just try to remember as much as you can.”

“Got it.” Gloria and Sue nodded at the same time.

“What you encountered back at the warehouse was timely and lucky. ” Chef Tang proceeded: “As you may know, the flow of Qiyun and karma is not unlike that of water in a river, or in the ocean. There are streams, flows and tides. And since we are but beings at their mercy and going with the flow, we as mere humans are not able to sense the distortions and changes unless they happen very abruptly.

“And this is the very reason that a thing like this might be happening right under our noses. One may call it a ‘hidden stream’. But what seemed to me, is that something truly disturbing happened at that warehouse, or just in the docks generally. And it caused the local flow of Qiyun and karma to freeze, or stall.”

“Freeze?” Gyuu Park asked: “You mean stopping the flow of karma?”

“Yes. ” Chef Tang nodded: “Or at least, stopping its tides and waves. Dusters are not like us, nor are they any beings of significant power that could actually go upstream. They rely on the tides and waves of Qiyun and karma in order to function. They are scavengers. Their cycles of life depend on it. And what happened with that particular Duster, we can only assume, was because the life cycles are frozen. They stopped dying and began growing out of their normal sizes and ranges of power.

“And expanding on this, there’s also this very disturbing fact. Our people have been scouting around the docks for some time. So far we’ve found nothing obviously wrong. Or should I say - things were almost evenly, equally strange, we were not able to find anything that stands out. ”

“Evenly bad? Can you elaborate on that?” Gloria asked.

“Yes of course. ” Chef Tang pulled out a small piece of paper and a pen from his side and started drawing on it: “See, this is the entire docks area.”

Gloria watched as Chef Tang drew on the paper. It was quite an amazing sight, though he was just drawing from impression and memory, his outline was almost as exact and accurate as any map she saw.

“My people had placed probing incense in different corners of the entire area, even including the surrounding area.” Chef Tang drew a big circle around the docks area, then marked many dots in the circle: “These are all the spots. And as it turned out, the disturbance of Qiyun and spread of paranormal energy was quite - how should I say it, quite flat. Almost as if someone had a spray can of energy and sprayed it evenly across the area.”

“That sounds like a cover up.” Gloria shook her head.

“That’s exactly what it is.” Chef Tang nodded in approval: “You see, I’ve consulted some - some folks who have the access and knowledge, they told me that with frozen karmic tides, paranormal activities will be on the rise and display a sporadic pattern. But - here’s the thing, the docks area partially hovers over the water. And water - it is in a way a medium of paranormal energy. So…”

“So the suspicion is that there’s something underwater.” Gyuu Park interjected.